English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For 07 July/2022
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 10/27-33/:"What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. ‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven."

Titels For English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 06-07/2022
US, Israel reportedly tell Lebanon they're not seeking 'escalation'
Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah are focus of Lapid-Macron talks in Paris
Aoun: Border demarcation will be finalized soon and will satisfy everyone
Bou Saab criticizes Hezbollah drones timing, voices optimism on talks
Report: Hezbollah staged offshore 'operation' last Wednesday
Lapid cites 'multiple' Hezbollah attacks as official says gas can stabilize Lebanon
Report: Hezbollah pressing behind the scenes for govt. formation
UK Minister for the Armed Forces: UK support for the Lebanese Army continues
Lebanon Hopes to Repatriate Syrian Refugees within Months
Iran still seeking diplomats missing in Lebanon since 1982
Lebanon must reclaim its sovereignty from Hezbollah/Khaled Abou Zahr/Arab News/July 06, 2022
Lebanon, America, and the Courage of Fouad Ajami/Hussain Abdul-Hussain/The National Interest/July 06/2022

Titles For Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 06-07/2022
Muslims Attack Coptic Christians for ‘Sin’ of Opening a Church
Borrell: Window for Revived Iran Nuclear Deal Narrowing
US Says Iran's Repeated New Demands Suggest Lack of Seriousness
US Alarmed by Iran’s Progress in Uranium Enrichment
Iran denies asking for new concessions in nuclear deal
Evacuations as Russia advances in Ukraine's Donbas
US Targets Iranian Oil and Petrochemical Trade Network
Syrians Fear Effects of Russia Blocking Aid to Opposition Area
Russia Bans Activities of Jewish Agency
UK PM Johnson vows to plow on despite resignations
Canada/Conservative party disqualifies candidate Patrick Brown from leadership race
Turkey should face international court over Yazidi genocide, UK report says

Titles For LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 06-07/2022
Under Biden, U.S. Pushed Further Back in Latin America/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute./July 6, 2022
Lapid’s greatest election challenge will be skyrocketing cost of living/Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/July 06/2022
Europeans Switch to Malley’s Old Positions on Iran/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 06/2022
Maybe AI Isn’t as Scary as We Thought/Tyler Cowen/Bloomberg/July 06/2022
Netanyahu ‘Doomsday’ coalition looms over Israeli elections/Ben Lynfield/The Arab Weekly/July 06/2022

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 06-07/2022
US, Israel reportedly tell Lebanon they're not seeking 'escalation'
Naharnet/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Lebanon overnight received “a U.S. message stressing that the U.S. and Israeli sides do not want an escalation and that they are committed to the course of the negotiations” over sea border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Wednesday. The message comes after Hezbollah launched three unarmed drones towards the Karish offshore gas field on Saturday in what it said was a “reconnaissance” mission aimed at sending a “message” to Israel, which drew warnings from Israel’s prime minister and two Israeli ministers. According to al-Akhbar, Hezbollah itself received an Israeli reassurance message on Saturday evening through European and U.N. officials. “The drones operation is a dangerous escalation that might affect the negotiations, but Israel wants to contain the situation and has no desire to escalate or go to war. It rather wants to guarantee the continuation of the negotiations until reaching a solution,” the Israeli message said, according to the newspaper. Explaining why Hezbollah decided to carry out the “operation,” al-Akhbar said Hezbollah had learned through a foreign side of Israel’s response to Lebanon’s official border demarcation proposal. “The Israeli stance rejected Lebanon’s proposal to exchange the Karish field for the Qana field, although the matter remained ambiguous in the response that was carried by the U.S. ambassador, who tried to soften it by speaking of Israeli understanding and positivity and by saying that Tel Aviv had accepted to return to Naqoura” for resuming the indirect negotiations with Lebanon, the pro-Hezbollah daily reported. “Everyone knows that the response did not at all meet the Lebanese demands,” al-Akhbar added.

Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah are focus of Lapid-Macron talks in Paris
The Arab Weekly/July 06/2022
Iran’s aggressive agenda in the Middle East was high on the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday in talks with French President Emmanuel Macron during his first trip abroad in office. Lapid was also expected to ask for backing in a gas dispute with Lebanon that days ago saw Israel shoot down three drones launched by Hezbollah, which it says is largely Iran-financed. Lapid took over the premiership on Friday following the collapse of Israel’s coalition government, which will see the country return to the polls in November for its fifth election in less than four years. The new leader was confronted with his first test a day later, when Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement launched three drones towards an offshore gas field in the eastern Mediterranean. The Israeli prime minister also stressed the danger posed by Hezbollah’s arsenal. “Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, aimed at Israel. It tries to attack us with Iranian rockets and UAVs. will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks,”Lapid told reporters in the courtyard of the Elysee Palace. Lebanon rejects Israel’s claim that the Karish gas field lies within its territorial waters. Israel and Lebanon resumed negotiations on their maritime border in 2020, though the Karish site sits outside of the disputed area and is marked as Israeli on previous United Nations maps. The US-backed talks have been stalled by Beirut’s demand that the UN maps must be modified.
Make Iran ‘see reason’
“We will ask France to intervene to secure the negotiations that we want to lead until the end of the gas issues,” an Israeli official told journalists travelling with the premier before his arrival in Paris. Macron, at the news briefing, said both sides should “avoid any action” that could worsen relations between Israel and Lebanon. Lapid reiterated Israel’s firm stance against international efforts to revive a nuclear accord with Tehran. Acknowledging that France disagrees with that view, he said what was beyond dispute was that “Iran is violating the agreement and continues to develop its nuclear programme.” Israeli officials fear that giving Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme could allow Tehran to boost funding to Hezbollah, as well as the Palestinian militant group Hamas. “The current situation cannot continue as it is. It will lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which would threaten world peace. We must all work together to stop that from happening,” Lapid told reporters. Macron, meanwhile, deplored that Iran “refuses to seize the opportunity offered to it to conclude a good agreement”, but said he would “make every effort” to make Tehran “see reason”.
Macron used the meeting to urge efforts by Israel toward long-term peace with the Palestinians. “There is no alternative to a return to political dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians,” he said, to revive “a process that’s been broken for too long.”Lapid didn’t address Macron’s appeal in their public remarks. Lapid, unlike Netanyahu, supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians. But as a caretaker leader, he isn’t in a position to pursue any major diplomatic initiatives. Lapid’s Paris visit comes days ahead of US President Joe Biden travelling to Israel and the Palestinian territories, before flying to Saudi Arabia for energy talks. Washington is seeking to influence the global energy market towards a higher output following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which led Moscow to cut its gas supplies to some European countries. Israel and Egypt signed a deal last month to boost gas exports to the European Union, as the bloc attempts to end its dependency on Russian energy. “The Lebanon issue is essential and Lapid will come back to the Israeli position, according to which Hezbollah is first and foremost a threat to the future of Lebanon,” said the Israeli official, who requested anonymity. Israel and Lebanon remain technically at war but agreed to talks aimed at delineating their maritime border to allow both countries to boost gas exploration.

Aoun: Border demarcation will be finalized soon and will satisfy everyone
Naharnet /Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
President Michel Aoun has reassured that the sea border negotiations between Lebanon and Israel “will be finalized soon” and that “the solution will satisfy everyone.”“Border demarcation is making progress and we will soon finalize it,” Aoun said in an interview on OTV. “I believe finalizing it will not take a long time,” he added. Asked whether the solution will be in Lebanon’s interest, Aoun said “certainly.” “It will definitely be in everyone’s interest. We are demarcating a border and the two parties must be satisfied with the solution when we reach it, or else it wouldn’t be a solution, but rather hegemony by one party over the other,” the President added. Asked whether the Greek ship is “operating” in the Karish field, the President said it had been operating but that he does not know whether it continued operating after Hezbollah sent the three drones on Saturday.
“We will reach a solution in a short period and I believe that we have almost reached an understanding with the Americans, who are mediating between us and Israel,” Aoun said. “I don’t know when exactly, but the process will be successful. We will reach a solution that satisfies everyone,” the President reassured. Responding to a question, Aoun said “if the atmosphere wasn’t positive, we would not have continued with the negotiations.”

