English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 09/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me
John 16/16-19: “‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.’ Then some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What does he mean by saying to us, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”; and “Because I am going to the Father”?’They said, ‘What does he mean by this “a little while”? We do not know what he is talking about.’ Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, ‘Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”?”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 08-09/2021
MoPH: 173 new coronavirus cases, 5 deaths
France to host mid-June meeting to gather support for Lebanese army
Aoun marking commemoration of four assassinated Judges in Sidon Court calls for adherence to integrity, impartiality
BDL Issues Circular on 'Fresh Dollar' Withdrawals
Berri Says This Week 'Decisive' as to Govt. Formation
Hariri to Reveal a 'Surprise' Stance, Says Araji
Report: Berri Thrives to Make His Govt 'Initiative' Succeed
Berri Says This Week 'Decisive' as to Govt. Formation
Strong Lebanon Bloc Calls on Hariri to Take Final Decision
Nasrallah: Instead of promoting early parliamentary elections, go ahead and form government
Nasrallah Urges No 'Despair' on Govt., Threatens to Bring Iranian Fuel Ships to Beirut Port
Lebanon Pharmacies ‘Forcibly’ Close Friday amid Shortage
Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Nasrallah reassures supporters over his health
Language in the Formation of Nation States/ Dr. Amine Jules Iskandar Syriac Maronite Union-Tur Levnon/Tuesday/08 June/2021

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 08-09/2021
Syria’s defenses intercept Israeli missile strike over Damascus -state news agency
Blinken Says 'Hundreds' of U.S. Sanctions to Remain on Iran
Iran weighs using Palestinians against Israel again/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Blinken: Iran not close to returning to 2015 nuke compliance/Omri Nahmias/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Bennett-Lapid gov't to be sworn in Sunday, Netanyahu heads to opposition
Only weeks may separate Iran and the nuclear bomb, US warns
Is Kadhimi seeking Abadi’s help to ease tensions with PMF?
Kenyan silence over Turkish kidnapping of Gulen relative raises questions
Biden, Erdogan to discuss ‘significant differences’ next week
Kurdistan’s PUK forges alliance with pro-Iran factions in Iraq ahead of election
Extremist ploughs into Muslim family in Ontario, kills four
Focus on Libya as Turkish and French FMs meet in Paris
Macron Slapped during Trip to Southeast France
Israel Frees Jordanian Bus Bomber after 20 Years
Two Jordanians who Infiltrated Israel Repatriated
UN Security Council backs Antonio Guterres for second term

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 08-09/2021
A look at Netanyahu's legacy as curtains close on an era - opinion/Keren Setton/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Is Egypt planning to retake control of the Gaza Strip?/Kaled Bou Toameh/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen: Will West go easy on Iran?/Yonah Jeremy Bob/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Jordan’s tribal problems continue - analysis/Daoud Kuttab/The Media Line/June 08/2021
Sheba hospital in space: Exploring the final frontier of medical science/Zev Stub/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Denmark Cracks Down on Mass Migration/"The Current Asylum System Has Failed"/Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/June 08/2021

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 08-09/2021
MoPH: 173 new coronavirus cases, 5 deaths
NNA/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Lebanon has recorded 173 new coronavirus cases and 5 deaths in the past 24 hours, as reported by the Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday.

France to host mid-June meeting to gather support for Lebanese army
Reuters/June 08, 2021
Paris has sought to ramp up pressure on Lebanon's squabbling politicians
Discontent is brewing among Lebanon's security forces over a currency crash wiping out most of the value of their salaries.
PARIS: France will convene a virtual meeting of countries on June 17 to drum up support for the Lebanese army.
It seeks to weather an economic crisis that has put the military on the verge of collapse, France’s armed forces ministry said on Tuesday. Paris, which has led aid efforts to its former colony, has sought to ramp up pressure on Lebanon’s squabbling politicians, after failed attempts to rally them to agree a new government and launch reforms to unlock foreign cash. Discontent is brewing among Lebanon’s security forces over a currency crash wiping out most of the value of their salaries. Army chief Joseph Aoun was in France last month to warn of an increasingly untenable situation and in response Paris provided food and medical supplies for military personnel, whose salaries had fallen five or six fold in value, forcing many to take extra jobs. Two diplomatic sources said the meeting would seek aid from countries offering food, medical supplies and spare parts for military equipment. However, it was not designed to provide weapons or other military hardware. “The objective is to bring attention to the situation of the LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces), whose members are faced with deteriorating living conditions and who may no longer be able to fully implement their missions, which are essential to the stability of the country,” the ministry said, adding that it would host the meeting with the United Nations and Italy. It aims to encourage donations to benefit the LAF, it said. Countries from the Lebanon International Support Group, which includes Gulf Arab states, the United States, Russia, China and European powers, have been invited.
Lebanon’s pound has crashed 90 percent since late 2019 in a financial meltdown that poses the biggest threat to stability since the 1975-1990 civil war. The army has long been viewed as a rare institution of national pride and unity. Its collapse at the start of the civil war, when it split along sectarian lines, resulted in Lebanon’s descent into militia rule.

Aoun marking commemoration of four assassinated Judges in Sidon Court calls for adherence to integrity, impartiality
NNA/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, saluted the souls of the four martyred judges who were killed in Sidon Court on 8/6/1999 by shooters who stormed the courtroom in an unprecedented crime. On the occasion of the anniversary of the martyrdom of the four judges: Walid Harmoush, Hassan Othman, Assem Abu Daher, and Imad Shehab, the President said:
“On this day 22 years ago, four judges fell on the arc of justice in a heinous crime that sowed blood on the path of truth.
On this anniversary, I salute the souls of the martyrs of justice, and I call on the judges to uphold their true immunity, which is integrity, impartiality, non-dependency and integrity of practice, so accountability will be established in Lebanon, and progress will be achieved”.
The Follow-up Committee of Janna Dam:
President Aoun received a delegation from the Jannah Dam Follow-up Committee, which included the Chairman and Director General of the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Establishment, engineer Jean Gibran, lawyer Antoine Kaday, engineers Ziad Zakhour, George Rizk, Ramzi Saliba and George Melki.
Energy Minister, Raymond Ghajar, also attended the meeting.
The delegation presented the stages of the dam's construction process and the difficulties facing its completion in various respects. After its completion, this dam will secure 38 million cubic meters of water, 30 million of which are for Beirut, and 8 million for the Byblos region and its suburbs, in addition to its ability to produce around 100 megawatts of electrical energy. The meeting also addressed the cost of completing the project, as it was decided to make the necessary communications to secure the necessary needs to ensure the continuation of work on the dam.
MP Boustany:
The President met the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Economy, Trade, Industry and Planning, MP Dr. Farid Boustany, who briefed him on the actions of the Parliamentary Committee in cooperation with the government to deal with the export file to Saudi Arabia, and to act firmly and wisely to address the repercussions of the Saudi decision on the agricultural and industrial sectors.
Boustany also explained that the meeting also dealt with the financing card and the project submitted by the "Strong Lebanon Bloc" to the parliament, in addition to a number of issues related to the development of the Chouf region.
In addition, MP Boustany said that President Aoun assured him of the importance of mountain security, and the need to maintain civil peace and coexistence among its sons.—Presidency Press Office

BDL Issues Circular on 'Fresh Dollar' Withdrawals
Associated Press/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Lebanon's central bank said Tuesday that depositors will be allowed to withdraw limited monthly amounts from their foreign currency accounts, nearly 20 months after banks denied them access amid a severe financial crisis. The move is a small step toward instituting formal capital controls after Lebanese banks arbitrarily imposed policies preventing depositors from accessing their dollar accounts even as the local currency collapsed and a black market thrived. According to the new central bank circular, depositors will be allowed to withdraw up to $400 a month in cash and another $400 in local currency at a rate eight times higher than the official rate. The Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar at 1,515 for more than 20 years, has been crashing since 2019, losing more than 85% of its value to the dollar. The crash prompted banks to impose informal capital controls, barring depositors from reaching into their dollar accounts, as well as stopping transfers. Depositors have been allowed to withdraw foreign currency transferred after the crisis began. It wasn't immediately clear if commercial banks -- short on foreign currency -- can meet the demand of an anticipated rush on the banks when the policy goes into effect July 1.
The Association of Banks in Lebanon said last week that Lebanese banks cannot afford to pay back such amounts in foreign currency as the financial crisis worsens every month. It later said that banks would cooperate should the central bank lower the threshold of the obligatory reserve.
Lebanon is experiencing the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history. In March 2020, Lebanon defaulted on paying back its debt for the first time in its history. The World Bank said earlier this month that Lebanon's crisis is likely to rank as one of the worst the world has seen in more than 150 years. Also on Tuesday, caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said imports of all medicines that have a local or generic equivalent will be suspended. He added that imports of medicines for chronic diseases, baby formula and anesthesia will continue as usual.
The move comes amid dwindling foreign currency reserves at the central bank that stood at about $30 billion in late 2019 and dropped to nearly half that amount at the present time. The central bank subsidizes imports of vital goods including medicines, oil and wheat.

Berri Says This Week 'Decisive' as to Govt. Formation
Naharnet/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
The current week is supposed to be “decisive” regarding the formation of the new government, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Tuesday. “Lebanon can longer bear… and God willing there will be positive results,” Berri was quoted as saying by Joseph Kossaifi, the head of the Lebanese Editors Syndicate, after he met with the Speaker in Ain el-Tineh. “There are intensive contacts to resolve the two remaining obstacles, not more,” Berri added. Berri also emphasized that “Lebanon’s problem is 100% domestic,” lamenting that “the international and Arab communities care about Lebanon more than the Lebanese themselves.”“If you can’t help yourself, you can’t ask for help from others, and the biggest proof is the French endeavor,” the Speaker went on to say. He added: “All people have shown a desire to assist Lebanon and the Lebanese must start assisting themselves. I heard these words yesterday from the World Bank delegation and I continuously hear it from the ambassadors who visit me.”

Hariri to Reveal a 'Surprise' Stance, Says Araji
Naharnet /Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Al-Mustaqbal MP Assem Araji said he expects a “surprise" position from PM-designate Saad Hariri in the "next few days," as the government formation stalls further and the country drifts deeper into its economic crisis, al-Anbaa electronic newspaper reported on Tuesday. Araji said amid the continued “obstacles and conditions” hampering Hariri's effort to form a new government, the PM-designate plans to take a position that will surprise many. “How can Hariri form a government when the obstructing party insists on not interacting with Hariri?” asked Araji. “Lack of interaction" between President Michel Aoun and Hariri, and adamancy not to discuss the formation process “only mean that Hariri’s role will be limited, and that he rejects, meanwhile the country continues to slide down into the abyss,” he added. “After the (economic and financial) crisis, no political figure can form a government without the approval of the international community, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states,” added Araji. “Lebanon will go into a major crisis after losing most types of medicine while smuggling is in full swing, especially wheat, flour and diesel.”

Report: Berri Thrives to Make His Govt 'Initiative' Succeed
Naharnet/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Speaker Nabih Berri reportedly insists on making his initiative “succeed” in easing the hurdles delaying the formation of a government in Lebanon, the electronic al-Anbaa newspaper reported Tuesday. The daily quoted Berri’s visitors as saying that the Speaker “more than ever, adheres to his initiative because any alternative would only mean Lebanon’s collapse.”They said the “Speaker and loyal people like him, categorically reject the status quo,” stressing that “Berri will never allow Lebanon to collapse as long as he exists.”President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri have failed, since the latter’s designation in October last year, to agree on a much-needed government to steer the country out of its crises. In May, Berri revived an initiative that gained the support of several political parties including Hizbullah and the Progressive Socialist Party.
Berri’s initiative is seen as the last chance for Lebanon to have a government imperative to start the salvation process. Lebanon is wrangling with multiple crises, including an economic deadlock that drenched many Lebanon into poverty.

Berri Says This Week 'Decisive' as to Govt. Formation
Naharnet /Tuesday, 08 June 2021
The current week is supposed to be “decisive” regarding the formation of the new government, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Tuesday.
“Lebanon can longer bear… and God willing there will be positive results,” Berri was quoted as saying by Joseph Kossaifi, the head of the Lebanese Editors Syndicate, after he met with the Speaker in Ain el-Tineh. “There are intensive contacts to resolve the two remaining obstacles, not more,” Berri added. Berri also emphasized that “Lebanon’s problem is 100% domestic,” lamenting that “the international and Arab communities care about Lebanon more than the Lebanese themselves.”“If you can’t help yourself, you can’t ask for help from others, and the biggest proof is the French endeavor,” the Speaker went on to say. He added: “All people have shown a desire to assist Lebanon and the Lebanese must start assisting themselves. I heard these words yesterday from the World Bank delegation and I continuously hear it from the ambassadors who visit me.”

Strong Lebanon Bloc Calls on Hariri to Take Final Decision
Naharnet /Tuesday, 08 June 2021
The Free Patriotic Movement-led Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc on Tuesday called on Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to take a final decision regarding the formation of the new government. “The Lebanese are still waiting for positive results from the parliament speaker’s initiative and for the PM-designate’s cooperation with it,” the bloc said in a statement issued after its weekly e-meeting. The bloc added that on his own, Hariri can also form a government according to the “norms of the constitution and the National Pact” and “on the basis of the French initiative.”“Seeing as it is impossible to prolong the state of waiting in light of the pressing circumstances, the bloc sees that the PM-designate must take a final decision as to whether or not he wants to form a government,” Strong Lebanon added. “All the parties concerned must shoulder their responsibilities in terms of highlighting the facts while pushing for formation, because overlooking or distorting them will allow for further waste of precious time,” the bloc went on to say.