Bou Saab criticizes Hezbollah drones timing, voices optimism on talks
Naharnet/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab has said that there is a chance to finalize the sea border demarcation negotiations during the remaining few months of President Michel Aoun’s term. “We have a chance to achieve that within two months to pave the way for returning to Naqoura,” Bou Saab said in an interview with the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper. “We can say from today that when negotiations resume in Naqoura, they will be different than the past, which means that the (Lebanese) team will not go there to obstruct, but rather to find a solution while preserving Lebanon’s full rights,” Bou Saab added.
“Performance mistakes were committed and the technical-military team could have remained a technical-military team while leaving political and diplomatic tactics to politicians,” the Deputy Speaker added, in renewed criticism against the team. “Mistakes were committed in the media and in the talks with the other party that made us run into a delay,” Bou Saab went on to say. He added that today Lebanon should “benefit from those keen technicians, as well as from politicians, so that we continue with this file and obtain the utmost limit that preserves Lebanon’s interest.”“In negotiations, we make demands and the other party does the same, but eventually we should reach a middle ground,” Bou Saab said, noting that “it is not right to say that we either obtain Line 29 or we be labeled as traitors.”“Between Line 29 and the Hoff Line, we will eventually reach a line that would satisfy both parties,” the Deputy Speaker added. Asked whether Hezbollah’s sending of drones towards the Karish field had represented “a message of support for Lebanon’s stance in the negotiations,” Bou Saab said that “there are two viewpoints.”“The first suggests that it will speed up the negotiations. But in my opinion, the move should not have happened in this stage, specifically because the negotiations are moving forward in a fast pace,” Bou Saab added. “The issue of the drones has returned us to the point of addressing the possibility of continuing the negotiations, instead of continuing the discussion of the points we have already reached,” the Deputy Speaker lamented. Addressing Israel, Bou Saab said “the other party must know that the best solution is to move forward quickly through continuing the negotiations.”“There are common intersections and interest that Lebanon should benefit from. The Europeans need gas and they have signed agreements with Egypt and Israel, and stability in the region is necessary to continue the production of gas and this is a point of strength for Lebanon,” the Deputy Speaker added. He also pointed out that Hezbollah’s drones were launched “without the knowledge of the Lebanese state and those concerned with negotiations,” adding that he does not have an answer over the motives.He, however, called for “continuing the negotiations,” while noting that “Lebanon is negotiating from a position of strength.”

Report: Hezbollah staged offshore 'operation' last Wednesday
Naharnet/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Hezbollah’s sending of three drones on Saturday towards Israel’s gas installations in the Karish field was not the group’s “first operation,” the pro-Hezbollah newspaper al-Akhbar reported on Wednesday. “It was preceded by another operation that took place on Wednesday,” al-Akhbar added. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Tuesday that Hezbollah’s launching of the three drones was not the first such activity, mentioning that there had been “multiple attacks.”"Multiple attacks were carried out against Israeli gas rigs. Israel will not accept this kind of aggression against its sovereignty and whoever does it must know that they are taking a risk," Lapid said in Paris. "Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks," he warned. Until Tuesday, neither Israel nor Hezbollah had mentioned anything about previous “attacks” on Israel’s gas rigs. Israeli news website ‘Walla’ had reported Friday that in 2016, “divers from Hezbollah's elite force reached, at least in one case, to the maritime border area and crossed into the Israeli side to examine the Israeli underwater technology.”“In another case that year, a buoy placed by the navy on the border fell into their hands and was swept to the Lebanese side,” Walla added.

Lapid cites 'multiple' Hezbollah attacks as official says gas can stabilize Lebanon
Agence France Presse/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid has hinted that Hezbollah’s launching of three unarmed drones towards the Karish gas field on Saturday was not the first such activity, mentioning that there had been “multiple attacks.”"We had a long discussion about Lebanon, we presented intelligence on Hezbollah and its activities," Lapid told a small group of reporters after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday. He gave no details, but said the information was "connected to the attacks on the gas rig.""Multiple attacks were carried out against Israeli gas rigs. Israel will not accept this kind of aggression against its sovereignty and whoever does it must know that they are taking a risk," Lapid said earlier in Paris."Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, aimed at Israel. It tries to attack us with Iranian rockets and UAVs," he said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles. "Israel will not sit back and do nothing, given these repeated attacks," he warned. Until Tuesday, neither Israel nor Hezbollah had mentioned anything about previous “attacks” on Israel’s gas rigs. Israeli news website ‘Walla’ had reported Friday that in 2016, “divers from Hezbollah's elite force reached, at least in one case, to the maritime border area and crossed into the Israeli side to examine the Israeli underwater technology.” “In another case that year, a buoy placed by the navy on the border fell into their hands and was swept to the Lebanese side,” Walla added. An Israeli government official meanwhile told AFP after Lapid met with Macron that "one of the key factors to stabilize Lebanon would be its ability to become an exporter of gas."The Lebanese government had signed a deal with French oil major Totalenergies and "therefore France is a player on the issue," the official said.

Report: Hezbollah pressing behind the scenes for govt. formation
Naharnet/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Hezbollah intends to “rein in Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil” and put an end to his “obstruction tendencies and crippling conditions” in order to push for the formation of the new government in the near future, media reports said on Wednesday. Hezbollah is “currently sponsoring behind-the-scenes contacts with the relevant parties in order to reach a middle ground solution between Bassil and PM-designate Najib Mikati,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem had on Tuesday called for forming a government “with the least conditions,” urging “brave steps for formation.”“The benefit from the presence of an incumbent government is better from the benefit from the presence of a caretaker cabinet,” Qassem said.

UK Minister for the Armed Forces: UK support for the Lebanese Army continues
Naharnet/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
The UK Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey MP, conducted a one-day visit to Lebanon yesterday. This was Minister Heappey’s first visit to Lebanon where he saw first-hand how UK projects support the Lebanese Armed Forces in “their mission to maintain stability across Lebanon,” the British embassy said. The British Ambassador to Lebanon, Ian Collard, and the British Embassy’s Defense Attaché, Lt. Col Lee Saunders, accompanied Minister Heappey. The Minister met the caretaker Minister of Defense, Maurice Slim, and the Lebanese Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun. They discussed military cooperation between the UK and Lebanon. At the Third Land Border Regiment (LBR) on the border with Syria, Minister Heappey heard from senior Lebanese officers how the UK’s work to enhance the capabilities of the LBRs has improved efforts to counter cross-border smuggling and terrorist activity. “This has made the area safer for local communities. UK support has enabled deployment of four Land Border Regiments (LBRs), the construction of over 78 border towers, provision of 350 Land Rovers, 100 armored patrol vehicles, and training of over 20,000 Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) personnel,” the embassy said in a statement. At the end of his visit, Minister Heappey said: “The UK and Lebanon are close friends and partners. I was proud to see first-hand the positive impact of the military cooperation between our two countries that has spanned more than a decade.”“In times of need, the UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Lebanon and our partners around the world to tackle shared challenges. In the current context, it is more important than ever that we continue to work together to combat threats to global peace and security,” he added. Ambassador Collard for his part said: “I am delighted to host the Minister for the Armed Forces, James Heappey, on his first visit to Lebanon. The Lebanese Armed Forces is crucial to ensuring Lebanon’s stability and safeguarding the Lebanese people during these challenging times.”“Since 2010, the UK has committed over £87 million to optimize the LAF’s capabilities which underlines the UK’s government commitment to a safe and stable Lebanon,” Collard added.

Lebanon Hopes to Repatriate Syrian Refugees within Months
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Lebanon plans to start sending back tens of thousands of Syrian refugees within months over objections by the United Nations and rights groups, a minister said in an interview Wednesday. Lebanon has one of the world's highest numbers of refugees per capita and currently hosts over 1 million Syrians who fled the decade-old conflict. Officials say the influx has cost Lebanon billions of dollars and further damaged its crippled infrastructure while it struggles with a financial meltdown. "We are serious about implementing this plan and we hope to do so within months," Issam Sharafeddine, Lebanon's caretaker Minister of the Displaced, told The Associated Press. "This is a humane, honorable, patriotic and economic plan that is necessary for Lebanon."The Lebanese government's plan would entail sending back 15,000 Syrian refugees every month. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and rights groups oppose involuntary repatriation to Syria and say the practice risks endangering the returning refugees. The UN refugee agency in a press statement denied that it is engaged in negotiations with Beirut and Damascus on refugee returns. "UNHCR continues to call on the government of Lebanon to respect the fundamental right of all refugees to a voluntary, safe and dignified return," the statement read. The United Nations estimates that 90% of Syrian refugee households live in extreme poverty. But since late 2019, poverty has worsened for both Lebanese and Syrians as the Mediterranean country continues to struggle with crippling economic crisis. Sky-rocketing fuel prices coupled with a currency collapse has meant many essential commodities are now out of reach. In recent months, a surge of Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians have tried to flee cash-strapped Lebanon by sea to Europe. The Lebanese minister on Monday presented the plan to President Michel Aoun. A committee consisting of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Sharafeddine, six other ministers and the country’s General Security organization had been working on the proposal since March to gradually return some 1.5 million Syrian refugees from Lebanon. Sharafeddine plans to visit Syria next week to meet Local Administration and Environment Minister Hussein Makhlouf. He hopes they will agree on a concrete timeline for the plan to repatriate 15,000 Syrian refugees every month. The minister says Makhlouf had told him that the Syrian government could provide temporary shelter for repatriated refugees in areas that are "entirely safe." "We have statistics from the Interior Ministry of the names of the displaced, where they live, and where they’re originally from, and so we would return them by neighborhood," the minister said. He said Lebanon is willing to repatriate refugees in larger numbers if the Syrian government is able to receive them "at a later stage". Human rights organizations in recent reports have documented cases of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and a host of human rights violations against returning refugees. Sharafeddine rejected these reports as a "fear campaign" and said the Syrian government has agreed to drop charges against former opposition fighters and political opposition. "I was surprised that the Syrian state has eased matters a lot for returns even when it comes to security matters - even those who held weapons will get waivers," Sharafeddine told the AP.
The caretaker minister also criticized the UNHCR and donor countries for what he said was their unwillingness to redirect refugee aid to Syria, which he says deters refugees from returning. "Whatever the UNHCR’s position is, we will go ahead with the plan," he said.

Iran still seeking diplomats missing in Lebanon since 1982
Agence France Presse/July 06/2022
Tehran said Wednesday it is "still looking" for four Iranian nationals with diplomatic status who disappeared during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. "We are continuing serious efforts to determine the fate of the four abducted diplomats," Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement issued on the 40th anniversary of their disappearance. The ministry criticized "the lack of cooperation on the part of the international community and human rights organizations to determine the fate of the abductees." Three diplomats and a photographer from the official Iranian news agency IRNA were arrested in northern Lebanon on July 4, 1982, at a checkpoint of the Lebanese Forces militia at the time, and have not been seen since. They were Ahmad Motevasselian, the military attache of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Mohsen Moussavi, charge d'affaires, Taghi Rastegar-Moghadam, an employee of the embassy, and photojournalist Kazem Akhavan. Motevasselian was also a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's ideological army, which established itself in Lebanon in 1982 and was crucial to the formation of Hezbollah. Iran blames Israel for the disappearance, describing those responsible as "agents of the Zionist regime." In 1982, the Lebanese Forces were armed by Israel. The Iranian ministry "renewed its calls to the United Nations and relevant human rights agencies to pursue the cases of the four Iranian diplomats and punish the perpetrators of this crime."
Iran also called for the formation of a commission of inquiry between the two countries.

Lebanon must reclaim its sovereignty from Hezbollah
Khaled Abou Zahr/Arab News/July 06, 2022
The Israeli military on Saturday announced it had shot down three unmanned aircraft launched by Hezbollah toward an area of the Mediterranean Sea where an Israeli gas platform had recently been installed. The platform is in a contested area that is the center of a legal feud between Lebanon and Israel. This feud is about the delimitation of sea borders and, ultimately, each country’s share of offshore gas resources.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and his foreign minister carefully criticized Hezbollah’s action as counterproductive but did not go as far as condemning it. Most political forces stayed silent on this military operation emanating from Lebanese territory and, most probably, no one was informed.
This is another prime example of Iranian proxy Hezbollah launching a military reconnaissance operation beyond the country’s borders and putting the entire country at risk. It also brings forward the question of why Israel should continue negotiating with Lebanon when Hezbollah calls the shots. Despite the declarations by Lebanese officials of good progress, this military mission was still conducted. How can this be? How can we continue accepting state sovereignty being shattered in this manner?
I condemn this action by Hezbollah. I condemn it because it is another knife in the back of Lebanese sovereignty before being anything else. The lie that Hezbollah wants you to believe is that “the immediate objective should be to prevent the enemy from extracting oil and gas from the Karish gas field,” as claimed last week by the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. In reality, it is all linked to Iranian regional activity and applying pressure and sending a message to the US and the regional powers. It can be added to the provocations by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ speedboats harassing US Navy ships a fortnight ago. The message here is, as always, that they have the capacity to bring chaos to the region.
Hezbollah, just as in 2006, has put the entire Lebanese state in danger while politicians look the other way. If Lebanon does not want to pursue negotiations with Israel on the border, then it is up to the Lebanese state to move forward, not Hezbollah. Once again, Iran and Hezbollah use this excuse to advance their agenda in the region and, as a bonus, silence everyone in shame. The worst part is that none of the voices that claimed to be fighting for sovereignty dared condemn this action. Why? Because they will be accused of being pro-Israeli and siding with the enemy. This is all lies and false accusations.
Hezbollah knows it will not stop the Israelis from moving forward in its gas extraction activities or that it will disrupt the negotiations. Hezbollah also knows it will allow Israel to use such actions against Lebanon, just as the trip of new Prime Minister Yair Lapid to Paris revealed. In short, it disrupts the Lebanese proposals in the indirect talks with Israel.
The entire Lebanese political system is heading toward complete disintegration.
These activities by Hezbollah are simply playing along with the Iranian agenda while it is facing off with the negotiating teams regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. It is no surprise this happened right after the Doha talks, following which US officials stated that the chances of a deal had deteriorated. Not surprisingly, and in contradiction, Iran considered that these talks went well. It is all part of the usual tactics used by the Iranian regime.
It is quite easy for Hezbollah to take this action with total impunity, as the entire Lebanese political system is heading toward complete disintegration. Lebanon is also in complete economic and social chaos. The country is in the middle of consultations over the formation of a new government, meaning there is once again only a caretaker prime minister. It really seems like Lebanon has had more time with a caretaker PM than an actual one. This is also a game of humiliation of all official institutions by Hezbollah, which brings the entire state down.
Lebanon will probably still have a caretaker PM when the mandate of the president ends in October. And then what? Will Michel Aoun be sworn in for a new mandate while a caretaker PM still runs around trying to put together a consensus government? Or will political forces block this?
The fact that groups opposed to Hezbollah have enough seats but are unable to agree to put a government in place tells the rest of the story. And so, regardless of all speculation, nothing will change, as they do not call the shots. They have all become a caretaker political force, while Hezbollah handles all political, social and military policy. How can this continue?
There is an absence of political will and the capacity to face the hegemony and constant humiliation from Hezbollah. The ones capable of doing so have been eliminated or silenced. How can politicians stay silent amid these military activities that put the entire country at risk? Where are the voices of the new MPs? Isn’t this sufficient reason to put differences aside and form a strong opposition government, or will they follow the steps of the legacy political actors? They stood silent when Hezbollah sent forces to kill Syrians. They stood silent when they sent forces to train Iraqi militias and take part in combat.
It is high time for Hezbollah to be held accountable for its actions and for the country’s sovereignty to be restored. This starts with restoring the Lebanese state’s power over decisions of war and peace.
• Khaled Abou Zahr is CEO of Eurabia, a media and tech company. He is also the editor of Al-Watan Al-Arabi.