Nasrallah: Instead of promoting early parliamentary elections, go ahead and form government
NNA/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of "Al-Manar" channel, considered that "the daily developments happening in Palestine in general, and Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular, must be accompanied by [a movement across] the whole nation and not only by Palestinians.""We stand opposite a hateful and foolish enemy. Everyone knows the extent of the political, social, and cultural dilemmas experienced by the Israeli society, including the call for repeated elections and the inability to form a government," he argued, stressing that "[protecting] Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa Mosque is the responsibility of the entire nation." He pointd out that the people of Jerusalem and the West Bank have preserved the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem with their presence, their patience, their steadfastness, and their flesh, and still do so to this day. "We are working hard to reach an equation that renders any assault on Al-Quds tantamount to a regional war," he stressed, warning that "former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may resort to foolishness, yet again, after his political crisis."
Reassuring his audience over his health condition, Nasrallah thanked all those who checked in on him, and said "I have a dream and a great hope that I will, one day, pray in Al-Aqsa Mosque."Tackling the Yemeni war, Nasrallah said: "Since day one, we had faith in the ability of the Yemeni people to withstand [calamities], despite the different sources of aggression. Indeed, we believed in its ability to achieve victory. We knew for a fact that this victory was inevitable. All through the past years we have witnessed heroic epics, and today we stand in front of a catastrophic failure for the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen."
"When war fails, they resort to economic means and pressures to achieve the goals they were unable to achieve by military means," he explained. "This is what is happening in Syria, as well as in Lebanon and many countries of the world that have refused to bow to the American arrogance."
Turning his attention to local affairs, namely the parliamentary elections, the Hezbollah secretary General said: "It did not occur to us to postpone the parliamentary elections, neither did we discuss the matter with any of our allies. We are still against early parliamentary elections as we believe that resorting to such a measure is a waste of time."To those calling for early parliamentary elections, Nasrallah retorted that "instead of talking about early parliamentary measures, why won't you go ahead and form a government?" Pertaining to the government formation dilemma, he informed his addressees that "the party stands by Berri and always seeks to assist him. We must not despair and continue to work." He pointed out that "the state performance is weak in all files, which increases the suffering. The government must thus shoulder its responsibilities."
Nasrallah also tackled the issue of monopoly, noting that "monopolists are free to do as they please; they're well-known and enjoy political coverage. They are protected by political forces, sectarian references, and state bodies. The present government and the relevant ministries must declare war on monopolies and monopolists -- this is part of the treatment." Moving on to the fuel crisis, Nasrallah stressed that "the Iranian offer to send fuel to Lebanon in the Lebanese currency is still valid. If the state remains sluggish, we will go to Iran and negotiate and buy petrol and diesel ships and bring them to the port of Beirut, and let the state then prevent their entry into Lebanon," asserting that "the sight of the humiliation of our people will not be tolerated.""The rationalization of subsidies will not happen, for any official decision to rationalize or lift subsidies must be made the responsibility of everyone. (…) If a new government is formed, its program will be clear; it has no way out but through the International Monetary Fund, and its first condition is to lift subsidies," he went on to say. Finally, the Hezbollah Chief uttered his support for the "subsidy card" draft law, and called upon the House of Representatives to approve it as soon as possible.

Nasrallah Urges No 'Despair' on Govt., Threatens to Bring Iranian Fuel Ships to Beirut Port
Naharnet/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday said the cabinet formation initiative led by Speaker Nabih Berri should have no deadline as he threatened to “bring Iranian fuel ships to Beirut port” if the Lebanese state does not resolve the fuel shortage crisis.
“We are against early parliamentary polls, because it would be a waste of time and it would deviate people’s attention from their concerns. Instead of talking about early polls, let them form a government,” Nasrallah said, in a televised address marking the anniversary of Hizbullah’s al-Manar TV.
“We are with continuing the government formation efforts and there should be no despair. Let those forming the government feel the people’s pain,” Nasrallah added. Nasrallah also said that one of the reasons behind the delay in the formation of the government could be that some parties are awaiting the end of the state’s subsidization of essential goods. “The current official performance is weak in the various files and at the various ministries and the government, ministers and directors general must shoulder their responsibilities, especially that the government formation crisis might protract,” Hizbullah’s leader added. “The radical solutions for the economic crisis need years and it is unacceptable to wait without finding a solution to the current crisis,” Nasrallah said. Turning to the country’s fuel shortage crisis, Nasrallah said an Iranian proposal for selling Lebanon fuel in Lebanese lira is still on the table.
“If Lebanon accepts at this very moment, fuel ships would come now from Iran,” Hizbullah’s leader said, lamenting that “we are in a country that has surrendered to the United States.”“We need a bold political decision to resolve the gasoline crisis in Lebanon,” he urged. He also threatened that Hizbullah would take action in this regard if the Lebanese state does not act. “If we reach a state of despair over the state’s action, we in Hizbullah will negotiate with the Iranian government and buy gasoline and diesel ships and will bring them to Beirut port and let the Lebanese state block the entry of diesel and gasoline to the Lebanese people,” Nasrallah said, warning that Hizbullah “cannot tolerate the scenes of the people’s humiliation.”

Lebanon Pharmacies ‘Forcibly’ Close Friday amid Shortage
Naharnet/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
In light of a shortage in medicines in Lebanon, the Association of Pharmacies announced in a statement that it would “forcibly” stop working for one day on Friday in protest at the worsening conditions, media reports said on Tuesday. The Association waved in a statement on Monday of "escalating" measures because of the crisis, and a shortage in baby milk formula that is being sold at the black market for hefty prices. The Association complained about “failure of drug importers to deliver needed medicines to pharmacies.” They said that “more than a month has passed since drug importers stopped delivering medicines, mainly those for chronic diseases.”“Our stock of infant formula has completely run out, while we find it available on social media pages at double prices, which indicates that some are monopolizing it in cooperation and coordination with some merchants or those who work with them,” added the statement. They added that their move aims to bring attention to Lebanese officials that the crisis has touched "red lines," and Lebanon’s health, medicines and food security are seriously threatened. Drugs for everything from diabetes and blood pressure to anti-depressants and fever pills used in COVID-19 treatment have disappeared from shelves around Lebanon. Officials and pharmacists say the shortage was exacerbated by panic buying and hoarding after the Central Bank governor said that with foreign reserves running low, the government won’t be able to keep up subsidies, including on drugs.
More than half the population has been pushed into poverty and people’s savings have lost value. Public debt is crippling, and the local currency plunged, losing nearly 80% of its value. The health sector is buckling under the financial strain and coronavirus pandemic.

Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Nasrallah reassures supporters over his health
Reuters/Tuesday, 08 June 2021
Hezbollah chief says Iran can come to Lebanon's rescue
* Nasrallah says all what is needed is a "courageous" decision
* First televised speech since rumours about Nasrallah's health (Adds quotes on fuel crisis)
Laila Bassam and Maha El Dahan
BEIRUT, June 8 (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah reassured supporters that he was well on Tuesday after coughing episodes during his last speech caused concerns about his health.
"A human being is a human being, you get sick or tired sometimes," Nasrallah said in his first televised appearance since he coughed his way through a speech on May 25, when he said he was suffering from allergies and nothing serious.
Referring to social media rumours suggesting he had a grave illness, he said: "Some people killed us off and some started looking for a successor. I reassure them."
Nasrallah has led the Iran-backed, armed Hezbollah movement for nearly three decades, turning it from one of Lebanon's many civil war militias into a group of regional influence.
"There are some people who expressed their love and distributed bread and salt and wrote and called and I reassure these," Nasrallah said. "I cherish their love and thank (them) all."Nasrallah made his comments while delivering a speech on Lebanon's financial crisis and political deadlock.
He urged politicians to urgently form a new cabinet and said, without providing details, that Iran could alleviate his country's economic problems if a "courageous" decision was taken. Lebanon's financial meltdown is escalating, with shortages of basic items such as food, fuel and medication worsening amidst political deadlock.
"We, Hezbollah, can go to Iran and negotiate with the Iranian government and buy shipments of fuel," Nasrallah said.
The purchases, he said, would be made in Lebanese pounds and would not require long waits for the central bank to approve dollar allocations.
"These scenes of humiliation, people should not bear," he said referring to long fuel lines in recent weeks. Lebanon's financial situation is complicated by the political deadlock as prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri and President Michel Aoun squabble over naming ministers. Aoun is an ally of Hezbollah.
A new cabinet is needed to enact reforms that could unlock foreign aid.
"Those responsible for government formation need to listen to people's voices and look with pain at the cars queueing up for fuel and the loss of electricity and medication," Nasrallah said. (Reporting By Maha El Dahan and Laila Bassam; Editing by Alex Richardson, David Gregorio and Timothy Heritage)