Lebanon, America, and the Courage of Fouad Ajami
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/The National Interest/July 06/2022
For his courage to think independently, and for his honesty in tackling Arab failure, Ajami became the guiding light for many Arab thinkers after him.
Reading Fouad Ajami’s posthumous memoir, When Magic Failed, was like reading my own life story. Both Ajami and I hail from Shia families who moved from a homogeneous countryside to cosmopolitan Beirut. My journey to Beirut took a bit longer—my father hailed from Iraq, and we fled the repression of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime in the 1980s to my mother’s country, Lebanon.
Ajami and I attended the same Beirut prep school and later migrated to the United States. During our time in our ancestral homeland, we learned the same lesson: Arab failure was from within. It was not the fault of imperialism, colonialism, or even Zionism. For Ajami, the price of dissent was often vilification, in particular the accusation that he was a self-hating Arab.
Ajami was born in 1945, three decades before I was. For both of us, the seeds of unconventional thinking were sown at International College, an American missionary school that—unlike traditional Arab ones—taught students how to reason for themselves. Thinking independently alienated us from the conservative society we lived in.
Estranged within his homeland, Ajami emigrated to the United States at the age of eighteen. In America, Ajami earned a Ph.D. in political science, then taught at Princeton in the 1970s before moving to Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. Over the span of three decades, Ajami advised U.S. presidents on foreign policy, testified at dozens of Congressional hearings, published in leading journals, and went on primetime TV to make the case that America should spread its founding principles of liberty and democracy throughout the world.
For me, it would take a decade after high school before I emigrated. I attended the American University of Beirut (AUB), a school that “ unintentionally, taught revolution,” in the words of British intelligence officer T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia) as quoted by Ajami. I then became a journalist, working at The Daily Star, Lebanon’s oldest English-language newspaper.
At the time, I subscribed to Arab nationalism. The late Palestinian-American academic Edward Said was my hero. He taught a generation of scholars that “orientalism”—the patronizing Western belief in Arab inferiority—was the midwife of imperialism and the ultimate author of Middle Eastern misfortunes.
Then something unusual happened. The United States prepared to invade Iraq, promising democratic self-government to its people. Meanwhile, Said and an overwhelming majority of Arab intellectuals portrayed Saddam Hussein as a victim of Yankee aggression.
In general, Said and his fellow travelers had few qualms about “armed resistance” to imperial oppressors. They lionized Palestinian resistance above all, yet had sympathy for the dictator who had forced my family out of Iraq. Thus, I saw the ugly face of Arab nationalism.
In America, both Ajami and I became citizens. Arab elites watched Ajami on TV, who gave tips on how to best safeguard American national interests while helping to modernize the Arab world. Many Arabs vilified Ajami, depicting him as a self-hating Arab. Said accused Ajami of having “unmistakably racist prescriptions.”
But neither Ajami nor I were ever self-hating Arabs. Ajami loved Arab culture—the language, poetry, music, and cuisine. My children, born and raised in the United States, are fluent Arabic speakers. For both of us, cultural pride never interfered with American patriotism. What’s more, exporting to our ancestral homelands the Enlightenment ideas upon which this republic was founded is not an act of betrayal, except in the eyes of the so-called nationalists who only blame others for decades of political dysfunction across the Arab world.
In his memoir, Ajami reminisced about his childhood in his southern Lebanese village of Arnoun, and later years in Beirut. He described growing up in a society that publicly maintained a facade of virtue but secretly lived a life of vice. Some of this vice he saw first-hand.
The title of Ajami’s memoir, When Magic Failed, describes two family traumas. In 1942, Ajami’s father, Ali, married his mother, Bahija Abdullah, a divorced mother of three several years his senior. After the couple had their first son, Riad, the father started courting another woman. To lure him back, Bahija conceived and gave birth to Fouad. But Fouad, her magic, failed to save their marriage and his father left.
The book describes another failure: Lebanon. “Clerics of the rival sects prohibited any original thoughts, anything beyond the strictures they sanctified,” Ajami wrote. He recounted how the Lebanese prime minister “with the carnation in his lapel and his ever-present cigar,” Saeb Salam, “asked men not to dream” of a better future.
This was the Lebanon that Ajami grew up in. It suffered from the same pathologies while I lived there. While Ajami taught at Princeton and Johns Hopkins, the country immolated itself in a fifteen-year civil war. A remarkable recovery followed, yet corruption brought on a financial implosion in 2019 that erased decades of growth. The country’s dominant political force is the terrorist group Hezbollah. Ajami died in 2014, just shy of his seventieth birthday, but saw more than enough of Lebanese history to know that foreigners are not to blame for its travails.
Ajami was born and raised an Arab but chose to abandon a world that failed him. In contrast, Edward Said “chose” his Arab identity at age thirty and then made a career out of teaching others to blame foreigners. In his introduction to the Arabic translation of his memoir, Out of Place, Said recounts how he was born American in a Jerusalem household where everyone spoke English. He attended high school and college in the United States and later hired a top linguist to teach him Arabic. This is the man who told America that Westerners cannot understand his Arab world and that it should listen to him when making its foreign policy, not natives like Ajami.
As Ajami freed himself from the Arab shackles through free and independent thinking, he tried to understand one more country that the Arabs had turned into a bogeyman: Israel.
While not in the book, a student of Ajami quoted his teacher’s impression after a trip to Israel. “I didn’t know Hebrew; there was only so much of Israeli life that was accessible to me,” Ajami said, adding: “But the culture of universities [and] intellectual debates would soon strip me of the nervousness with which I had initially approached the place.”
Ajami concluded: “The Palestinian story was not mine. [I] wanted to understand and interpret Arab society without the great alibi that Israel had become for every Arab failing under the sun.”
For his courage to think independently, and for his honesty and bluntness in tackling Arab failure, Ajami became the guiding light for many Arab thinkers after him, such as Egyptian Samuel Tadros, Lebanese Emile Hokayem, and Syrian Ammar Abdul-Hamid. Ajami’s posthumous memoir was his last hurrah, a gift to those who wish he were still here to pierce the intellectual fog that distorts America’s understanding of the Arab world.
*Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on Twitter @hahussain
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/lebanon-america-and-courage-fouad-ajami-203353

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 06-07/2022
Muslims Attack Coptic Christians for ‘Sin’ of Opening a Church
Raymond Ibrahim/Coptic Solidarity/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
On the evening of June, 23, 2022, Muslim mobs attacked the homes of Coptic Christians, including by hurling stones through their windows, in al-Hilla, a village in Luxor governate, Upper Egypt. The occasion of this latest Muslim mob attack on Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority was the legalization of the Church of Michael the Archangel. Although the church was originally built in 2003, it only received formal recognition last week. After waiting for 17 years, as soon as the decree (signed by the prime-minister) was issued to legalize and open the church —and in anticipation of expected, fanatical Muslim ire—the responsible committee dispatched a security force to protect, and set up barriers around, the church. On learning that the church that had been built nearly two decades ago was finally going to start functioning as a church, Muslims throughout the village “rejected the matter,” says one report, “and the process of charging and inflaming the people’s feelings began,” as Muslims cried out that the building or renovation of a church contradicts shari‘a, or Islamic, law (as well captured by the Conditions of Omar, a document purportedly drawn up by Caliph Omar I, which, among several other severe stipulations placed on Christians, holds that new churches can never be built, and preexisting but dilapidated churches can never be repaired). Before long, the angry mobs, which were augmented by Muslims from neighboring villages, had grown very large and, “amidst hostile chants”—which no doubt included Islam’s jihadist war-cry, “Allahu Akbar!”—began hurling stones through the windows of Coptic homes. According to the report, “the security force charged with protecting the church tried to rebuff them, but the number of assailants was too large.”Before peace could be regained, many Christian homes had been damaged; several vehicles and motorcycles parked in front of Coptic homes were also “smashed” or set aflame, including the village priest’s vehicle. On the following day, Friday, Luxor police forces reinforced their presence in the village in anticipation of more Muslim anger following Friday mosque prayers—when imams habitually whip the faithful into a frenzy concerning the alleged sins of the “infidels” who need to be punished. Armed security and national forces—including several armored vehicles—were also deployed all throughout the region, especially around the Church of Michael the Archangel, Christian homes, and surrounding mosques. Meanwhile, and as the report notes, the traumatized Copts maintain that their “only sin” was to have “obtained an official decision to legalize the church.”It is worth noting that the above scenario has played out countless times in Egypt: whenever a church is built, legalized, or repaired—or is merely rumored to be built, legalized, or repaired—local Muslims riot and attack the Copts. Authorities frequently respond by appeasing the rioters and rescinding the church’s legal status, effectively shutting it down. Time will tell if the law will, once again, collapse before Muslim mob rule, or if justice will prevail for the Church of Michael the Archangel in Egypt.

Borrell: Window for Revived Iran Nuclear Deal Narrowing
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
The window for an agreement to bring Iran back into compliance with a nuclear deal along with the US is closing, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on Tuesday. "If we want to conclude an agreement, decisions are needed now. This is still possible, but the political space to revive the JCPOA may narrow soon," he tweeted, according to AFP. The JCPOA is the 2015 nuclear deal under which Iran committed to curbing its nuclear program in return for lifting of international sanctions. Former US president Donald Trump severely weakened the pact when he pulled America out of it in 2018, prompting Iran to drop its own compliance. Iran has now enriched uranium close to the level needed to build atomic weapons. Efforts led by Borrell and his deputy Enrique Mora to get Iran and US back under the nuclear deal's terms have stalled, largely because of a late-running added demand by Tehran that Washington remove Iran's Revolutionary Guards from a terror blacklist. Borrell in his tweet said he had again spoken with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, following up on talks he had during a surprise June 25 visit to Tehran. Indirect negotiations between Iran and the US hosted by Qatar last week failed to produce a breakthrough. The 2015 deal was strenuously negotiated by European powers France, Britain and Germany, along with Russia, China and the United States. French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday he would "make every effort" to get Iran to revise its extra demands and take up the agreement worked out for a revival of the nuclear pact.

US Says Iran's Repeated New Demands Suggest Lack of Seriousness
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Iran has repeatedly introduced, over the recent weeks and months, extraneous demands that go beyond the confines of the nuclear deal struck in 2015, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday, saying that the new demands suggest a lack of seriousness on Tehran's behalf. Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at breaking an impasse over how to salvage Iran's 2015 nuclear pact ended in Doha, Qatar, last week without the hoped-for progress. According to Reuters, Price said there was not another round of planned talks with Iran at the moment.

US Alarmed by Iran’s Progress in Uranium Enrichment
Washington - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Iran has made alarming progress on enriching uranium, the US envoy for talks on reinstating the 2015 nuclear deal said on Tuesday. Under the nuclear pact, Tehran limited its uranium enrichment program, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons, though Iran says it seeks only civilian atomic energy. Then-US President Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, calling it too soft on Iran, and reimposed harsh US sanctions, spurring Tehran to breach nuclear limits in the pact. Now, Tehran is much closer to having enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said, though they do not appear to have resumed their weaponization program. “But we are of course alarmed, as are our partners, about the progress they've made in the enrichment field,” the US top negotiator said in an interview with the National Public Radio. Iran has enough highly enriched uranium on hand to make a bomb and could do so in a matter of weeks, he warned. Meanwhile, Malley said Iranian negotiators rejected last week in Doha “very detailed outlines” of what the European Union, as a coordinator, thought a fair outcome would be. He said the proposal set a timeline by which Iran could come back into compliance with the nuclear deal and Washington could ease sanctions on Tehran, stressing that the US was prepared to take that deal. Indirect talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at breaking an impasse over how to salvage the pact ended in Doha, Qatar, last week without the hoped-for progress. Malley described those talks as “more than a little bit of a wasted occasion.”“They have, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they've wanted in the past,” he revealed. The demands included some that the United States and Europeans have said could not be part of negotiations. “The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we're prepared to have that. It's between Iran and itself,” Malley said. “They need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal.”The nuclear pact seemed near revival in March but 11 months of talks between Tehran and major powers in Vienna were thrown into disarray chiefly over Tehran's insistence that Washington remove the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), its elite security force, from the US Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list.

Iran denies asking for new concessions in nuclear deal
Al-Monitor Staff/July 6, 2022
Qatar’s foreign minister arrived in Tehran today in an attempt to salvage the Iranian nuclear deal. Muhammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani was greeted by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Tehran. Qatar has been facilitating indirect talks between Iranian and US officials in Doha. Though those talks have not resulted in a breakthrough, they did bring representatives of the two countries to the same city for the first time since the Vienna talks collapsed in March. Amir-Abdollahian told reporters, “Contrary to claims by US media, we do not have any demands beyond the JCPOA and our demands are within the framework of the 2015 deal.” He was using the acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the deal signed in 2015 under President Barack Obama in which Iran agreed to reduce its nuclear program and expand inspections at its nuclear sites in exchange for sanctions relief. In 2018, President Donald Trump exited the deal and reapplied sanctions. Some of the hang-ups in reviving the deal, which President Joe Biden is seeking to do, are sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and guarantees that the United States will not exit the deal again. Dropping the IRGC from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations would be politically costly for Biden and the Democrats and given the nature of the JCPOA — it is not a treaty ratified by Congress — it's difficult for Washington to make guarantees against a future exit. The next US president could easily reapply sanctions on Iran.
On the issue of “economic guarantees,” Amir-Abdollahian said, “This is not an extra demand.” He added, “The US has to be committed that Iran will benefit completely from the 2015 agreement.” He continued, “Up until now, the US has not been able to convince Iran that it remains committed.”
Iranians are also watching US public opinion polls. Given Biden’s low approval ratings and a midterm election in which Democrats are projected to lose the House, Iran is very concerned that a Republican Congress or president in 2024 will withdraw from the deal or reapply sanctions.
Amir-Abdollahian certainly seems to be expressing the position not just of the administration but of all they key decision-makers in the Islamic Republic. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has the final say on all foreign policy decisions. While previously there was more room for dissent on debating the merits of a deal with the United States, there seems to be more conformity within the Iranian establishment. Members of the Hassan Rouhani administration, which worked on the original 2015 deal, have all been sidelined and have abstained from expressing opinions about the ongoing negotiations.

Evacuations as Russia advances in Ukraine's Donbas
Agence France Presse/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
The evacuation of civilians from Sloviansk continued Wednesday as Russian troops pressed towards the eastern Ukrainian city in their campaign to control the Donbas region, as Ireland's prime minister visited Kyiv. Sloviansk has been subjected to heavy bombardment in recent days as the invading Russian forces push westwards. "Twenty years of work; everything is lost. No more income, no more wealth," Yevgen Oleksandrovych, 66, told AFP as he surveyed the site of his auto parts shop, destroyed in Tuesday's strikes. AFP journalists saw rockets slam into Sloviansk's marketplace and surrounding streets, with firefighters scrambling to put out the resulting blazes. Around a third of the market in Sloviansk appeared to have been destroyed, with locals coming to see what was left among the charred wreckage. The remaining part of the market was functioning, with a trickle of shoppers coming out to buy fruit and vegetables. "I will sell it out and that's it, and we will stay home. We have basements, we will hide there. What we can do? We have nowhere to go, nobody needs us," said 72-year-old greengrocer Galyna Vasyliivna. Mayor Vadym Lyakh said that around 23,000 people were still in Sloviansk but claimed Russia had been unable to surround the city. "Since the beginning of hostilities, 17 residents of the community have died, 67 have been injured," he said. "Evacuation is ongoing. We take people out every day. About 23,000 residents remain. Many of the evacuees were taken by bus to the city of Dnipro, further west. "The city is well fortified. Russia does not manage to advance to the city," he said. Vitaliy, a plumber, said his wife and their daughter, who is six months pregnant, were evacuated from Sloviansk on Wednesday. "I am afraid for my wife," he told AFP. "Here, after what happened yesterday, they hit the city centre; need to leave."I sent my wife, and I have no more choice: tomorrow I will join the army."
- Russians push west -
The eastern Donbas is mainly comprised of Lugansk region, which Russian forces have almost entirely captured, and the Donetsk region to its southwest -- the current focus of Moscow's attack and the location of Sloviansk. The fall of Lysychansk in Lugansk on Sunday, a week after the Ukrainian army also retreated from the neighboring city of Severodonetsk, has freed up Russian troops to advance west on Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in Donetsk. On Tuesday, they were first closing in on the smaller city of Siversk -- which lies between Lysychansk and Sloviansk -- after days of shelling there. Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian forces killed five civilians and injured 21 in the region on Tuesday. Lugansk governor Sergiy Gayday claimed that Ukrainian forces were holding back Russian troops on the borders of Lugansk and Donetsk. "Yesterday Russians wanted to advance towards Donetsk Oblast and to cut the Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway going through Bilogorivka, but have nothing to report to their chiefs. The enemy had to retreat because of our army's pressure," he said. He insisted that Russia did not control the entire Lugansk region, saying they had not reached the administrative border. "Fighting still keeps going in two villages," he said.
Irish PM visits Kyiv
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in his evening address Tuesday, said he was continuing to press Western allies for upgraded anti-missile systems as air siren alerts sounded across much of the country, including the capital. Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin was in Kyiv on Wednesday to voice Dublin's solidarity and discuss how Ireland can support the country's needs. "The people of Ireland stand with Ukraine and its people in the face of Russia's immoral and unprovoked war of terror," he said. "The bombardment and attacks on civilians are nothing short of war crimes."Martin said Ireland supported Ukraine's push for membership of the European Union. The EU on Wednesday set out a harder focus on energy given Russia's war in Ukraine. "We need to prepare for further disruptions of gas supply, even a complete cut-off from Russia," European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament. The EU has launched a 300-billion-euro ($310-billion) plan to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel supplies, and is also investing heavily to transform the market towards renewable sources. Meanwhile former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev invoked the possibility of nuclear war if the International Criminal Court moves to punish Moscow for alleged crimes in Ukraine since the February 24 invasion. "The idea to punish a country that has the largest nuclear arsenal is absurd," Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said on messaging app Telegram."And potentially creates a threat to the existence of mankind."

US Targets Iranian Oil and Petrochemical Trade Network
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a network of people and entities it accused of helping to deliver and sell Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products to East Asia, applying pressure on Tehran as Washington seeks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The US Treasury Department in a statement said the network used a web of front companies based in the Gulf to facilitate the delivery and sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the products from Iranian companies to East Asia. In Doha last week, indirect talks between Tehran and Washington ended without a breakthrough over how to salvage Iran's 2015 JCPOA nuclear pact. "While the United States is committed to achieving an agreement with Iran that seeks a mutual return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we will continue to use all our authorities to enforce sanctions on the sale of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals," Brian Nelson, the Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in the statement. Among those designated in Wednesday's move was Iran-based Jam Petrochemical Company, which the Treasury accused of exporting petrochemical products worth hundreds of millions of dollars to companies throughout East Asia, many of which the Treasury said were sold to Iran Petrochemical Commercial Company for shipment to China.