Language in the Formation of Nation States
 Dr. Amine Jules Iskandar Syriac Maronite Union-Tur Levnon//Tuesday/08 June/2021
Maronitism bears a culture in all of its expressions. It constitutes a unity with its original Syriac language. This reality makes it difficult for a Maronite to embrace a different culture. Because his identity is inscribed within his language and spirituality.
Today’s Lebanese is a dialect of Syriac that was the language taught in our Mount-Lebanese schools up till the 1940’s. Many organizations and Maronite parishes are striving today for the revival of Syriac, at a time where Lebanon is in an existential vulnerability. Why is language such an important ingredient in the elaboration and building of a Nation?
The genesis of the concept of culture, as related to people’s identity, started mainly in the end of the 18th century and evolved during the 19th century with the Romantic German philosophers. They developed the notion of Nationalism. The prominent figures were Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), and a French version with Jules Michelet (1798-1874) and Ernest Renan (1823-1892) who gave a conference in 1882 entitled “What is a nation?” (Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?).
French literature helped spread these ideas to the rest of Europe and beyond. It reached the Balkans, Russia, and even Lebanon all the way to Armenia. The large scale diffusion of this concept of Nation State in the Western World defined its political morphology based on its national cultures. For that, it is important to describe this philosophy as developed by the German Romantic movement.
Linguistics
Swedish philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg was among the first to inspire several German philosophers within the Romantic movement. In 1771 he wrote: “Germany is divided into more governments than the neighboring kingdoms…. However, a common genius prevails everywhere among people speaking the same language” (True Christian religion). This description helps us notice the intimate relation that lays between language and identity. Even when a country is not politically united, language can become the cement that brings it all together.
Based on this observation, it was tempting to explore the relation between language and identity. This approach was first supported in Germany by Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803). He considered that one can only think if one has a language. For him, the striving of people and their mentality are intimately related to language. The needs, the believes and the aspirations become one with culture. In that sense, language is revealed as the focal support and the main ingredient of identity.
Linguistics and Nation
Pushing further with this conception, another German, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), associated it to the idea of Nation. He considered language as the most important component for cultural specificity and therefore, for nation. He founded the concept of Nation State as based on culture and expressed by language. His nationalistic approach was conscious and intentional as his work on the Spiritual Revival in Prussia aimed to oppose Napoleon Bonaparte’s hegemony. Hence, the Volkstum (or National Culture) started in Germany as a way of resisting French supremacy. This Volkstum can be considered today as one of the most efficient weapons of resistance for any country under existential threat.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte expressed the unity of language and nation in 1806, in his Addresses to the German Nation. He said:
“The first, original, and truly natural boundaries of states are beyond doubt their internal boundaries. Those who speak the same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds by nature herself…
“… and in the natural view of things it is not because men dwell between certain mountains and rivers that they are a people, but, on the contrary, men dwell together -and, if their luck has so arranged it, are protected by rivers and mountains- because they were a people already by a law of nature which is much higher” (Addresses to the German Nation).
There are indeed other mountains and rivers in the Levant, in Arabia and in North Africa, it did not create a specificity nor any autonomous mountain like in Lebanon. Here there is more than a Mountain, there is a language and a religious culture emphasizing a particular and specific identity.
Language is not a simple means of communication. It carries the cultural heritage of a people, its history and its lived experience as well as its faith and spirituality. Each word carries a collection of meanings, images and concepts that are unique and particular to that specific people.
Language and worldview
In 1820, Wilhelm von Humboldt declared that “the diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world.” In his humanistic understanding of linguistics, each language generates its own worldview in its particular lexical and grammatical categories, and conceptualization. In that same perspective, Jean-Marie Klinckenberg noted in 1996 that “to use a sign is to refer to a specific culture, a specific society”.
Consequently, by changing the language of someone, we can change his way of understanding the world and the perception he has of himself and of his own society. We can convince him that he belongs to a different society, and make him adopt foreign causes and foreign battles as being his own cause. He can destroy his own society for the benefit of another.
We know how much language is important in our way of thinking, in our way of building our idea of the world, and of ourselves, thanks to several studies all through the 19th and 20th centuries. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, was actually developed separately by Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). Their two independent approaches were later combined to form a synthesis under the name of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It states that the Structure of a language affects its speakers’ cognition and relation to the world.
And during that same period, the Austrian-British philosopher, Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951), expressed strongly this vision when he wrote: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (Tractatus logico-philosophicus).
Language as bearer of identity
Throughout these philosophical observations concerning the worldview and the individual as well as collective cognition, we recognize the central role of language. The relationship between Language and Nation becomes mostly explicit. Which one comes first? Nation or Language?
Let us consider the examples of Cyprus that made the choice of Greek, and of Malta that fixed its Arabized Cananean dialect full of Italian, French and English words, exactly like spoken Lebanese. The people of Cyprus and of Malta, started by fixing their linguistic identity to be able to establish for themselves the foundations of their political entity and immunity. An immunity that clearly lacks in Lebanon. Language and Nation are so intimately related, that one does not go without the other. A language without a country could disappear. But this is also the case of a country without a language.
Contrary to the prejudice that is very common in Lebanon, contrary to the fantasy preached by some Maronite intellectuals, language is definitely a component of identity. It reflects identity, it defines it, and makes it flourish or die with it. Contrary to what those scholars pretend, English is undeniably an identity for an American, and it caries in it an Anglo-Saxon Christian protestant substrate. In the same logic, Portuguese is an identity and a Latin catholic culture for a Brazilian. And Spanish is an identity and a Latin catholic culture for an Argentinian. Hence, a language can be adopted as long as it reflects the culture, faith, religion, history and identity of a country and of its people.
Maronitism bears a culture in all of its expressions. It constitutes a unity with its original Syriac language. This reality makes it difficult for a Maronite to embrace a different culture. Because his identity is inscribed within his language and spirituality. What better example than that of Boutros Boustany who had to abandon his Maronite faith and to convert to Protestantism to be loyal to his adopted Arab culture? And often, this shift constitutes just the first step before the conversion to Islam like the case of Fares Chidiac (who became Ahmad Fares Al Chidiac).
Maronite priest teaching Syriac to boys and girls
Nation States
History has shown us that most languages were originally just dialects that developed their spelling, and fixed their grammar and syntax in codes and books. Max Weinreich (1894-1969), an American from Latvian origin, defines language as “a dialect with an army and a navy”. Without the self consciousness of a people, a dialect cannot evolve to become a language. And sometimes a language can degenerate into a dialect, or simply disappear, annihilating in the process its speakers.
Without a conscious willing to establish a nation, a dialect doesn’t evolve to become a language the way it did in Malta and the way Syriac language was created consciously by the first Christians of the Levant to demarcate their identity. Lebanese and Maltese are both exactly the same. One of them however, was established as a language while the other was politically limited as a dialect (not even of its own Syriac origin) but as a dialect, or even a deterioration of Arabic. Through its Arabization all along the 20th century and especially since it stopped being taught in schools in 1943, it lost more and more from its Syriac and Italian vocabulary, to end up looking effectively like an Arabic dialect.
1943 National Pact
The 1943 agreement on which was founded the Lebanese Republic was made of good intentions: the respect of all the cultural components. It was expressed by two layers, the Mithaq (the National Pact) and its formula (Al Sigha). The will of coexistence was certainly a very noble idea, only its materialization in the formula was far from being respectful of its components specificities.
German Romanticism opposes the theses known as Contractual (contractuelles) of the French Jean Bodin (16th century), Jean Jacques Rousseau (18th), Henri Benjamin Constant (18-19th), and even the German Emmanuel Kant (18th). According to the latters, society organizes around the Social Contract (le Pacte Social) by a simple agreement between social components and the surrender of some freedoms. According to this opinion, to reach coexistence, it is necessary to abandon part of our cultural heritage, specificities and even needs.
This is precisely the way the Mount-Lebanese people surrendered their sociocultural reality, their history, language and identity, in the Social contract of 1943. After deserting their identity, they started forsaking their rights to have a space that expresses, reflects and protects this identity. The Social Contract of 1943 had to lead inexorably, to the Cairo agreements of 1969 with the full surrender of Lebanon’s legitimacy.
How to build a Nation with several peoples, each one with its own myths, believes, faith, or Narrative known as “le Roman National”? It is worthy of attention that the republic for Aristotle is based on the community (KEINONIA) and not on a people (ETHNOS). This means that we need to have a people with the same faith, aspirations and vision, that is able to act as a cohesive community. In that matter, can we imagine establishing a republic with, not only several communities, but a multitude of peoples from different origins and backgrounds, each one with its particular views and its needs?
What happened in Lebanon, or in the Christian Levant in general?
What brought us to this impasse today, this deadlock situation?
The Ottoman Empire
During the second half of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was in serious decline, and known as the Sick Man (l’Homme Malade). This is when the Judeo-Christian peoples under Ottoman occupation for centuries started to get prepared to rise again. The first step was to revive their dying languages. This is the reason why we have today Modern Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Serb, and even Syriac.
Indeed, in Upper Mesopotamia, Naoum Fayek (1868-1930) had started a revival of this language with the printing of newspapers in Syriac. Modern words were added, and schools provided and developed a secular Syriac literature next to the traditional Christian heritage.
But Arabism made its way for the Christians of the Levant. Most of them started reviving Arabic instead of Syriac. They excelled and made its literature and culture flourish in the most beautiful way. They will always be remembered for this honorable achievement bequeathed to humanity. Only at the same time they forsake the language that could express more deeply and more genuinely their needs, their views, their aspirations, their identity, faith and existence. This lead inexorably to what Bat Ye’or calls: “Le dernier Chant du Signe”, the most beautiful swansong announcing a certain death.
Fortunately, despite that irresponsibility, most Mount-Lebanese schools kept on teaching Syriac, and the Maronite Church kept on using it for all its masses. The fatal rupture would only happen in 1943.
Schoolbook dated 1913 (just before the Great War which ended the autonomy of Mount Lebanon)
The Governorate of Mount Lebanon
Actually it was only in the 19th century that the Nation States as we know them today started their emergence. The German Empire was declared in the Galerie des Glaces in Versailles, in 1871. And this is when Germany started existing as a Nation State. Italy started existing as a Nation State since 1861. Mount Lebanon became an independent or autonomous country and recognized by the European powers in 1860. It was even viewed as a Nation State by Prince Richards von Metternich.
Before him, his father, Klemens von Metternich (1773 1859) or Prince of Metternich, was the Austrian Empire’s foreign Minister from 1809 and chancellor from 1821 to 1848. He was the one who suggested the concept of Caimacamia in Mount Lebanon in 1841. But this partition of Lebanon into two separate entities, was as we know it, a total failure. It ended up in massacres of Christians in the entire Southern Caimacamia and all the way to Syria.
The sustainable solution was found with the Mount Lebanon Governorate (Moutassarifia as named by the Ottomans). Its constitution was called “Règlement Organique” (in English: «Solution Based on Nations»). And it was developed by Richards von Metternich (1829-1895). He was ambassador of Austria at the court of Napoléon III who’s army maintained security in Lebanon in 1860.
Richards von Metternich based the constitution of the Governorate on the cultural reality designating it as “organic”. He furthermore, noted the fundamental differences between the people of Mount Lebanon and the rest of Ottoman Syria. He talked about a clear cultural specificity which is the characteristic of the base of the Nation State as defined during the 19th century. His proposal was a geographical and political system adapted to the demographic reality.
The signatories of the “Règlement Organique” where the Ottoman Porte and the ambassadors of the five Christian Powers, Prussia, Austria, France, Great-Britain and Russia. They were joined later by Italy. Known as the Beyoglu Protocol, and valid for 3 years, it became final in 1864 with a federal system that makes clearly use of the word Canton. Until its invasion by the Ottoman troupes in WWI (1914), the Mount Lebanon Governorate had 8 governors starting with Garapet Artin Daoud Pasha, and ending with Ovhannes Kouyoumjian Pasha. The autonomous entity became famous for its economic and intellectual prosperity.
The concept of “organic” in its constitution, refers to the idea of nations based on cultural groups developed in 19th century Europe by the German Romantic movement. It reached Lebanon directly with Prince of Metternich and European powers, but also through the French culture of the Maronites and the Maronite Church. French writers had also a direct influence.
The National Narrative (Roman National)
As soon as 1860, Ernest Renan arrived with the solders of Napoleon III. Ernest Renan, as well as Jules Michelet upon others, played a predominant role in the French spreading of German Romanticism concerning identity. In 1864, Ernest Renan well aware of the specific identity of the Mount-Lebanese, wrote: “Sous le nom de Syriaque et identifié avec le dialecte des populations du Liban, le Phénicien traversa le Moyen Age.” (Under the name of Syriac and identified with the dialect of the populations of Lebanon, Phoenician crossed the Middle Ages).
This fundamental understanding of the concept of historical continuity underlined by Ernest Renan, was rejected by the official history books under Bechara el Khoury who imposed a fraudulent identity and erased the genuine memory. He created an orphan society and suppressed the foundations of the Nation. He based his political activity on the ideology of a centralized Greater Lebanon with a unique character and an imaginary identity.
A French diplomat, Robert de Caix de Saint-Aymour, had noticed the cultural diversity of the populations of Greater Lebanon (Grand Liban created in 1920). He warned of the danger that would result from the denial of this reality, and he suggested a federal political system that is more adapted to it. Unfortunately, with Greater Lebanon, the Nations on which Richards von Metternich had based his organic solution, were simply erased. Their definition as Millet (Nations) by the Ottomans was translated into the pejorative word Sect. Semantically speaking, what was noble as a Nation became repulsive as a Sect and needed to be suppressed. Bechara el khoury desired to melt everything into one single ideological identity.
What was unconscious during the beginning of the 20th century with the Nahda, turned into premeditated act in 1943. The Syriac language was simply sacrificed on the altar of Greater Lebanon. It was not recognized as one of the national languages of the new entity. As a result, mountain schools in the 1960’s stopped teaching Syriac when the last language teachers retired. The Syriac Maronite Church saw itself forced to hold Mass in Arabic because parishioners could no longer follow in the books printed in Syriac or Garshouné. Until our days, schools refuse to reintegrate the teaching of Syriac pretexting it is useless. This is as if today, proud countries like Italy or Poland would suddenly decide not to teach their own languages any more under the pretext that no other country in the world understands them or uses them. This is what happened in Lebanon.
Letter of 1946, by Raphael Bar Armalet, advocating Syriac as the official language for Lebanon
The warning
However, in 1946, three years after the supposedly independence of Lebanon, Patriarch Antonios Arida was still opposing the drift of Bechara el Khoury and of his pairs. He expressed his concern to safeguard the Syriac language in all Christian schools and universities. In a document drafted for him by the priest Raphael Bar Armalet, it is clearly requested that the Syriac language be spoken “not only in the monasteries and schools but also and above all in every house in Lebanon“. These warnings had no result. On the contrary, the Patriarch was slandered and denounced in the Vatican and ended his life in forced isolation.
A serious awareness was tempted by Lebanese philosopher Charles Malik after the collapse of Lebanon in 1975. In his Two Letters to the Maronites, he emphasized the importance of language in safeguarding identity and in the elaboration of the nation. He wrote:
« Who is more worthy then the Maronites to respect, honor, admire, study and perpetuate the Syriac language? It has been given to them. It is living in their quintessence. They –not others- are primarily accountable for it, and not only to study it historically, theoretically, and with the same curiosity as Europeans and Westerners. They are accountable for it; thus, tying them both culturally and spiritually to remaining elements of the Eastern civilization and living Diaspora around the world ».
This Greek-Orthodox scholar, hold the Maronites responsible for Lebanon because, as he said, they were able to preserve their Syriac language. He even associated this linguistic fact to their raison d’être, their very existence. Like his fellow German philosophers, he stressed on the predominant role of language when he wrote:
“Language is the most significant phenomenon of civilizations, because it is life in its deepest meanings; it determines the roots, origins, and heritage… Why have the Maronites preserved their Syriac heritage? Was it preserved simply by coincidence? … does not Providence have a hand in this matter? … is it not possible and even expected that the survival of the Maronites and their ancient Syriac heritage has an eternal purpose especially in these special times and in this special region…? (Two Letters to the Maronites)
Mediterranean Lebanon
Lebanon has always been Mediterranean, since the Phoenicians, then the Greeks, the Romans and the Byzantine Empire. Lebanon’s Middle Ages flourished in a Latin State under the Franc crusaders, and its Renaissance was initiated by the Maronite College in Rome. Cutting these ties with Lebanon’s past can be extremely perilous.
“Every race and land that has been successively Romanized, Christianized and as regards the mind, disciplined by the Greeks, is absolutely European”. In these words, Paul Valery (1871-1945) defines the European territory. And as we know, Lebanon has been Romanized (the school of law of Beryte), Christianized (since the Apostles), and disciplined by the Greeks (the Agora and Hellenism). But Ottomanism, and later Arabism, worked on the transformation of the Mediterranean or Levantine identity and reality of the Mount-Lebanese people to drawn them in the new ideology of the Middle East. There is no doubt that Bechara el Khoury was backed by powerful Maronite parties and families. Indeed, as the historian Arnold Toynbee puts it, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”. Mount Lebanon’s people were killed by Identity usurpation.
If we refer to what Milan Hubl wrote, the current deterioration of Lebanon makes sense. He said: “The First step in liquidating a people, is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was” (Milan Hubl by Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). Mount Lebanon is the perfect illustration and the living example of this theory. Lebanese people learn in their schools and universities everything but their own history and their language. What better way to annihilate a people but to make its language vanish? Once detached from their roots, people become a puppet tossed around by every new regional actor.
History never forgives indifference, recklessness, cowardice and fear of sacrifice. The crime we are committing against our language and history is a crime against our own existence. Identity is not a cloth that can be replaced according to fashion and to circumstances. This unworthy behavior jeopardizes a nation’s future “because after all, says Michel Serres, language defines the genius of a people, and to abandon one’s language is an unforgivable crime.”
*Dr. Amine Jules Iskandar is an architect and the former president of the Syriac Maronite Union: Tur Levnon. Amine Jules Iskandar has written several articles on the Syriac Maronites, their language, culture, and history.
For the article in French see L’orient le Jour
Also Read:
“KAFNO”: The Genocide on the Christians of Mount Lebanon during the First World War
The Mysterious Origins of the Language of the Maronites

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 08-09/2021
Syria’s defenses intercept Israeli missile strike over Damascus -state news agency
Agencies/June 08, 2021
Syrian air defenses intercepted an Israeli missile strike over Damascus
Earlier, state media said large explosions were heard
DAMASCUS/AMMAN: Syria’s air defense system has been activated against an “Israeli aggression” within Syria, state news agency Sana said late Tuesday.
Israeli planes arrived from Lebanese air space, said Sana, which gave no indication of any deaths or damage.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported “violent explosions felt in Damascus and around the city, followed by Israeli strikes on military positions” of the Syrian army.
“Air strikes also took place in the south of Homs province and in the border zone between Homs and Tartus,” Observatory chief Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP. The target of the reported Israeli attacks were not immediately clear. The attacks are the first reported since the re-election of Syrian President Bashar Assad for a fourth seven-year term. The Israeli army, which rarely acknowledges its strikes in Syria, told AFP it would not comment on “information coming from abroad.”
Since the start of the war in neighboring Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory, targeting regime positions as well as Iranian forces and members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Western intelligence sources said Israel’s stepped-up strikes on Syria since last year are part of a shadow war approved by the United States. The intelligence sources said that Israel has over the past year expanded its targets across Syria, where thousands of Iranian-backed militias have been involved in regaining much of the territory lost by Assad to insurgents in a nearly decade-old civil war. The reported attacks are also the first after a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas’ militant rulers in the Gaza Strip following an 11-day conflict that killed more than 250 people, most of them Palestinian. (With AFP, AP and Reuters)

Blinken Says 'Hundreds' of U.S. Sanctions to Remain on Iran
Agence France Presse/June 08/2021
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that "hundreds" of U.S. sanctions will remain on Iran even if the United States rejoins a nuclear accord. President Joe Biden's administration has been engaged in indirect talks with Iran about reversing former president Donald Trump's exit from the 2015 nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). "I would anticipate that, even in the event of a return to compliance with the JCPOA, hundreds of sanctions remain in place, including sanctions imposed by the Trump administration," Blinken told a Senate hearing. "If they are not inconsistent with the JCPOA, they will remain unless and until Iran's behavior changes," he said. The discussions in Vienna, brokered by European diplomats, have been locked in dispute on which sanctions to lift. The Biden administration is ready to end the sweeping measures imposed by Trump -- including an effort to stop all of Iran's oil exports -- if it reverses the steps away from the nuclear deal that it took to protest the last administration's sanctions. But Iran has insisted on a removal of all sanctions -- while the Biden administration has insisted that some will remain if they were imposed over other concerns, including human rights and Iran's support for extremist movements. Blinken reiterated support for returning to the nuclear accord, with which UN inspectors said Iran was complying before Trump pulled out the United States. Asked about concerns that Iran did not declare all activities from before the nuclear deal, Blinken said: "Plain and simple, we would be in an even better place to insist on it answering those questions if we had managed to get Iran back into compliance with the JCPOA and if we were part of it, too.""But regardless, it needs to answer those questions. It needs to come clean about past activities," Blinken said.

Iran weighs using Palestinians against Israel again
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Whether it is Sheikh Jarrah or a planned march in Jerusalem, now called off, or other “threats,” there is always an excuse to stoke war plans.
Iran came out of the recent war between Israel and Hamas thinking it had achieved something. It helped put the Palestinian “resistance” back on the map, its leadership and media think. Its analysis is that Israel’s defenses were challenged and even breached. This is why it has been highlighting new threats against Israel this week. Re-reporting what Palestinian factions in Gaza are saying, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency said Palestinian groups in Gaza are “ready at any moment” to engage with Israel. “The nation and the Palestinian resistance heroically faced the enemy in the battle of ‘Quds Sword,’ and with unity, empathy and various means of resistance was able to smear the enemy’s snout and its sinister plans in the city of Quds to impose new realities by displacing, pursuing and arresting Palestinians, and defeat the temporal and spatial division of al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Under the rhetoric of “smearing the enemy’s snout,” which means something like, “We gave Israel a black eye,” Iran thinks Israel overestimated its ability in May. The argument is that while Israel believed it could achieve a quick and relatively easy defeat of Hamas, the terrorist group surprised Israel and largely dictated the pace of the war. When there were clashes in Israeli cities between Arabs and Jews, this made Hamas think it might have tapped into something deeper. Iran and its allies in Gaza have set upon new excuses for creating tensions. Whether it is Sheikh Jarrah or a planned march in Jerusalem, now called off, or other “threats,” there is always an excuse to stoke war plans. Then there is the issue of Qatari financial assistance for Gaza. Any one of these things can trigger more rockets. The larger question for Iran and its allies in Iraq and Lebanon is whether it thinks the timing is right to push yet another crisis. Lebanon has its own political crisis. In Iran, there is a presidential election. Egypt has worked to broker the ceasefire in Gaza and would be upset to see its work overturned. Considering the rapprochement between Riyadh and Doha, the transfer of Qatari money to calm the situation in Gaza may be seen as a step in the direction of Cairo and Riyadh rather than against them. Iran may want destabilization and to sing the praises of Hamas and launder statements from Gaza to assert its willingness to challenge Israel. But it will have to calculate carefully how to do that.

Blinken: Iran not close to returning to 2015 nuke compliance
Omri Nahmias/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Iran has not given indications that it’s willing to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement.
WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Iran has not given indications that it’s willing to return to compliance of the 2015 nuclear agreement. In a wide-ranging hearing at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Blinken said that the sides are “not even at the stage of returning to compliance for compliance” with the 2015 nuclear agreement. “We don’t know if that’s actually going to happen,” Blinken emphasized. “We’ve been engaged in indirect conversations for the last couple of months and it remains unclear whether Iran is willing and prepared to do what it needs to do to come back into compliance.” “What we do know, unfortunately, is that meanwhile [Iran’s nuclear] program is galloping forward,” he said. “It has lifted restraints imposed on it by the agreement including the amount of enriched material that it has; material that’s now, in some cases, enriched up to 20% and even a small amount to 60%. It has started to deploy some more advanced centrifuges.”He went on to say that “the longer this goes on, the more their breakout time gets down.” The agreement had pushed it to a year or more, Blinken said, “it’s now down – by published reports – to a few months at best. And if this continues, it will get down to a matter of weeks, exactly what we sought to avoid and what the agreement stopped.”
“We have a real incentive if we can to at least put that back in the box, and then to use it as a platform, both to look at whether the agreement itself can be lengthened and if necessary, strengthened, and also to capture these other issues. We’re going to be in a much better place with our allies, with our partners who wanted to stick with the agreement for all this time to do exactly that, to insist that Iran engage on these other issues. And there will be a united front to hold them to account.”Blinken stressed that the US is committed to the Iron Dome’s replenishment. “The Israeli defense minister was in Washington just this past week,” he said. “We are working with the Israelis to fully understand their needs and working with Congress, most importantly, to make sure that we can secure the funding for that replenishment. This is under very active review and we look forward to working with [Congress] to make sure that that happens.”
Asked whether the Biden administration recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Blinken said: “as a practical matter, Israel has control of the Golan Heights, irrespective of its legal status, and that will have to remain unless and until things get to a point where Syria and everything operating out from Syria no longer poses a threat to Israel, and we are not anywhere near that.” Asked about Operation Guardian of the Walls, Blinken said that it would be unacceptable “for any country to have rockets rain down on it indiscriminately targeting civilians and not do something about it.”
“We strongly supported Israel’s right to defend itself; to defend people against these indiscriminate rocket attacks,” he said. “As a democracy, Israel also has an extra burden to do everything it possibly can to avoid civilian casualties.”
“Hamas is engaged in terrorism, period,” he added. “And the idea that any country could accept and for that matter the world could accept a terrorist organization, which is vowed in its own charter to destroy Israel, to indiscriminately launch rockets against Israeli civilians; that anyone finds that acceptable or does not understand that it constitutes terrorism is hard to fathom. And Israel has the right to defend itself against these attacks. And we stood strongly for that proposition.”Earlier on Monday, Blinken was interviewed by Mike Allen of Axios on HBO Max and was asked about the possibility that Naftali Bennett would be Israel’s next Prime Minister. “I’m not doing politics, I’m going to focus on the policy, so we’ll see,” he said. “We will work, as we always have, with whatever the Israeli government is.”
Asked about Bennett’s opposition to the two-state solution, Blinken told Axios: “Our President’s been very clear about this. We see a two-state solution as the best and probably only means to ensure that, going forward, Israel remains not only a secure but a Jewish and democratic state, and the Palestinians have the state to which they’re entitled. But the conditions right now are not – are not there.” “We’ve just come off of the violence in Gaza and elsewhere,” he noted. “We’re working very hard not only to make sure that the ceasefire stays in place, but to start to deal with the humanitarian situation in Gaza. And over time, if we can build a little bit more hope, a little bit more trust, a little bit more confidence, maybe then the conditions are in place to reengage on two states.”Blinken also said that the administration is “moving forward expeditiously” with the appointment of a special envoy to combat antisemitism. “I hope that’s before the Senate very, very soon,”

Bennett-Lapid gov't to be sworn in Sunday, Netanyahu heads to opposition
Yamina MK Nir Orbach announces he will vote in favor of change government, guaranteeing majority in crucial Knesset vote.
By GIL HOFFMAN JUNE 8, 2021 13:58
Knesset speaker Yariv Levin announced on Tuesday that the new unity government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid would be brought to a vote of confidence and be sworn in during a special session of the Knesset on Sunday. Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid congratulated the setting of the date for the vote, tweeting "It's happening!" Lapid thanked Levin for setting the date for Sunday. "MK Karin Elharrar will convene the Arrangements Committee to determine the agenda. The coalition agreements will be guided by law," he detailed. "The unity government is launching for the benefit of the citizens of the State of Israel." Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman also responded, tweeting, "A little more and it's happening. A government that comes to rebuild the economy, comes to work, comes to make order here!" Yamina MK Nir Orbach announced on Tuesday morning that he has decided to vote in favor of the new coalition led by Bennett alongside Lapid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he would stay in the Knesset as an MK and as leader of the opposition.
Orbach's decision guarantees that his party leader will have enough support to approve the government in the vote of confidence on Sunday. There has been concern that without Orbach, the coalition would not have the narrow majority of 61 MKs required to form the government. Coalition Chairman Miki Zohar (Likud) commented on Orbach's decision, tweeting that "Bennett's opportunism defeated ideology." Defense Minister Benny Gantz also wrote on Twitter, stating that on Sunday, "Israel will embark on a new path." While Orbach was met with such support for his decision, the chairman of the right-wing Religious Zionist Party, Bezalel Smotrich, attacked him for his change of heart.  "I wanted to write that he is a nothing. But he is a rude arrogant liar, and a pursuer of honor and political patronage positions that if he has been given armor with us he would have come immediately," Smotrich said. "Most of the rabbinical and quorum building, the leaders and voters of the Religious Zionist Party, who strongly oppose the betrayal of values and voters of a left-wing government that supports terrorism, are not the Religious Zionism of Nir Orbach. Only him, obviously," he tweeted. Rebel Yamina MK Amichai Chikli responded to both the positive and negative responses, "I both regret and respect Orbach's decision and in my eyes, the insults (as opposed to criticism) toward him and the other members of Yamina serve no purpose." "A change government is one of the moments of most important moments of truth in any democratic regime, both for the government and those who form public opinion," he continued. At the same special session on Sunday, a vote will be held to replace Levin as Knesset Speaker with Yesh Atid MK Mickey Levy.
On Monday, Levin formally said that a government has been formed and that the day for the vote and the swearing in would be set "later." Likud sources said then that he would announce it with enough time in advance in order to be "fair," even though legally he does not have to announce it at any particular time in advance. The sources said on Monday that Levin would most likely announce on Tuesday when the vote would be held. They denied a report that Levin had decided to hold the vote next Monday, the last possible date permitted. Coalition agreements must only be submitted 24 hours ahead of the vote.  Bennett said on Sunday that he wanted the vote to be held on Wednesday. Lapid added on Monday that delaying the vote to next week would be wrong. "There is no reason in the world, legal or otherwise, that a government won't be sworn in in two days except to put pressure," Lapid said. "That is not proper."

Only weeks may separate Iran and the nuclear bomb, US warns
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
“Meanwhile, its programme is galloping forward… it’s now down, by public reports, to a few months at best. And if this continues, it will get down to a matter of weeks.”
WASHINGTON - Amid uncertainty about serious intent to resume compliance with its 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran continues to shorten the “breakout time” it needs to amass enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Monday.“It remains unclear whether Iran is willing and prepared to do what it needs to do to come back into compliance,” Blinken told lawmakers. “Meanwhile, its programme is galloping forward … The longer this goes on, the more the breakout time gets down … it’s now down, by public reports, to a few months at best. And if this continues, it will get down to a matter of weeks.”The United States and Iran began indirect talks in Vienna in April to see if both sides might agree to resume compliance with the 2015 accord under which Tehran agreed to restrain its nuclear programme to make it harder to obtain fissile material for a weapon in return for relief from US, EU and UN sanctions. The fifth round of talks ended on June 2 and diplomats have said a sixth may begin on Thursday, though that was not set in stone. The United States abandoned the agreement in 2018, prompting Iran to begin violating its terms about a year later. Resuming talks on Thursday would leave only eight days to reach a pact before Iran’s June 18 election, which is likely to usher in a hard-line president. Some delegates say that while a deal is possible by then, it appears increasingly unlikely. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Blinken’s comments on Monday. “It remains unclear whether (Biden and Blinken) are ready to bury the failed ‘maximum pressure’ policy of Trump … and cease using #EconomicTerrorism as bargaining ‘leverage’,” he tweeted. Iran “is in compliance” with the nuclear deal, he added, citing the article that allows one side to drop its commitments if the other party fails to abide by the accord. “Time to change course,” Zarif wrote, without elaborating.

Is Kadhimi seeking Abadi’s help to ease tensions with PMF?
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
In order to maintain calm and ease tensions ahead of elections, the Iraqi premier now seems intent on building better ties with figures who are close to pro-Iran Shia parties and militias.
BAGHDAD – Iraqi political sources told The Arab Weekly Monday that a meeting between Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and former Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi signalled a push by the Iraqi premier to restore ties with the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF). Kadhimi’s relationship with the PMF militias has recently been marked by unprecedented tensions after government forces arrested militia commander Qassim Mahmoud Musleh on terrorism charges. The same sources noted the meeting came after Abadi presented his initiative on the PMF, which included, in addition to a number of proposals, a call to organise the militias’ relationship with the state, in recognition of their role that cannot be put into question. Kadhimi’s meeting with Abadi is viewed as an indication of the prime minister’s willingness to deal with the initiative, although the majority of political parties in the country had already neglected this proposal and avoided commenting on it because, according to them, its content is a foregone conclusion. The presence of the PMF is now a fait accompli that is hardly in need of recognition by anyone, especially after the integration of the militias within state institutions, allowing them to benefit from state funds and a legal umbrella. Government sources said that the prime minister discussed with Abadi, who also heads the parliamentary Victory coalition, “the latest developments in the country.” The two sides also discussed “the government’s plans to confront the challenges facing Iraq and preparations to provide a safe environment for early elections.”In the run-up to voting scheduled for this October, Kadhimi is trying to maintain calm and preserve security. However, economic, social, security and political challenges, including the pressure by Shia parties and militias on the premier, have made Kadhimi’s task very difficult. Iraq’s premier does not have a partisan cover and is accused by pro-Iran Shia parties and militias of “working” and colluding with the United States. In order to maintain calm and ease tensions, he now seems intent on building better ties with figures who are close to pro-Iran Shia parties and militias.
Therefore, Kadhimi’s rapprochement with individuals like Abadi, who is counted as the leader of a moderate faction within the highly influential Islamic Dawa Party in Iraq, provides the premier with a form of support and protection. Despite Abadi’s disagreements with party leader Nuri al-Maliki, his relations remain good with senior PMF leaders and leaders of the most prominent militias, such as Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Badr militia and Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist movement and founder of Saraya al-Salam militia. In the wake of the militias’ violent reaction to Musleh’s arrest, Abadi presented his initiative which he dubbed National Mobilisation. In its preamble, the initiative reads, “With the increasing friction and the approaching elections and in compliance with national responsibility, Haider al-Abadi announces the National Mobilisation initiative for the Popular Mobilisation Forces and calls on the government and political forces to discuss and adopt the document to resolve the existing problems and agree on the rules for dealing with this file, and to prevent any escalation that could threaten the stability and security of the state and the interests of its people.”
The initiative praised the PMF as an “honourable national force that contributed and still contributes to the battles of liberation and salvation from terrorism. It is a combat force that has been legitimised by decisions of the parliament and the government.”
Abadi also considered that “the survival of the PMF is a necessity, as it is a strategic force for the nation and the state. Therefore, attempts to dissolve the PMF must be countered.” Abadi himself had suffered during his leadership of the Iraqi government between 2014 and 2018 from the PMF’s meddling with political and military decisions. In the end, he was forced to accept the militias and help them infiltrate state institutions, especially security and military institutions. It does not seem that the current prime minister is about to deviate from this approach, after he realised the limitations of his capabilities in confronting the militias.