Syrians Fear Effects of Russia Blocking Aid to Opposition Area
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Over the past two years, Adila Afesh has seen the food assistance her Syrian family receives shrink by nearly two-thirds. Now, she fears Russia - perhaps seeking to retaliate against Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine - will block the renewal of a UN Security Council resolution that allows aid to be delivered from Turkey to Syrians who, like her family, live in the opposition-run Idlib province. Such a move would mean Afesh and her seven children - along with 4 million others in Idlib - will have to survive on even less.
"If, God forbid, aid is stopped, it means that they have sentenced us to death. Death by hunger," she said on a recent day in the tent she lives in with her family, her cat deep asleep in her lap as her children played nearby.
The jobless woman says the family survives on two meals a day, mostly made up of rice or bulgur. Soon, she says, "we might have to fight in order to get a bite of food." Russia, a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, has long wanted to shut down the Turkey route, seeking to have aid delivered solely through government-controlled areas. Opposition activists and residents warn that is something the authorities in Damascus would exploit as a pressure tactic against Syria’s main opposition stronghold of Idlib.
In 2014, aid flowed into Syria from four border crossings. Since then, UN Security Council permanent member Russia forced the council to close three of the four crossings. It kept one in the north, the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, for aid to flow into the opposition stronghold destroyed by 11 years of war.
In early July 2020, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution that would have maintained two border crossing points from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to Idlib. Days later, the council authorized the delivery of aid through just one of those crossings, Bab al-Hawa. That one-year mandate was extended and expires this weekend. A vote to renew it is set for Thursday in New York. Aid agencies warn that if Russia vetoes the resolution, food would be depleted in Idlib and surrounding areas by September, putting the lives of some 4.1 million people, many of them displaced by the conflict and living in tent settlements, at risk. Afesh, 37, who was displaced from the northern city of Aleppo in 2016, said her main concern before moving to Idlib province used to be where to hide with her four sons and three daughters from government airstrikes. Since December 2016, the family that lost its main bread winner seven years ago has been living in relative calm close to the Turkish border. But soon they might not have food on the table.
Syria's economy is suffering its worst period since the crisis began in 2011. That's the result of an array of troubles, including crippling Western sanctions, widespread corruption, coronavirus, rising food prices because of the war in Ukraine and an economic meltdown in neighboring Lebanon - Damascus’ main gate to the outside world and home to 1 million Syrian refugees.
"The situation in Syria has always been highly politicized, but this year the stakes are clearly higher with everything that’s going on in Ukraine and the tensions between Russia and the United States and European countries," said Marc Cutts, the UN’s deputy regional humanitarian coordinator.
Cutts told The Associated Press that, "people will certainly die" if the Security Council resolution is not extended. He added there would be a massive crisis as hospitals go without the necessary medical supplies and people will not get the vaccinations they need. Cutts said delivering aid through Turkey is direct and sufficient. If aid has to come through government areas, it will have to pass through an active front line. "This is still a war zone," he said.
He said that over the past 12 months, five convoys have crossed from government-controlled areas while 800 trucks cross from Turkey every month. He said last year they were reaching 2.4 million people in northwest Syria and if there is funding, more should be reached.
Abdul-Razzaq Awad, a manager at Syria Relief, a local aid group, warned that aid agencies now are offering 50% of what they used to give due to the war in Ukraine. He said that if Bab al-Hawa is closed and aid has to come from government-controlled areas, he expects it to drop to about 20% of what used to be delivered before the Ukraine war. In late June, 29 aid agencies came together to share one message, which is that a humanitarian "catastrophe will happen" should the UN Security Council fail to allow lifesaving aid and services to be delivered across the border.
At stake is access to food, vaccinations against COVID-19, critical medical supplies and essential services including health care, access to clean water and education for millions of Syrians. "Removing this channel of assistance will have devastating humanitarian impacts on civilians and that there is no viable alternative," said the agencies, including International Rescue Committee, CARE International, World Vision International, Save the Children, Norwegian Refugee Council and Mercy Corps. "Now it is the time for the UN Security Council to correct course and show it can put people’s lives above politics," said David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee. Russia has argued that aid delivery should be handled by the government, claiming that militant groups are handling the deliveries in the current setup.
In May, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told the Security Council that "we are not okay" with preserving the status quo at any cost. The most powerful group in Idlib, al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, threatens humanitarian assistance, Polyansky noted. Cutts, the UN official, said the world should do something for residents of northwest Syria. "This is actually one of the most vulnerable civilian populations anywhere in the world," he said.

Russia Bans Activities of Jewish Agency
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 6 July, 2022
Russia has ordered the agency in charge of organizing the emigration of Jews to Israel to halt activities immediately. The directive was issued by Russia’s Justice Ministry and could impact thousands of Russian Jews who want to repatriate to Israel. This decision is the first of its kind since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The Jewish Agency in Russia confirmed that it received a letter from the Russian government earlier this week, but did not provide further details. “Contact with the Russian authorities takes place continuously, with the aim of continuing our activities in accordance with the rules set by relevant bodies,” the agency said. The incident comes amid growing tension between Moscow and Jerusalem over Israel’s support of Kyiv in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Israeli officials in Tel Aviv expressed concern that Russia may have started punishing Israel for its stances in Ukraine and Syria. They fear this decision is a warning for a greater modification in its policy towards Israel. Israel’s Aliyah and Integration Minister Pnina Tamano Shata said she has “appealed to Prime Minister Yair Lapid to work with the Moscow administration to resolve the problem.”The Jewish agency is the Israeli government’s main arm in giving the Jews access to migrate to Israel, Shata stressed. She said Jews have the right to immigrate to Israel, and no action that prevents them from doing so is acceptable in any world country. Russia had previously taken a similar decision during the Soviet Union era before reconsidering it in 1989.
More than a million from the former Soviet Union have moved to Israel in the past two decades. This immigration was considered a turning point in Israeli history, which provided it with dozens academics specializing in the fields of medicine, culture, technology and science.

UK PM Johnson vows to plow on despite resignations
Agence France Presse/July 6, 2022
Boris Johnson on Wednesday refused to quit as British prime minister, despite a slew of resignations from his scandal-hit government, piling on pressure as he faced a grilling from angry MPs. The 58-year-old leader promised to "deliver" on his "mandate" but his grip on power appears to be slipping following 10 short minutes on Tuesday night, when Rishi Sunak resigned as finance minister and Sajid Javid quit as health secretary. Both said they could no longer tolerate the culture of scandal that has stalked Johnson for months, including lockdown lawbreaking in Downing Street that enraged the public who followed the rules. At the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions in parliament, MPs from all sides rounded on Johnson. But brushing off calls to resign, he told MPs: "Frankly, the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances when you have been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that's what I'm going to do."Johnson has suffered an exodus of ministers in just 24 hours and later faced an hours-long grilling from the chairs of the House of Commons' most powerful committees, including some of his most virulent critics in the Tory ranks. Sunak and Javid's departures came just minutes after Johnson apologized for appointing a senior Conservative, who quit his post last week after he was accused of drunkenly groping two men. Former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi was immediately handed the finance brief. "You don't go into this job to have an easy life," Zahawi told Sky News.
Challenge -
Days of shifting explanations had followed the resignation of deputy chief whip Chris Pincher. Downing Street at first denied Johnson knew of prior allegations against Pincher when appointing him in February. But by Tuesday, that defense had collapsed after a former top civil servant said Johnson, as foreign minister, was told in 2019 about another incident involving his ally. Minister for children and families Will Quince quit early Wednesday, saying he was given the inaccurate information before having to defend the government in a round of media interviews on Monday. That triggered a new wave of more than a dozen resignations, and the withdrawal of support from previously loyal MPs.  The Pincher affair was the "icing on the cake" for Sunak and Javid, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, a strident Johnson critic, told Sky News. "I and a lot of the party now are determined that he will be gone by the summer recess (starting on July 22): the sooner the better." The resignations dominated the British media, with even some of Johnson's staunchest newspaper backers doubting whether he could survive the fall-out. Other senior cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, still back Johnson but many were wondering how long that may last. Johnson only narrowly survived a no-confidence vote among Conservative MPs a month ago, which ordinarily would mean he could not be challenged again for another year. But the influential "1922 Committee" of non-ministerial Tory MPs is reportedly seeking to change the rules.
'Local difficulties' -
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a doggedly loyal cabinet ally and Johnson's "minister for Brexit opportunities" dismissed the resignations as "little local difficulties". "Losing chancellors is something that happens," he said on Sky News, pointing to past Tory leaders -- although Margaret Thatcher was ultimately felled by a cabinet revolt by top allies. Sunak's departure in particular, in the middle of policy differences over a cost-of-living crisis sweeping Britain, is dismal news for Johnson. Johnson, who received a police fine for the so-called "Partygate" affair, faces a parliamentary probe into whether he lied to MPs about the revelations.
Pincher's departure from the whips' office -- charged with enforcing party discipline and standards -- marked yet another allegation of sexual misconduct by Tories in recent months, recalling the "sleaze" that dogged John Major's government in the 1990s. Conservative MP Neil Parish resigned in April after he was caught watching pornography on his mobile phone in the House of Commons. That prompted a by-election in his previously safe seat, which the party went on to lose in a historic victory for the opposition Liberal Democrats.Labour, the main opposition party, defeated the Conservatives in another by-election in northern England on the same day, prompted by the conviction of its Tory MP for sexual assault.