Kenyan silence over Turkish kidnapping of Gulen relative raises questions
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
The silence of African capitals over the kidnapping of Selahaddin Gulen from Kenya reflects the willingness of Nairobi to be an accomplice against refugees and asylum seekers. It also shows the growing clout of Turkey in Africa, experts say.
NAIROBI – How did a foreign citizen disappear from Kenya’s police headquarters and end up under arrest in Turkey, despite a court order banning his extradition? Why did Nairobi and other African capitals remain silent over the breach of Kenya’s sovereignty?
A week after it emerged that Selahaddin Gulen, whose uncle is a longtime foe of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had been forcibly returned to his country, Kenya has remained silent on the abduction and any role it might have played. Rights activists say the incident has put the spotlight on Kenya’s history under President Uhuru Kenyatta of ignoring court orders and collaborating with foreign security agencies. But the silence of African capitals over the kidnapping of Selahaddin Gulen from Kenya also reflects the growing clout of Turkey in Africa, experts say. Ankara has in recent years expanded it diplomatic, economic and military presence over the continent. It has developed a wide support network that is willing to cover up its trails in covert operations, add the experts.
Since 2016, Turkey has arrested tens of thousands of people suspected of having links with US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of masterminding a failed coup in 2016 that left hundreds dead. Gulen has denied the accusations.
According to court documents filed in Kenya, his nephew Selahaddin Gulen, 30, a US permanent resident, travelled to the country on October 17 where he was arrested at the airport after clearing immigration. Ankara had sent out an alert to Nairobi saying that Gulen was wanted for “child molestation” and asking that he be extradited to Turkey.
His lawyers said that the alleged child molestation case was “tried and concluded with an acquittal of the applicant in 2018”. They argued that “the Turkish government is on a protracted campaign to prosecute and persecute the applicant together with his family”, saying that Selahaddin’s brother, sister and 62 other family members were currently imprisoned. “Their only crime was that they were related to one Fethullah Gulen,” said a court filing. The preacher, who lives in Pennsylvania, insists he is the head of a peaceful network of charities and companies and denies any links to the 2016 coup bid.
In March, a Kenyan judge issued orders barring authorities from deporting Selahaddin, who was also in possession of an asylum seeker pass, to Turkey.
‘Egregiously seized’
Under his bail conditions, Selahaddin had to report to the police every Monday. According to an urgent court application filed by his lawyer Jotham Arwa on May 5, it was when he had presented himself at the main police headquarters in Nairobi two days previously that he was last seen. Arwa accused Kenyan authorities of having “forcefully, wantonly and egregiously seized and detained the applicant incommunicado” in a “hasty and clumsy attempt to circumvent the law” and send him back to Turkey.
Turkish state news agency Anadolu said Selahaddin was brought back to Turkey by intelligence agents. Police and immigration officials have not responded to numerous requests by the media for comment. Human Rights Watch’s senior researcher in East Africa, Otsieno Namwaya, told AFP that in Kenya the narrative is that he was kidnapped by Turkish agents outside the police headquarters. “Even if that were true, how did he get out of the country?” “How do foreign agents manage to grab someone and go out with him and take him to JKIA (international airport) and fly him outside the country? Without anyone asking questions? How can the government keep quiet on that issue?”Namwaya said HRW planned to send a letter to the government demanding an explanation.
“The Kenyatta administration has become very notorious for collaborating with foreign security agencies and kidnapping foreign nationals who are in Kenya for security reasons,” he said.
Previous kidnaps  Namwaya recalled the case of two prominent critics of the South Sudanese government, lawyer Dong Samuel Luak and opposition member Aggrey Idri, who were kidnapped from Nairobi in January 2017, just days after a court blocked their deportation to South Sudan. The United Nations said in 2019 it was “highly probable” the two men, who were taken back to Juba, had been executed by security agents. Namwaya said HRW has heard many reports of Rwandans, Burundians, Congolese and Ethiopians being picked up in Kenya and forcibly returned to their homes, in many cases with the involvement of Kenyan security forces. “The hostility of the Kenya government towards asylum seekers and refugees is just astonishing,” he said. “The government as it is now doesn’t respect the courts at all.” Last week, the Law Society of Kenya slammed a “continuous onslaught on the judiciary by the executive” after Kenyatta criticised the judiciary for recently blocking his attempts to reform the constitution. Kenyatta also brought up a particularly sore issue, the nullification by the Supreme Court of his election victory in 2017 over widespread irregularities. Kenyatta later won the re-run which the opposition boycotted. Kenya and Turkey have close ties, but in 2016 Nairobi refused to close schools linked to the Gulenist movement despite pressure from Ankara. In 1999, Turkish services arrested the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, in Kenya. Ocalan remains imprisoned in Turkey.

Biden, Erdogan to discuss ‘significant differences’ next week
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
US-Turkish ties have been strained in recent years over several issues, including Turkey’s purchase of Russian defence systems which resulted in US sanctions, policy differences in Syria, as well as Washington’s alarm over Ankara’s human rights track record.
WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will meet to discuss Syria, Afghanistan and other regional issues next week and will also look at the “significant differences” between Washington and Ankara, the US national security advisor said on Monday. Speaking at a White House briefing, Jake Sullivan said the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Iran, as well as the role that Turkey will play in Afghanistan as the United States withdraws from the country will be part of the “expansive agenda.”
In addition, the meeting, planned to take place on June 14 on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels, will also review their ties and look at how the United States and Turkey can deal with some of their “significant differences on values and human rights and other issues,” Sullivan said. “President Biden knows Erdogan very well, the two men have spent a good amount of time together and they’re both, I think, looking forward to the opportunity, to really have a business-like opportunity to review the full breadth of the relationship,” Sullivan said. US-Turkish ties have been strained in recent years over several issues, including Turkey’s purchase of Russian defence systems which resulted in US sanctions, policy differences in Syria, as well as Washington’s alarm over Ankara’s human rights track record. The two NATO allies also have differing views on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as well as Ankara’s oil and gas ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean while Turkey’s potential role in Afghanistan in the aftermath of planned US pullout could serve as an area of cooperation.

Kurdistan’s PUK forges alliance with pro-Iran factions in Iraq ahead of election
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
An alliance that includes Talabani, Amiri and Maliki shapes up in front of another alliance that includes Kadhimi, Sadr and Barzani.
BAGHDAD – The visit to Baghdad by a delegation of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdish nationalist party founded by the late President Jalal Talabani, reflected a tendency by the PUK to openly ally itself with parties and militias loyal to Iran in preparation for the Iraqi parliamentary elections, which are expected to be held next October. This is a new development as Kurdish parties and groups used to keep their alliances within the Kurdish fold so as to preserve the appearance of unity inside the Iraqi parliament. The party delegation headed by Bafel Talabani met the leaders of the Shia political blocs in Baghdad, hoping to draw a nexus of new alliances. The head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan bloc in the Iraqi parliament, Alaa Talabani, said that the Al-Fateh alliance is the closest Iraqi party to the PUK and that an alliance between them is expected after the elections. The Al-Fateh Alliance is made up of Iranian-backed Shia parties and militias and is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, the leader of the Badr Organisation. “In the National Union, we will not forget our old friends,” Talabani said after meeting Amiri, and “we will always be allies, now and after the elections. The closest of alliances and parties to us is the Al-Fateh Alliance.”She pointed out that “the Union will continue to work with the Al-Fateh Alliance until the elections, besides forging a coalition at a post-election stage.”
The head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan bloc in the Iraqi parliament, Alaa Talabani. (twitter) The head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan bloc in the Iraqi parliament, Alaa Talabani. (twitter) Well-informed Iraqi political sources explained to The Arab Weekly that the PUK’s move has to be viewed against the background of the stance by the Kadhimi-Sadr-Barzani alliance towards Iran, a stance that is at variance from the PUK’s proximity to Tehran as a strategic ally. This has pushed the PUK to seek a rapprochement with the Al-Fateh bloc, which is increasingly perceived as representing Iranian interests in Iraq. The same sources said that Iran, the historical ally of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, welcomes any support for its loyal political bloc, which consists mainly of the Al-Fateh Alliance, as the Kurdistan Democratic Party decided to ally itself with the rival bloc of Kadhimi and Sadr.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Massoud Barzani, tends to agree with the Sairoon bloc, which is supported by the leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, while the Patriotic Union appears closer to a pact with the Al Fateh Alliance and the State of Law coalition headed by Nuri al-Maliki, leader of the Islamic Dawa Party. After meeting the Kurdish delegation headed by Bafel, the son of the late Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Maliki said that there is an “old” alliance with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan dating back to the era of Talabani’s father, addingg, “We are allied now and will be after the elections, and this is not new but is from previous times.”
An Iraqi MP has however described the prospective alliances between Shia and Kurdish parties as akin to “opening a new chapter with a friend who tends to practice blackmail against a particular side that is not confident it has full legitimacy”. The MP, who preferred not to be named, told The Arab Weekly that “the side in question is the Shia parties whose sectarian alliance is no longer able to guarantee support of the street for next elections that are considered by many to be a turning point in the political history of post-occupation Iraq.”He added, “The new relationship, like the old one, is based on expediency. The elections seem to be a front for such a motive. However, there is no indication that the two parties will rebuild the lost trust between them, in addition to the presence of many sticking points where their interests still collide.”
He pointed out that “the Shia side is now more than ever willing to offer concessions to the Kurdish side, not at the expense of its interests but at the expense of Iraq’s interests, as the Kurds can provide a civil cover away from sectarianism and embellished with a nationalist dimension.” He stressed that Shia alliances, whether with Talabani’s party or with Barzani’s formation, will only exacerbate inter-Shia dissensions as the two Kurdish allies in question are constantly at odds. Kifah Mahmoud, the media adviser to Masoud Barzani, said that in recent years in Baghdad, as in Iraqi Kurdistan, most of the large alliances have been split by divisions. He noted the division of the Shia alliance, as well as that of the Kurdistan Alliance, which turned into a group of blocs that entered the elections with divided ranks.
Mahmoud added in a statement to The Arab Weekly that the time is long gone when an alliance from the Kurdistan region would include all political players. The Kurdish actors, like the rest of the Iraqi political alliances, have turned into groups of disparate blocs or parties. Bafel Talabani in Baghdad. (facebook) Bafel Talabani in Baghdad. (facebook)
Several months ago, there were intense meetings between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the majority of the Iraqi political blocs. Some observers believed that the closest parties were the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Sadrist movement. A high-level delegation from the movement visited the Kurdistan region and met Massoud Barzani, the leader of the party, as well as the head of government and the president of the region. Mahmoud noted that these alliances take into account partisan interests. He pointed out that the most interesting development is that the Kurdish parties have for the first time shed their internal pacts within the Kurdistan region to forge their own alliances outside the region, a far cry from the era when they used to participate as a Kurdish alliance with the rest of the political currents. He concluded that these alliances are not strange in the Iraqi political scene and that what is important is the emergence of a consensus on holding the elections after there were voices calling again for the postponement of the ballot.

Extremist ploughs into Muslim family in Ontario, kills four
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday, “This killing was no accident. This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities”.
TORONTO- A driver ploughed a pickup truck into a family of five, killing four of them and seriously injuring the other in a deliberate attack that targeted the victims because they were Muslims, Canadian police said Monday. Authorities said a terrorism suspect was arrested in the parking lot of a nearby mall after the incident Sunday night in the Ontario city of London. Police said a black pickup truck mounted a curb and struck the victims at an intersection. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday labeled the killing of the Muslim family members a “terrorist attack”.
“This killing was no accident. This was a terrorist attack, motivated by hatred, in the heart of one of our communities,” Trudeau said during a speech at the House of Commons. “This was an act of mass murder perpetuated against Muslims,” Mayor Ed Holder said. “It was rooted in unspeakable hatred.”The extended family issued a statement identifying the dead as Salman Afzal, 46, his wife Madiha, 44, their daughter Yumna, 15 and a 74-year-old grandmother whose name was withheld. The hospitalised boy was identified as Fayez. “Everyone who knew Salman and the rest of the Afzal family know the model family they were as Muslims, Canadians and Pakistanis,” the statement said. “They worked extremely hard in their fields and excelled. Their children were top students in their school and connected strongly with spiritual their identity.”
A fundraising webpage said the father was a physiotherapist and cricket enthusiast and his wife was working on a PhD in civil engineering at Western University in London. Their daughter was finishing ninth grade and the grandmother was a “pillar” of the family, the page said. The family said in its statement that the public needs to stand against hate and Islamophobia. “This young man who committed this act of terror was influenced by a group that he associated with and the rest of the community must take a strong stand against this, from the highest levels in our government to every member of the community,” the statement said. Nathaniel Veltman, 20, was in custody facing four counts of first-degree murder. Police said Veltman, a resident of London, did not know the victims.
Detective Superintendant Paul Waight said police had not determined if the suspect was a member of any specific hate group. He said London police were working with federal police and prosecutors to see about potential terrorism charges. He declined to detail evidence pointing to a possible hate crime, but said the attack was planned. About a dozen police officers combed the area around the crash site looking for evidence Monday. Blue markers on the ground dotted the intersection. “We believe the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” Police Chief Stephen Williams said. “… There is no tolerance in this community who are motivated by hate to target others with violence.”
Painful memories
Canada is generally welcoming toward immigrants and all religions, but in 2017 a French Canadian man known for far-right, nationalist views went on a shooting rampage at a Quebec City mosque that killed six people. “This was an act of mass murder perpetuated against Muslims,” Mayor Ed Holder said. “It was rooted in unspeakable hatred.” The attack also brought back painful memories of a driving rampage in Toronto that killed ten people in April 2018. The National Council of Canadian Muslims said in a statement it was “beyond horrified and demands justice” for the family who was just “out for a walk” on a warm spring evening. “This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil and must be treated as such,” Mustafa Farooq, the council’s president, told Radio Canada. The Muslim Association of Canada also called on authorities to “prosecute this horrific attack as an act of hate and terrorism.”A Muslim mother and her daughter by flowers at the spot where a family of five was rammed by an extremist, in London, Ontario, Monday, June 7, 2021. “Hate and Islamophobia have NO place in Ontario,” tweeted Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “These heinous acts of violence must stop.” One woman who witnessed the aftermath of the deadly crash said she couldn’t stop thinking about the victims. Paige Martin said she was stopped at a red light around 8:30 pm when a large pickup roared past her. She said her car shook from the force.
“I was shaken up, thinking it was an erratic driver, Martin said. Minutes later, she said, she came upon a gruesome, chaotic scene at an intersection near her home, with first responders running to help, a police officer performing chest compressions on one person and three other people lying on the ground. A few dozen people stood on the sidewalk and several drivers got out of their cars to help.
“I can’t get the sound of the screams out of my head,” Martin said.
From her apartment, Martin said she could see the scene and watched an official drape a sheet over one body about midnight. “My heart is just so broken for them,” she said. Zahid Khan, a family friend, said the three generations among the dead were a grandmother, father, mother and teenage daughter. The family had immigrated from Pakistan 14 years ago and were dedicated, decent and generous members of the London Muslim Mosque, he said. “They were just out for their walk that they would go out for every day,” Khan said through tears near the site of the crash. “I just wanted to see.”
Qazi Khalil said he saw the family on Thursday when they were out for their nightly walk. The families lived close to each other and would get together on holidays, he said. “This has totally destroyed me from the inside,” Khalil said. “I can’t really come to the terms they were no longer here.”The National Council of Canadian Muslims said Muslims in Canada have become all too familiar with the violence of Islamophobia. “This is a terrorist attack on Canadian soil and should be treated as such”, council head Mustafa Farooq said. Nawaz Tahir, a London lawyer and Muslim community leader, said, “We must confront and stamp out Islamophobia and Islamic violence, not tomorrow, today, for the sake of our children, our family, our communities.” The mayor said flags would be lowered for three days in London, which he said has 30,000 to 40,000 Muslims among its more than 400,000 residents.
“To the Muslim community in London and to Muslims across the country, know that we stand with you. Islamophobia has no place in any of our communities. This hate is insidious and despicable and it must stop,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted.

Focus on Libya as Turkish and French FMs meet in Paris
The Arab Weekly/June 08/2021
In addition to Libya, the two ministers discussed Syria, the Mideast peace process and NATO cooperation, including “the values and principles that sustain the (NATO) alliance,” said the French foreign ministry.
PARIS – The foreign ministers of Turkey and France on Monday held talks in Paris, in a rare high-level meeting after months of tensions over international crises and French domestic legislation against radical Islamism. During the meeting, the two sides reiterated the need to respect the political transition’s roadmap in Libya that will lead the country to stability and elections. They also called for translating the ceasefire in Libya into action, according to a statement by the French Foreign Ministry. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey and France share some priorities in Libya, such as the stability and political unity of the country, support for the Government of National Unity (GNU) exercising its power throughout the country and for the reunification of institutions, a lasting ceasefire, as well as the fight against terrorism and irregular migration. In an op-ed for the French daily L’Opinion, Cavusoglu added that Ankara was open to dialogue on issues of common interest in Libya, whose stability affects the entire region. France’s Jean-Yves Le Drian hosted Cavusoglu for talks ahead of NATO and EU summits later this month, the French foreign ministry said in a statement.
In addition to Libya, the two ministers discussed Syria, the Mideast peace process and NATO cooperation, including “the values and principles that sustain the (NATO) alliance,” it said. “We aim to strengthen our relations with France on the basis of mutual respect,” Cavusoglu wrote on Twitter after the meeting.
Tensions between Paris and Ankara have been running high after a series of public rows between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Emmanuel Macron, who warned in March that Turkey would meddle in the 2022 presidential elections.
The pair have locked horns over a series of international crises including Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. Macron has suggested Ankara’s unilateral moves on the international stage have contributed to a “brain death” of NATO, where Turkey is a key member. A new law against Islamist extremism which the French government introduced after a series of attacks also aroused Erdogan’s ire, with the Turkish leader accusing France of Islamophobia. The relationship between Macron and Erdogan hit a low last year when the Turkish leader said his French counterpart needed “mental checks.”Erdogan in December then expressed hope that France would “get rid of” Macron as soon as possible, describing the president as “trouble” for the country. But there have been tentative signs of an easing of tensions in the last months, with Turkey reaffirming its commitment to EU integration.
Meanwhile a UN-led peace process that saw a new interim unity government installed in Libya earlier this year has also removed a major point of conflict between Paris and Ankara even as Macron insists that all Turkish forces must leave the country.
“Everything must be done to ensure that the political, security and electoral transition calendar is respected and that the ceasefire is translated into reality,” the French foreign ministry said on Libya.

Macron Slapped during Trip to Southeast France
Agence France Presse/June 08/2021
French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped across the face by a bystander during a trip to southeast France on Tuesday in a security scare on the second stop of a nationwide tour. Images on social media and broadcast on the BFM news channel showed Macron approach a barrier to greet voters, where a long-haired man in a green t-shirt took hold of his elbow and then slapped him. Macron's bodyguards quickly intervened and two people were detained afterwards, local officials said. The incident in the village of Tain-l'Hermitage in the Drome region sparked outrage across the political spectrum and overshadowed the start of Macron's tour, which he said was designed to "take the country's pulse." "Politics can never be violence, verbal aggression, much less physical aggression," Prime Minister Jean Castex told parliament, adding that "through the president, it is democracy that has been targeted." Macron continued his trip afterwards, said an aide, who described the incident as an "attempted slap" though video footage appeared to show the man making contact with the president's face. On the video of the incident, someone can be heard shouting "Down with Macronism!"
Election tour
Macron, who remains a highly divisive figure, is widely expected to seek a second term in next year's presidential elections and polls show him with a narrow lead over far-right leader Marine Le Pen. His planned nationwide tour includes around a dozen separate stops over the next two months, with the former investment banker keen to meet voters in person after more than a year of crisis management over the Covid-19 pandemic. He has spoken regularly of his fondness for informal exchanges with citizens -- "making contact" as he calls it -- but previous meet-and-greet initiatives have seen the reformer verbally abused. A 2018 multi-stop tour to mark the centenary of the end of World War I was marked by scenes of furious citizens booing and heckling him. It took place just as anti-government "yellow vest" protests were gathering momentum to denounce the government's policies and the head of state personally for his leadership style, which was criticized as aloof and arrogant. Macron conducted another tour billed as a listening exercise in the aftermath of protests in 2019, which shook the country and saw him promise to change his way of governing. In July last year, Macron and his wife Brigitte were verbally abused by a group of protesters while taking an impromptu walk through the Tuileries gardens in central Paris on Bastille Day.
Condemnation
Shortly before being slapped on Tuesday, Macron had been asked to comment on recent remarks from far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who suggested at the weekend that next year's election would be manipulated. "Democratic life needs calm and respect, from everyone, politicians as well as citizens," Macron said. In a rare moment of national unity, even his fiercest critics and political rivals came to his defense after the event. Le Pen called the slap "unacceptable and profoundly reprehensible in a democracy," while Melenchon said he stood "in solidarity with the president." The slap is nevertheless likely to spur debate in France about the political climate just two weeks from the first round of regional elections and 10 months from the presidential contest next April. "It's tense everywhere," ruling party MP Patrick Vignal commented. "This campaign stinks and it's because of the personalities. No one is going to come out a winner." In 2011, right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy had a security scare in southwest France when he was grabbed violently by the shoulder by a 32-year-old local government employee. In 2009, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi suffered face and mouth injuries when a man in a crowd threw a souvenir statuette that hit him in the face.

Israel Frees Jordanian Bus Bomber after 20 Years
Agence France Presse/June 08/2021
A Palestinian-Jordanian man jailed in Israel after planting a bomb on a bus that wounded 13 civilians in 2000 was released Tuesday after serving his 20-year sentence. Abdullah Abu Jaber, 46, was welcomed with flowers and shouts of joy by his family after he entered Jordan across the Sheikh Hussein Bridge.
Jaber, originally from Jordan's Baqaa refugee camp, hid a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv on December 28, 2000, detonating it remotely and wounding 13 people. He was arrested the following day. "Twenty years ago, I made a journey not for tourism, but of resistance," Jaber said, draped in Jordanian and Palestinian keffiyeh headscarves. "I have done my duty as a Palestinian, because it is the land of Palestine and we must liberate it as quickly as possible." According to Israeli charge sheet, Jaber was recruited by the armed wing of Fatah in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, and had entered Israel illegally. He called for rival Palestinian factions Fatah and the Hamas to end their long division and form a common front against Israel. "I hope that the Palestinians will be united again," he said, adding the differences extended to Palestinians inside Israeli prisons. Yunis Abu Sil, a member of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO's legislative arm, said he was "very happy" and called Jaber a "hero". Around half of Jordan's 10 million-strong population is of Palestinian origin, including some 2.2 million refugees registered with the United Nations.

Two Jordanians who Infiltrated Israel Repatriated
Agence France Presse/June 08/2021
Jordan's foreign ministry said that two Jordanians arrested in Israel in May were repatriated on Tuesday, after charges against them were dropped by the Jewish state. "The Israeli authorities have decided to withdraw the charges against Jordanian citizens Mussab Daajah and Khalifa Onouz and end their arrest," the Jordanian ministry said in an initial statement on Tuesday. The ministry said a few hours later that it had "received" the two Jordanian nationals "after they were released by Israel today." A statement from Israel's internal security agency said the two were caught in northern Israel on May 16 with knives and ropes. "From their investigation it emerged that they planned on reaching Jerusalem and carrying out a stabbing attack against soldiers in the area of Al-Aqsa mosque compound," the Shin Bet said in a statement. Israel and Hamas -- the Islamist group that rules the Palestinian enclave of Gaza -- waged a war between May 10 and May 21 in the wake of tensions and clashes in annexed east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel's decision not to prosecute the Jordanian suspects and to release them instead was "part of the security and diplomatic reciprocity between Israel and Jordan," the Shin Bet said. Jordan, which in 1994 became the second Arab state to normalize ties with Israel, had on May 25 summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest the detentions.  Several demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians and demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador have taken place in recent weeks in Jordan.

UN Security Council backs Antonio Guterres for second term
NNA/Reuters/June 08/2021
The United Nations Security Council backed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday for a second term, recommending that the 193-member General Assembly appoint him for another five years from Jan. 1, 2022, said Estonia's UN Ambassador Sven Jürgenson, council president for June.
Jürgenson said the General Assembly was likely to meet to make the appointment on June 18.

The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 08-09/2021
A look at Netanyahu's legacy as curtains close on an era - opinion
Keren Setton/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
A political maverick and a strong-willed nationalist, Netanyahu is poised to leave office in the coming days in what can be seen as a grating end to a remarkable term.
For many Israelis, it is difficult to imagine the political scene without the hovering presence of Benjamin Netanyahu. He entered the public arena in the mid-1980s as Israel’s representative to the United Nations and has since remained in the public eye. His last stretch as prime minister since 2009 has made him the country’s longest-serving premier.
For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org
A political maverick and a strong-willed nationalist, he is poised to leave office in the coming days in what can be seen as a grating end to a remarkable term. His last years at the official residence at Balfour Street in Jerusalem have been marred by scandal. On trial for charges of corruption, Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing. His staunch supporters follow him faithfully, while his opponents see the allegations as clouding his judgment, making him unfit for office.
Being a political mastermind was not enough this time. After four unprecedented consecutive elections, a group of political parties managed to agree on forming a coalition that will see Netanyahu vacate his seat.
But even before his judicial woes, he became one of Israel’s most divisive political figures.
“Netanyahu is an exceptionally talented man,” said political analyst Avraham Diskin, “But when leaders lead for so long, the public gets tired. He managed to acquire many enemies throughout the years.”
“The fact that he has been in power for 12 years and leads a right-wing party makes the left and center-left try to oust him by delegitimizing him,” said Arieh Eldad, a former right-wing Israeli politician. “During the years, he also lost the support of the ideological right … and this enables replacing him, regardless of the criminal proceedings.”
“The ideological right cannot forgive him for the very moves that kept him in office,” said Eldad.
“Netanyahu believes in being strong, not necessarily being right, and this was cultivated by him as a critical mindset in the Middle East,” said Dr. Alon Liel, a former senior diplomat who worked under Netanyahu for many years. “This benefited him personally, but also Israel became strong – and its military, technological, economic strength, strengthened Israel in the international arena as well.”
On the issue of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, Netanyahu has a record of inconsistency. He voted several times for Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 until finally resigning in opposition to it. In 2009, after years of opposing the two-state solution, he reversed his position in a pivotal speech at Bar-Ilan University, endorsing the idea of a Palestinian state. During the years of tension with the Obama administration, he avoided massive settlement construction, keeping him from direct conflict with the White House and helping maintain a rocky coalition with former prime minister and senior partner Ehud Barak.
All his moves guaranteed his political survival at the expense of a clear-cut ideology.
“His success in surviving by being a pragmatist and not an ideologist, in the end brought anger from both the right and the left,” said Eldad.
Many on the right have held the Bar-Ilan speech against Netanyahu.
“The speech showed his pragmatism,” said Diskin, “He never really retracted it. This shows his recognition for the need and for the option of a two-state solution.”
As the years in office progressed, Netanyahu and the Israeli public gradually shifted further right.
“When he felt enough political power, he renounced any notion of the Bar-Ilan speech and abandoned the two-state solution,” said Liel.
During the Netanyahu years, the peace process with the Palestinians was deserted. But this was not his work alone. Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas both proved to be reluctant to sit at the negotiating table and the split between Fatah and Hamas made peace-talking almost impossible.
“He leaves office with the Palestinian problem unsolved but in a controlled equilibrium,” said Diskin.
Throughout his term, Netanyahu singled out the Iranian nuclear program as his legacy issue. Sidelining the Palestinian matter, he focused on undermining Iranian nuclear aspirations both by campaigning on the international stage and by ordering operations, most of them covert, against Iran. While not the first to recognize the threat, Netanyahu’s long term in office has enabled him to persist, often at the cost of tiring his many audiences. Highlighting what some may say is his obsession, in 2015 Netanyahu addressed the American Congress, blindsiding then US President Obama. Internationally, Netanyahu’s stubborn approach was sometimes frowned upon.
“It was harmful to the relations with many world leaders,” said Diskin, “Even though it was detrimental to the relationship with Obama, Israel still received massive military aid from the administration.”
During the honeymoon years of Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, the Americans withdrew from the deal. But this was not necessarily enough to block Iran. It became increasingly evident that tackling the Iranian issue is not only up to the Israeli leader. When Russia, China and the European Union supported a softer approach towards Tehran, Netanyahu faced the limitations of his clout.
“He meant well, he acted correctly, he managed to strike the Iranians,” said Eldad, “But as he leaves office, Iran is no less dangerous than it was before and we are approaching a nuclear Iran in the near future.”
Regardless of whether Iran attains nuclear capabilities, he leaves his successor with Israel as a regional superpower. Years of Israeli operations throughout the Middle East have consolidated that position.
“He reached a position in which Israel can strike anywhere in the region without raising any objection in the world,” said Dr. Liel. “He achieved Israeli control of the skies and this undoubtedly harmed Iran and its aspirations to surround Israel with hostile borders. He leaves a strong, independent Israel, by operating very wisely in the international arena.”
In the coming days, a new Israeli government is slated to be sworn in. Netanyahu will leave the official residence despite wanting to stay there.
“Netanyahu cultivated an image in the public that there is only one Netanyahu and that is as prime minister,” said Eldad, “Therefore, he leaves office as a loser, against his will.”
“He leaves because of personal flaws, not because he failed to run the country,” said Liel.
The manner of his departure and the outcome of his court case will likely have an impact on his legacy.
“With so many extreme emotions about him on all sides, it is too soon to tell how the history books will judge him,” Diskin summarized.