Canada/Conservative party disqualifies candidate Patrick Brown from leadership race
The Canadian Press/July 06/ 2022
OTTAWA — Patrick Brown has been disqualified from the race to replace Erin O'Toole as leader of the federal Conservatives, the leadership election organizing committee announced late Tuesday.
Ian Brodie, the chair of the committee, announced the stunning move in a written statement that said the party had in recent weeks become aware of "serious allegations of wrongdoing" by the Brown campaign.
The allegations are related to the financing rules in the Canada Elections Act, Brodie said, but provided no further details.
The Brown campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Tuesday night. The most recent tweet from Brown, who is mayor of Brampton, Ont., was about campaign events in New Brunswick.
In his statement, Brodie said the chief returning officer for the party informed Brown of the concerns, requested a written response and decided to withhold the interim membership list from his campaign.
Brodie said the response from Brown's campaign did not satisfy the concerns and the chief returning officer recommended the leadership election organizing committee disqualify him, which it opted to do.
Brodie said the party will be sharing what it has with Elections Canada.
He said both he and the party's chief returning officer did their best to be fair to Brown, who is a former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, and provide time to refute the allegations. "None of these problems has any impact on the integrity of the vote itself," Brodie said. "While we felt it important to provide a transparent response to party members about this matter, because this issue is now subject to further investigation, we will not be speaking further on the subject."
The Conservatives will announce the winner of the leadership race in Ottawa on Sept. 10. The other five candidates in the race are Pierre Poilievre, Leslyn Lewis and Scott Aitchison, who are all Conservative MPs from Ontario, as well as former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Roman Baber, a former Independent member of the Ontario legislature.