Is Egypt planning to retake control of the Gaza Strip?
Kaled Bou Toameh/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Entry of construction equipment first time Egypt has deployed in the coastal enclave it used to rule until 1967.
Scenes of dozens of Egyptian bulldozers, cranes and trucks entering the Gaza Strip last Friday have left some Palestinians wondering whether Egypt is planning to return to the coastal enclave it ruled between 1948 and 1967.The Egyptian decision to send building equipment and engineers to the Gaza Strip came within the context of Cairo’s pledge to contribute to reconstruction efforts there after the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi has pledged $500 million to help rebuild the houses and buildings that were destroyed during the fighting.
The presence of the Egyptian construction teams in the Gaza Strip means that Hamas and other Palestinian factions will not be able to resume the rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinian sources told The Jerusalem Post. “It will be hard for Hamas to initiate another round of fighting with Israel when there are many Egyptians inside the Gaza Strip,” one of the sources said. “If Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad start firing rockets at Israel while the Egyptian construction teams are working in the Gaza Strip, the two groups will get into trouble with Egypt.”
According to the sources, the Egyptians have warned Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar against initiating another round of fighting while Cairo pursues its efforts to help rebuild the Gaza Strip. During the 1948 War of Independence, the Arab League established the “All-Palestine Government” to govern the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip. Palestinians living in the enclave were issued “All-Palestine” passports. Egypt did not offer them citizenship. After the dissolution of the All-Palestine Government in 1959, Egypt continued to control the Gaza Strip until 1967.
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The Egyptians, however, never annexed the Gaza Strip and chose to administer it through a military governor. “There are many rumors that the Egyptians are planning to return to the Gaza Strip,” said a veteran Palestinian journalist in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave. “Many people here are convinced that the Egyptian-sponsored reconstruction work is part of a plan to pave the way for a permanent Egyptian security presence in the Gaza Strip.” The Egyptians played a crucial role in reaching the Israel-Hamas ceasefire that went into effect on May 21. The head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, last week made a rare visit to the Gaza Strip, where he met with leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian factions and discussed with them ways of maintaining the ceasefire and the reconstruction efforts. Kamel’s visit to the Gaza Strip is seen by some Palestinian political analysts as a sign of Egypt’s intention to play a major role in the coastal enclave in particular and the Palestinian arena in general. “I don’t believe that Egypt wants to go back to the days when it was administering the Gaza Strip,” one analyst told the Post. “But Sisi’s decision to contribute to the reconstruction effort shows that he wants to be heavily involved with everything concerning the Gaza Strip.” Relations between Egypt and Hamas have improved over the past few years, the analyst said.
Relations between Egypt and Hamas were strained when Sisi came to power in 2013 after deposing president Mohamed Morsi and outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2015, an Egyptian court listed Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a terrorist organization.
Morsi and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were later charged with spying for Hamas and Iran. Until a few years ago, Egypt’s state-controlled media had accused Hamas of helping Muslim terrorists who attacked Egyptian security forces in the Sinai. Hamas has strongly denied the charges, saying it does not meddle in the internal affairs of any Arab country. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas appreciates the efforts Egypt has been making to calm the situation and assist in the reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian official in Ramallah told the Post.
He dismissed talk about a possible return of Egyptian control of the Gaza Strip. “The Egyptians are working to achieve Palestinian national reconciliation and reunite the West Bank with the Gaza Strip,” the official said. “That’s why they have invited representatives of several Palestinian factions to Cairo. The Egyptians support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.”

Ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen: Will West go easy on Iran?
Yonah Jeremy Bob/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
"Will we be pushovers to Iran? Will we let it support and carry out terror? Destroy embassies?”
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen has expressed grave concern that the West will go easy on Iran regarding the nuclear issue and its destabilizing the Middle East. In his first speech since retiring on June 1, he asked a conference of Friends of Bar Ilan rhetorically: “Will we be pushovers to Iran? Will we let it support and carry out terror? Destroy embassies?” “We need to be stubborn and determined with Iran. We need to declare to Iran that its actions are unacceptable. This is the central trend in our strategy,” said Cohen. The former Mossad director continued, “if the US leaves Iraq, it will be conquered by Iran. The rockets from the North during Operation Guardian of the Walls were largely managed by the Iranians. It supports two terror organizations who are against us,” in Lebanon and in Gaza. He warned that the Islamic Republic is providing advanced precise weapons to terror groups in both arenas which are creating a whole new level of danger to the Israeli home front.
In the past, terror groups never had such advanced weapons, said Cohen. Regarding Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, he said, “It is not yet known if he is sick with the coronavirus, but something is wrong with him – we are trying to clarify this.” Nasrallah recently gave a speech intended to show off his power, but which was panned as showing weakness because he was coughing throughout. The heavy coughing has sparked speculation that the Hezbollah chief may be sicker than he has let on. One area where Cohen reportedly admitted some fault was in dealing with Qatar.
During his term as Mossad chief, Cohen had been a major facilitator and proponent of transferring funds from Qatar to Hamas to avoid an economic collapse in Gaza, but keep the terror group on a tight leash which might restrain it.
Cohen seemed to admit following the May 10-21 Gaza war that this Qatar funding Hamas policy had gotten out of hand and had not brought the rewards he had anticipated.
In addition, Cohen reportedly expressed concerns about the triangle of the US, China and Israel and whether America might lean on Jerusalem too hard to limit some of its cooperation with Beijing. Though Washington and Beijing have essentially been in a near-cold war state in recent years, Israel and China have continued to increase their joint business and cooperation, sometimes to the US’s chagrin. More specifically, the US has expressed concerns about the potential for China to learn about classified US items through its increased interactions with and presence in Israel.

Jordan’s tribal problems continue - analysis
Daoud Kuttab/The Media Line/June 08/2021
Dissident legislator’s kindred protest as he comes under fire for criticizing king, establishment.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, one of the most stable countries in the region, is going through internal difficulties as King Abdullah II tries to deal with some troubles with the previously very loyal tribal communities.
For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org
While far from the coup initially claimed by an American newspaper, the troubles that began with the house arrest of former Crown Prince Hamzah, the king’s half-brother, have spread to some tribal communities.
The issue with the prince was downgraded to an accusation of “sedition” and tensions were lowered when Prince Hassan, the monarch’s uncle and the elder of the family, held a family gathering where everyone, including Hamzah, pledged in writing their support to King Abdullah. Prince Hamzah’s bodyguards and staff, who had been arrested, were also released, leaving only former royal court chief Bassem Awadallah and a distant relative of the king, Sharif Hassan bin Nasser, still awaiting legal proceedings.
But while the case of the former crown prince was no longer in the headlines, tribal problems continued. Osama Ajarmeh, a member of parliament, was caught speaking ill of the legislature for inaction, especially after the electrical troubles that blacked out the entire country for a couple of hours on May 21.
This angered the speaker of the parliament, who pushed its Law Committee to order a one-year suspension of Ajarmeh. Before the decision was taken up by the full parliament, Ajarmeh’s tribal supporters set up a protest tent.
The Jordanian police took down the tent on May 29 and as a result, Ajarmeh submitted in writing his resignation from the parliament.
In the meantime, Ajarmeh was again caught on video speaking ill of the king, using never before heard nasty language against the monarch. Small protests with tire-burning took place in Ajarmeh’s stronghold tribal area of Naour, southwest of the capital Amman.
Parliament met on Sunday, a day before scheduled, to vote on the resignation and instead voted overwhelmingly to permanently terminate their colleague. Later, King Abdullah announced the suspension of the extraordinary session of the parliament, which will not reconvene in regular session until October.
Member of parliament Omar Al Aiasra told The Media Line recent events constituted a “rebellion against the state” and must be dealt with as such. “When tribal protests start shooting at the nation’s security forces, the tribes are becoming destroyers not builders of the state.”
Hassan Barari, a professor of political science at Qatar University who comes from the Ajarmeh tribe, told The Media Line the parliament erred in the way it dealt with a statement made by a member whose right of expression and immunity to speak is protected by the constitution.
“At the same time, I am not with those who want to bring us back to the pre-state period that focused on sub-identities to face the national one. There is a big difference between criticizing the government and denying the historic importance of a central government as a national accomplishment,” Barari said.
Munther Hiwarat, a political commentator, told The Media Line that real democratic change is required.
“It is important to understand what led to these popular protests and the anger that many people have with the state, but what is needed to deal with this issue is to provide a chance for people to express themselves and to feel that they are allowed to share in the decision-making process.”
The monarchy needs to “provide an umbrella for all different ideas and must deal with the root causes of these protests in a democratic way,” Hiwarat said.
Saleh Armouti, a member of parliament for the Islamic Action Front and former head of the Jordanian Bar Association, told Radio Al-Balad, a local station in Amman, that there has been a failure in dealing with the problem of Ajarmeh on all relevant levels.
“The circumstances are complicated, and the national interest requires a moment of quiet, national unity and focus on the higher interest of the country,” Armouti said, adding that the problem is not a “storm in a teacup” but runs much deeper.
Meanwhile, Jordan faces another problem, this time concerning the small but influential Christian community.
A street sign from the Bible Society of Jordan congratulating the kingdom on the 75th anniversary of its independence contained a biblical verse. An uninformed Islamic cleric noted that the verse is from Psalms and attacked the municipality of Amman for allowing a “Jewish psalm” to be included in a sign and the Bible Society for acting to “normalize” relations with Israel.
The municipality took down the sign and a spokesman said the city is opposed to any sign that contains words that are “abusive to our culture.”
This brought angry reactions from Christians who felt their scripture − the Old and New testaments − was being attacked. Many progressive Muslims joined the largely Christian tribes to attack the central government-appointed city council.
The strength of the protest led the city’s mayor to visit the head of the largest Christian community, Archbishop of the Orthodox Church Christophorus Atallah, on Saturday. Even that event was not without controversy, as the archbishop denied permission to the Bible Society to speak at the event, leading to the withdrawal of the Society’s director, Munther Neemat, a Catholic, and to the interdenominational board leaving the event in protest.
*Mohammad Ersan provided research assistance for this report.

Sheba hospital in space: Exploring the final frontier of medical science
Zev Stub/Jerusalem Post/June 08/2021
Sheba Medical Center set to launch medical research into outer space with Rakia mission
When a world-leading hospital prepares to conduct medical research in outer space, the sky is not the limit. Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer on Monday said its new ARC Space Lab will send eight medical experiments into orbit.
The experiments will be conducted by Israel’s second space traveler, Eytan Stibbe, on Axiom Space’s first private mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2022.
Stibbe, a former IAF fighter pilot and businessman who is funding the $50 million cost of his participation on the mission himself, is set to spend 10 days on the ISS, running dozens of experiments created by Israeli start-ups, universities and hospitals.
The mission, called Rakia (Hebrew for heaven), is led by the Science and Technology Ministry and the Ramon Foundation.
Sheba’s new space lab “will allow us to test many of our ideas for the future of medicine in this unique and delicate environment called space,” Dr. Harel Baris, director of the ARC Space Lab, told The Jerusalem Post.
Among the experiments will be a study of how space travel affects the ocular system in space and on Earth.
“Many space travelers experience visual impairment during the flights, and studies find changes in the retina and the optic nerve after the space flight,” Baris said. “An understanding of this is crucial for NASA in order to develop countermeasures and to ensure that in long-duration flights, like manned missions to Mars, astronauts’ vision will not be damaged.
“We have a device that is less than 2.5 kilograms that Eytan will use to take high-resolution scans of his retina over the course of the trip, providing data that has never been recorded before. Of course, this research can have groundbreaking ramifications on Earth, as well.”
Another experiment will investigate the behavior of the urinary microbiome, said Ben Boursi, one of the scientists involved with the project.
“We know that astronauts in space often suffer urinary-tract infection, urgency and other issues during and after the flight as the bacteria in the microbiome change,” he said. “This is an issue that can affect space travel in the future, and if we can understand how to prevent it, it may also help us understand related issues affecting many people.”
Other experiments will observe different aspects of the space traveler’s immune system, study the impact of microgravity on blood-brain barrier permeability and its potential for future Alzheimer’s disease treatment, assess systemic states using multispectral imaging of the anterior chamber of the eye, study T-cell activation in space and explore transcriptomic changes causing bacterial enhanced virulence and antibiotic resistance in space microgravity.
Sheba’s three-year-old ARC Center is the innovation hub of the largest hospital in Israel, which was named one of the top 10 in the world by Newsweek.
The experiments for the project were created by a team of Sheba’s top medical experts, as well as scientific experts from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, the Mayo Clinic, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Texas Tech University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
The Rakia mission will be Sheba Medical Center’s second adventure into space. Last year, it collaborated with the Israel Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, a major university in Napoli, Italy, and Space Pharma to launch an experiment into space that examined the effects of microgravity on common bacteria that were shown to be resistant to antibiotics.
People involved with the program believe its significance reaches far beyond the scientific value.
“This fulfills a lifelong dream I have had to combine medicine and space,” said Prof. Yitshak Kreiss, director-general of Sheba Medical Center. “ I don’t know any other area of the world that inspires humanity and sparks the imagination more than space.”
Stibbe said his goal for the mission is to inspire people to challenge their natural boundaries and to help develop and promote Israeli technologies.
Israel’s first-ever astronaut was Ilan Ramon, whose historic NASA flight in 2003 ended in catastrophe when his space shuttle Columbia was destroyed upon reentering earth. Ramon was Stibbe’s commander in the IAF, and Stibbe has dedicated his mission to Ramon’s memory.

Denmark Cracks Down on Mass Migration/"The Current Asylum System Has Failed"
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/June 08/2021
The Danish Parliament has passed a new law that will allow the government to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the European Union to have their cases considered abroad. The legislation is widely seen as a first step toward moving the country's asylum screening process beyond Danish borders.
"Denmark is committed to finding new and sustainable solutions to the present migration and refugee challenges that affect countries of origin, transit and destination. The current asylum system is unfair and unethical by incentivizing children, women and men to embark on dangerous journeys along the migratory routes, while human traffickers earn fortunes." — Danish Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye.
"Gang crime in no way belongs in Denmark. When foreigners or persons to whom we in Denmark have granted Danish citizenship participate in the gangs' ruthless crime, it is a fundamental expression of contempt for the society of which they are a part. Therefore, it is good news that Parliament has today passed the government's bill to provide the opportunity to revoke citizenship in the event of serious gang crime to the serious detriment of the state's vital interests. It is a goal for the government to ensure that Danes can be safe in their everyday lives." — Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup.
The Danish Parliament approved a first-ever Repatriation Law which authorizes the government to deport failed asylum seekers and other migrants illegally in the country.... The Danish government tightened citizenship rules.... The Danish government announced a package of new proposals aimed at fighting "religious and cultural parallel societies" in Denmark.... The Danish Parliament approved a new law that bans foreign governments from financing mosques in Denmark.... The Danish Parliament approved a ban on Islamic full-face veils in public spaces.
"We hope that people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark." — MP Rasmus Stoklund.
The Danish Parliament has passed a new law that will allow the government to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the European Union to have their cases considered abroad. The legislation is widely seen as a first step toward moving the country's asylum screening process beyond Danish borders. Pictured: A Danish checkpoint on the border with Germany, near Padborg, on January 6, 2016.
The Danish Parliament has passed a new law that will allow the government to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the European Union to have their cases considered abroad. The legislation is widely seen as a first step toward moving the country's asylum screening process beyond Danish borders.
The law, proposed by the Social Democrat-led government, is aimed at discouraging frivolous asylum applications. It has been greeted with fury by those who favor mass migration, presumably out of fear that other EU countries may now follow Denmark's lead.
Denmark, which already has some of the most restrictive immigration policies in Europe, is at the vanguard of European efforts to preserve local traditions and values in the face of mass migration, runaway multiculturalism, and the systematic encroachment of political Islam.
An amendment to the Aliens Act, approved on June 3 by 70 votes to 24, authorizes the government to enter into agreements with non-EU countries (so-called third countries) to allow it to "transfer third-country nationals and stateless persons who apply for asylum in Denmark to the third country in question for the purpose of substantive processing of asylum applications."
Danish Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye, a Social Democrat and the son of an Ethiopian immigrant, told the Financial Times that Denmark had "identified a handful of countries," mostly in Africa, that might be open to hosting migrant reception centers.
In April, Tesfaye signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with Rwanda regarding "cooperation on asylum and migration issues." The document raised speculation that Denmark wants to transfer migrants to the East African country, which has a tradition of hosting refugees. The memorandum spelled out the Danish government's long-term objective:
"Denmark is committed to finding new and sustainable solutions to the present migration and refugee challenges that affect countries of origin, transit and destination. The current asylum system is unfair and unethical by incentivizing children, women and men to embark on dangerous journeys along the migratory routes, while human traffickers earn fortunes.
"There is a need to finding new ways of addressing the migration challenges by promoting a fairer and more humane asylum system based on a comprehensive approach. This includes addressing the root causes of irregular migration, providing more and better protection of refugees in the regions of conflict and increasing assistance to host nations, countries of origin and transit — along the migratory routes — in order to improve border management, strengthen asylum systems and fight human smuggling.
"It is also the vision of the Danish Government that the processing of asylum applications should take place outside of the EU in order to break the negative incentive structure of the present asylum system."
Advocates of mass migration have criticized Denmark's new law. The European Commission, the EU's powerful administrative arm, said that it had "fundamental concerns" about deporting asylum seekers to countries outside of Europe:
"External processing of asylum claims raises fundamental questions about both the access to asylum procedures and effective access to protection. It is not possible under existing EU rules or proposals under the new pact for migration and asylum."
Others have accused Denmark of seeking to "export" the asylum process. Gillian Triggs, assistant high commissioner of UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency, warned that "such practices undermine the rights of those seeking safety and protection, demonize and punish them and may put their lives at risk."
UNHCR global spokesperson Shabia Mantoo added that the agency "remains firmly opposed to national initiatives that forcibly transfer asylum-seekers to other countries and undermine the principles of international refugee protection."
In an interview with Euronews, Nikolas Feith Tan, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, said that Denmark's plan to house asylum seekers outside its borders represents "a fundamental shift" in how the international protection system functions:
"Up until now, refugee protection has been primarily territorial. If you reach Denmark, then Denmark is responsible for both assessing whether you are a refugee or not, and if you are a refugee, then for granting you protection. The new legislation shifts that idea of territorial asylum."
Tan said that transferring asylum seekers abroad in principle does not violate international law, but that the government should still expect be sued in Danish courts and at the European Court of Human Rights.
Tesfaye said that "a key aim" was to reduce the number of "spontaneous" asylum seekers to Denmark:
"The current asylum system has failed. It is inefficient and unfair. Children, women and men are drowning in the Mediterranean or are abused along the migratory routes, while human traffickers earn fortunes."
Other Measures to Curb Mass Migration
Since assuming power in June 2019, the government of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has introduced a raft of measures aimed at curbing mass migration. The measures build on those implemented by previous governments.
June 3, 2021. The Danish Parliament approved by 78 votes to 16 a new law that authorizes the government to revoke Danish citizenship from immigrants who are members of criminal gangs. The law is aimed at tackling a surge in migration-linked violent crime. The amendment to the Citizenship Act allows for the "denial of citizenship for certain forms of serious gang crimes considered detrimental to the vital interests of the State." The law applies only to dual nationals and not to gang members who, by losing their Danish citizenship, would become stateless. The new law, which is not retroactive, enters into force on July 1, 2021.
Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup said:
"Gang crime in no way belongs in Denmark. When foreigners or persons to whom we in Denmark have granted Danish citizenship participate in the gangs' ruthless crime, it is a fundamental expression of contempt for the society of which they are a part. Therefore, it is good news that Parliament has today passed the government's bill to provide the opportunity to revoke citizenship in the event of serious gang crime to the serious detriment of the state's vital interests. It is a goal for the government to ensure that Danes can be safe in their everyday lives. When the gangs challenge that security, it must have noticeable consequences."
May 26, 2021. The Danish Parliament approved by 67 votes to 26 a first-ever Repatriation Law which authorizes the government to deport failed asylum seekers and other migrants illegally in the country. The law allows the government to monitor foreigners' mobile phones in order to more easily identify and deport them.
The law was approved amid reports that migrants who had been paid between 100,000 and 225,000 Danish kroner ($16,000 and $37,000) by the Danish government to leave the country took the money but then disappeared without actually leaving. Others took the money and left the country and later returned.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Mattias Tesfaye said:
"We have too many foreigners without legal residence in Denmark who do not return home. It is unsustainable. Both for the individual and for the Danish state, which must spend money on accommodating these people.... The penalties have been increased for those with deportation orders who do not comply with their control obligations. Now we have taken the next step towards a coherent repatriation policy. It is intended to help more foreigners without legal residence to return to their home countries. I am glad that there is broad support for this in the parliament."
May 6, 2021. The Danish government tightened citizenship rules. In future, individuals with criminal records will be excluded from obtaining Danish citizenship. Individuals found guilty of committing immigration or social security fraud must wait for six years for their citizenship application to be considered. The new rules also introduced an employment requirement. Applicants must have been in full-time employment or have been self-employed for at least three years and six months within the previous four years. Five questions about Danish values ​​have been added to the citizenship test. Applicants will be required to correctly answer four out of the five questions. "There is great agreement among the parties to the agreement that it is crucial that an applicant has adopted Danish values," the government said in a statement.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Mattias Tesfaye said:
"We have to draw a line in the sand. People who have been imprisoned must not have Danish citizenship."
Spokesman for the Liberal Party, Morten Dahlin, added:
"Danish citizenship is a gift to be earned. Therefore, we must make an effort when handing out passports. Those we welcome in the Danish family must have embraced Denmark and stayed on the right side of the law. That is why we in the Liberal Party are happy that there is now a greater focus on Danish values ​​and that there is a crackdown on foreigners who have committed crimes. These have been important demands on our part."
Conservative Rapporteur Marcus Knuth said:
"The Conservatives have been fighting for new rules for Danish citizenship for over a year. It is especially important to us that criminal foreigners with a prison sentence can never apply for Danish citizenship, and it is important to us that there is now an employment requirement, so one must now have worked the last 3½ out of four years. We also worked on a ceiling on the number of citizenships for applicants outside the EU and the Nordic countries, but unfortunately the government would not. In return, we now have an audit provision, so the government shall call for discussions if there is a significant increase in the number of applicants."
Liberal Alliance Rapporteur Henrik Dahl said:
"I am first and foremost happy that, as something new, we demand that new citizens have worked for some years before they can get a Danish passport. It is only reasonable that one has contributed to the Danish economy before one gets full rights in Denmark."
March 17, 2021. The Danish government announced a package of new proposals aimed at fighting "religious and cultural parallel societies" in Denmark. A cornerstone of the plan includes capping the percentage of "non-Western" immigrants and their descendants dwelling in any given residential neighborhood. The aim is to preserve social cohesion in the country by encouraging integration and discouraging ethnic and social self-segregation.
March 9, 2021. The Danish Parliament approved a new law that bans foreign governments from financing mosques in Denmark. The measure is aimed at preventing Muslim countries, particularly Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, from promoting Islamic extremism in Danish mosques and prayer facilities.
March 9, 2021. The Danish Parliament approved by 96 votes to 0 a new law that bans religious marriages of minors and forced marriages. Islamic preachers and others who conduct such marriages now face up to two years in prison and deportation from Denmark. The same goes for parents who allow their children enter into a Sharia marriage. The penalty for detaining a person in a forced marriage was increased to four years in prison. The law also authorizes the government to withdraw the passports of children if there is reason to believe that they are being sent abroad to be married, regardless of whether the marriage is legally valid. The law bans the use of Islamic nikah marriage contracts which often make it difficult for Muslim women to seek a divorce. The new law entered into force on March 15, 2021.
February 18, 2021. The Danish government announced that it would review the residency status of 350 Syrian migrants from Syria. The move came after the Danish Refugee Board decided that the Rif Damascus region of Syria is now safe and that there is no longer a basis for granting or extending temporary residence permits.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Mattias Tesfaye said:
"Denmark has been open and honest from day one. We have made it clear to the Syrian refugees that their residence permit is temporary. It can be withdrawn if protection is no longer needed. With the Refugee Board's decisions this week, the authorities will now review the pile of cases from the same province. This is good. We must give people protection for as long as it is needed. But when conditions in the home country improve, a former refugee should return home and re-establish a life there."
October 3, 2020. The government proposed a new Repatriation Law to ensure that more rejected asylum seekers were sent home. At least 1,100 rejected asylum seekers in Denmark do not have the right to reside in the country, and more than 200 rejected asylum seekers have remained Denmark for a more than five years. The measures include paying failed asylum seekers 20,000 Danish kroner (€2,700; $3,600) to leave the country.
September 11, 2020. The government proposed an amendment to the Foreigners' Citizenship Act that would deny Danish citizenship to Danish jihadists — so-called foreign fighters. Cabinet Minister Kaare Dybvad said:
"The government will go to great lengths to prevent foreign fighters who have turned their backs on Denmark from returning to Denmark. We are talking about men and women who have committed or supported outrageous crimes. Therefore, it must also be possible in the future to deprive them of their citizenship."
September 10, 2020. The government created a new ambassadorial post and a task force to work to establish migrant reception centers in third countries outside of the European Union — in Libya, Tunisia or Morocco.
May 31, 2018. The Danish Parliament approved a ban on Islamic full-face veils in public spaces. The law, sponsored by the center-right government in power at the time, and backed by the Social Democrats and the Danish People's Party, passed by 75 votes to 30. Anyone found wearing a burka (which covers the entire face) or a niqab (which covers the entire face except for the eyes) in public in Denmark is subject to a fine of 1,000 Danish kroner (€134; $163); repeat offenders could be fined 10,000 Danish kroner. In addition, anyone found to be requiring a person through force or threats to wear garments that cover the face could be fined or face up to two years in prison.
January 26, 2016. The Danish Parliament adopted several measures aimed at reducing the number of asylum seekers arriving in Denmark: The reintroduction of the requirement that only refugees with the highest potential for integration into Danish society be accepted; an increase in time requirement to three years for family reunifications for asylum seekers; an increase in time requirement before the awarding of permanent residency status; additional integration requirements, including the ability to prove language skills, before permanent residency can be attained; permanent and temporary residency status were made easier to lose; the introduction of fees to apply for family reunification and to convert temporary residence permit to permanent residence permit; a 10% reduction in economic aid to asylum seekers; police were given power to confiscate from asylum seekers items of value to support the cost of their stay; asylum seekers were required to live in special housing centers.
Changing Demographics
Denmark, which has a population of 5.8 million, received approximately 40,000 asylum applications during the past five years, according to data compiled by Statista. Most of the applications received by Denmark, a predominately Lutheran country, were from migrants from Muslim countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
In recent years, Denmark has also permitted significant non-asylum immigration, especially from non-Western countries. Denmark is now home to sizeable immigrant communities from Syria (35,536); Turkey (33,111); Iraq (21,840); Iran (17,195); Pakistan (14,471); Afghanistan (13,864); Lebanon (12,990) and Somalia (11,282), according to Statista.
Muslims currently comprise approximately 5.5% of the Danish population, according to the Pew Research Center. Under a "zero migration scenario," the Muslim population is projected to reach 7.6% by 2050; with a "medium migration scenario," it is forecast to hit 11.9% by 2050; and under a "high migration scenario," Muslims are expected to comprise 16% of the Danish population by 2050, according to Pew.
As in other European countries, mass migration has resulted in increased crime and social tension. Danish cities have been plagued by shootings, car burnings and gang violence.
During a recent EU review of the Schengen Agreement, the treaty that regulates the EU's system of open borders, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Mattias Tesfaye said: "The possibility of reintroducing temporary border control is crucial for the security of Danes. This was shown by the refugee and migrant crisis in 2015. And the corona crisis has recently reaffirmed this. There is a need for changes to the Schengen rules so that member states have more flexibility to decide. We in Denmark know best when there is a need for control of Denmark's borders."
On January 22, during a parliamentary hearing on Danish immigration policy, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that she was determined to reduce the number of asylum approvals:
"Our goal is zero asylum seekers. We cannot promise zero asylum seekers, but we can establish the vision for a new asylum system, and then do what we can to implement it. We must be careful that not too many people come to our country, otherwise our social cohesion cannot exist. It is already being challenged."
In an interview with Danish broadcaster DR on June 3, MP Rasmus Stoklund said that if someone seeks refuge in Denmark in the future, he or she must expect to be deported to a third country: "Therefore, we hope that people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark."
*Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
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