Turkey should face international court over Yazidi genocide, UK report says
Arab News/July 06, 2022
LONDON: British human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy has said that Turkey should face charges before the International Court of Justice for being complicit in acts of genocide against the Yazidi people.
Kennedy also endorsed an investigation against Syria and Iraq for failing to prevent the killings. The groundbreaking report, compiled by a group of prominent human rights lawyers, seeks to highlight states' binding responsibility to prevent genocide on their territories, even if perpetrated by a third party such as extremist organizations. The lawyers, known as the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC), asserted that states are held accountable under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide. Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the YJC, described the genocide of the Yazidi people as “madness heaped on evil”.
“Mechanisms in place could have saved the Yazidis from what is now part of their past, and part of their past partial destruction,” he said. From 2013, a genocide against the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq and Syria, has been attempted. Following a three-year investigation into the conduct of 13 countries, the 278-page report concluded that three of them failed in their duty to take reasonable steps to prevent genocide. Regarding Turkey, the YJC accused its leaders of being complicit in the massacres, claiming that the country failed to police its borders to prevent the free flow of extremist fighters, including a significant number of Turkish nationals. Turkish officials have dismissed the criticisms as unfounded. The YJC also claimed that from April 2014, Turkish officials turned a blind eye to the sale, transfer and enslavement of Yazidi women and children,and assisted in training fighters affiliated with extremist organizations to fight its Kurdish enemies in Syria, thus strengthening the perpetrators of the genocide. “Turkish officials knew and/or were willfully blind to evidence that these individuals would use this training to commit prohibited acts against the Yazidis,” the report said. Although the report acknowledged that Iraq had called on the UN to recognize the atrocities committed in 2014, it accused the Iraqi government of failing to coordinate with Kurdish authorities or take steps to evacuate the Yazidis to safety. According to the report, the Syrian government also failed to prevent the transfer and detention of enslaved Yazidis on its territory.
The Turkish ambassador to the UK, Ümit Yalçın, called the criticisms baseless and unfair. “Turkey starting from the early years of the conflict in Syria played a key role in the protection of Syrian civilians and minorities, including Yazidis, in the region against the attacks and violations of terrorist groups,” Yalçın said. He also added: “Turkey not only opened its doors and became a safe haven for millions of Syrians and Yazidis but also provided protection for the people of the region through three counter terrorism operations in Syria. Today Yazidis live peacefully in areas that are under the control of the legitimate Syrian opposition in north-western Syria. “Moreover, last year many Yazidi families that took refugee in north-western Syria tried to return to their homes in Syria’s north-east but [were] prevented from doing so by PKK/YPG [the initials of the Kurdish groups in Turkey and Syria].”“An ocean of impunity exists in relation to the Yazidi genocide”, Kennedy said, noting that extremist groups as a non-state actors cannot be prosecuted under international law. Kennedy added that meanwhile, states had “failed to in their duty to address their responsibilities to prevent the genocide for a variety of inhumane reasons”. She wrote that if they are not held accountable, “then the promise of ‘never again’ rings hollow”.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 06-07/2022
Under Biden, U.S. Pushed Further Back in Latin America
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute./July 6, 2022
China is now Latin America's largest trading partner (excluding Mexico).
China's relationships with Latin American countries however, are about far more than trade.
"It is not necessary to show malevolent PRC intentions with respect to its activities in Latin America and the Caribbean to conclude that the current and long-term implications of that engagement are grave for prosperity, democracy, and liberties in the region, as well as the security and strategic position of the United States." — Professor Evan Ellis, US Army War College, "Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission," May 20, 2021.
China also has another advantage: No regard for human rights or democracy. It is more than happy to invest in and trade with authoritarian dictatorships like itself.
"... U.S. influence has been diminishing in the continent." — Martha Bárcena, former Mexican ambassador to the United States, The New York Times, June 9, 2022.
The odds of Biden's new plan winning over Latin American countries -- where China has already massively invested in building roads, railways, harbors, bridges and a host of other infrastructure and communications projects, with no questions asked on the environment, climate or "inclusivity" -- are probably low. Even Biden administration officials do not seem to harbor any illusions about the new plan's ability to change facts on the ground....
"As long as China is ready to put its cash on the table, we seem to be fighting a losing battle." — U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, Reuters, June 8, 2022.
"Latin American governments complain that there's a lot of talk but ask 'where is the money'?" — Welber Barral, Brazil-based partner at BMJ Consultores Associados, Reuters, June 8, 2022.
"The U.S. is losing Latin America to China without putting up a fight, Ecuador's ambassador to Washington told Axios."
"And China is waiting, saying, 'We're here. We're giving you money.' They want control of course, but they don't say that." — Ivonne Baki, Ecuador's ambassador to the US, Axios, September 23, 2021.
China is now Latin America's largest trading partner (excluding Mexico). China's relationships with the countries in the region, however, are about far more than trade. China's influence in the region has deepened to the point where it has translated into significant leverage. (Image source: iStock)
China has overtaken the United States in trade terms "in large swathes of Latin America," according to a recent Reuters analysis of UN trade data from 2015-2021. Reuters added that "outside of Mexico, the top U.S. trade partner, China has overtaken the United States in Latin America and widened the gap last year."
Although US President Joe Biden pledged to give Latin America higher priority, "current and former officials told Reuters that the United States had been slow to take concrete action and that China, a major buyer of grains and metals, simply offered more to the region in terms of trade and investment."
Biden, while campaigning for the presidency in March 2020, in response to the question of whether China's growing influence in Latin America is a threat to U.S. national security, pledged to restore American leadership to the region, and said:
"It is the current absence of American leadership in the Western Hemisphere that is the primary threat to U.S. national security. Russia and China can't match our extraordinary ties and common history with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean."
China is now Latin America's largest trading partner (excluding Mexico). While in 2000, China's trade with Latin America amounted to just $12 billion, by 2019 the number had grown to $330 billion.
Trade between China and Latin America is expected to grow even more in the coming decade. "LAC [Latin America and the Caribbean] China trade is expected to more than double by 2035, to more than $700 billion," wrote Pepe Zhang, Associate Director at the Atlantic Council's Latin America Center, and Tatiana Lacerda Prazeres, former Foreign Trade Secretary of Brazil, in June 2021.
China's relationships with Latin American countries however, are about far more than trade. Chinese companies have been investing greatly in Latin America as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by the Chinese Communist Party in 2013 as a global infrastructure and economic development project that seeks to advance China's geopolitical ambitions. The BRI has deepened China's influence in the region to the point where it has translated into significant leverage. For instance, in the past four years, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama each switched their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. As with China's engagement in other places, especially through the BRI, China is looking to secure its boundless need for resources, markets and control.
Professor Evan Ellis of the US Army War College, in testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in May 2021, said:
"It is not necessary to show malevolent PRC intentions with respect to its activities in Latin America and the Caribbean to conclude that the current and long-term implications of that engagement are grave for prosperity, democracy, and liberties in the region, as well as the security and strategic position of the United States...
"... China's pursuits in Latin America and the Caribbean are remarkably consistent with what it seeks globally: secure sources of commodities and foodstuffs, reliable access to markets for its goods and services (particularly in strategic, high value-added sectors), strategic technologies and related capabilities."
Biden's pledge to counter China's consolidation of influence in Latin America and restore American leadership has so far amounted to little in practice. While 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed onto the Belt and Road Initiative, Biden's Build Back Better World, which was launched in June 2021 as a means to counter China, has not even taken off yet.
China is openly involved for the long haul, proposing long-term cooperation, while the US evidently is not. One of the reasons for this discrepancy is that 80% of China's investments in Latin America come from Chinese state-owned firms and other public ventures, including from those owned by Chinese municipalities, cities and provinces.
"China is proposing cooperation for 2035 and 2050," said Enrique Dussel Peters, a professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
"There is a very clear, long-term perspective. The U.S. used to be, a couple of decades ago, much more clear... China is very clearly working to integrate infrastructure, investments, trade, financing, et cetera. Their strategy is very clear, and not in the case of the United States."
China also has another advantage: No regard for human rights or democracy. It is more than happy to invest in and trade with authoritarian dictatorships like itself. The US, on the other hand, did not invite the undemocratic Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the Summit of the Americas that took place in Los Angeles in early June, which had apparently been intended to showcase Biden's ostensible prioritization of the region. Not inviting the three countries upset several other Latin American countries and caused the leaders of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Bolivia to boycott the summit, making it a public relations failure for the Biden administration.
"It shows the deep divisions in the continent," said Martha Bárcena, the former Mexican ambassador to the United States. The leaders who decided against attending, she continued, are "challenging U.S. influence, because U.S. influence has been diminishing in the continent."
"We definitely would have wished for a different Summit of the Americas," said Argentinian President Alberto Fernández about the US decision not to invite the three countries. "The silence of those who are absent is calling to us."
"The United States is playing catch-up," said Diego Abente Brun, director of the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program at George Washington University. He suggested that the Biden administration will need to "have a little bit more of a flexible approach" and consider whether geopolitical considerations should come before ideological ones when dealing with undemocratic regimes in Latin America.
At that Summit of the Americas, Biden announced the "Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity" a new U.S. economic partnership with Latin America to counter China's growing power in the region.
The plan aims to reinvigorate regional economic institutions and mobilize investment, "create resilient supply chains," and "broaden participation in the formal economy, including tax and anti-corruption measures, as well as cooperation and infrastructure investments in areas such as migration, education, health, unemployment and retirement, childcare, and women's economic empowerment."
The plan also aims to create "clean energy jobs" and work to "decarbonize" economies; enhance biodiversity and build resilience to climate impacts" and ensure "sustainable and inclusive trade."
The odds of Biden's new plan winning over Latin American countries -- where China has already massively invested in building roads, railways, harbors, bridges and a host of other infrastructure and communications projects, with no questions asked on the environment, climate or "inclusivity" -- are probably low. Even Biden administration officials do not seem to harbor any illusions about the new plan's ability to change facts on the ground. "As long as China is ready to put its cash on the table, we seem to be fighting a losing battle," one US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
This belief appears to be backed by Welber Barral, Brazil-based partner at BMJ Consultores Associados, who said that the US is too much talk and no money. "Latin American governments complain that there's a lot of talk but ask 'where is the money'?" he said.
Ecuador's ambassador to the US, Ivonne Baki, probably put it most succinctly. "The U.S. is losing Latin America to China without putting up a fight, Ecuador's ambassador to Washington told Axios," according to a September 2021 article featuring selections of an interview with Baki, in which she said:
"And China is waiting, saying, 'We're here. We're giving you money.' They want control of course, but they don't say that."
*Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2022 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Lapid’s greatest election challenge will be skyrocketing cost of living
Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/July 06/2022
The skyrocketing cost of living and record-breaking housing prices are dominating Israel’s public agenda to an unprecedented degree. These domestic issues have not been so prevalent since the mass 2011 social justice protests that drew hundreds of thousands of angry demonstrators and sidelined the country’s predominant security agenda, for a while. The spiraling cost of living is a legacy of the previous government, but under the current government, housing prices have ballooned to unprecedented levels. A steep 16% annual rise in the prices of new apartments has dashed the hopes of young Israelis to own their own home.Israelis love to carp about the cost of living, and rightfully so. The prices of basic consumer goods and food are among the highest in the world. Tel Aviv enjoys an unenviable ranking as one of the world’s most expensive cities. Nonetheless, these problems have never swung Israeli elections. Israelis moan all the way to the ballot box, but then they invariably vote for candidates who provide them with the greatest sense of security.
But history may not repeat itself on Nov. 1, when Israelis go to the polls yet again, judging by initial signs. Will Israel finally become like other countries where voters pick their leaders according to domestic issues?
Recent polls indicate that the cost of living dominates voters’ concerns. In a poll conducted this week on behalf of the Kan public broadcaster, for example, 44% of respondents said the issue would affect their vote, whereas only 14% said security issues would determine their choice — even lower than public corruption, which was a leading concern of 15%.
These findings are particularly significant given the recent wave of terrorist attacks in Israeli urban centers in which 19 people were killed and nearly 70 wounded. A series of counterterrorism operations by Israel’s military, police and Shin Bet security agency appears to have restored calm, but the frightening reverberations still echo in the public mind. The almost back-to-back attacks from March to May undermined the fragile government and contributed to its downfall. Has this agenda issue also been sidelined now, and if so, which candidate will be best served by voters’ predominantly economic focus?
Former Prime Minister and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, with his keen political senses, was the first to identify this shift in public sentiment. He has already campaigned at two supermarkets and malls. Posing for photos with basic foodstuffs such as milk, he lamented their price and pledged that once elected, his government would slash voters’ grocery bills. He was clearly counting on voters’ forgetting the constantly rising cost of living during his own 12 years in power.
Netanyahu is also leveraging the steep cost increases of recent months stemming from the war in Ukraine and the ongoing repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Netanyahu, as always, has transformed himself into the man of the hour, from “Mr. Security” to “Mr. Economy.” Will the public buy it?
Netanyahu’s corruption trial could also return to the headlines with the start of dramatic testimony by a key state witness, Hadas Klein, the business manager of American-Israeli tycoon Arnon Milchan. Klein has given detailed testimony of the expensive gifts she helped procure for the Netanyahu family on Milchan’s behalf, including cases of pink champagne, Cuban cigars and jewelry to the tune of nearly NIS1 million ($300,000).
Her testimony in court, starting July 5, is expected to be particularly embarrassing and could damage Netanyahu’s campaign if it dominates the agenda. However, much of her testimony and other aspects of the case are already well known, and most analysts believe Netanyahu’s fans are unaffected by his indictment.
A relatively secure four months could serveYair Lapid, as of last week Israel’s caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed after the elections. But renewed terrorism or cross-border attacks from Gaza or Lebanon could sink his prospects at the last minute.
Domestic issues have risen to the top of the public agenda as a result of the successful operations that plugged up the holes through which terrorists were able to infiltrate Israeli towns and carry out their killing sprees. Lapid will need a generous helping of luck on this front. Palestinian terrorism has scuttled the political careers of many candidates identified with the center-left, even those with impressive security resumes, such as former Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Lapid is therefore determined to add former army chief Gadi Eizenkot to his ticket, but these attempts have proven unsuccessful so far.
Clearly, Lapid faces what are likely to be the toughest four months of his life. Netanyahu’s propaganda operations, which former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett dubbed his “poison machine”, will undoubtedly launch a no-holds-barred attack on him. Netanyahu is an unchallenged master of these techniques, certainly in Israel and possibly worldwide. Lapid has the advantage of an effective, disciplined party, Yesh Atid, which he formed a decade ago. He is charismatic and as accomplished at flirting with cameras as Netanyahu is.
But the upcoming elections are different in one important aspect — for the first time since 2009, Netanyahu is not running as an incumbent. His control of the agenda is limited. His aura has been tarnished. The helm is now in the hands of a rival skilled at manipulating the media, shaping the public agenda and creating news. For Netanyahu, who has branded himself as the perennial underdog fighting alone against dark forces, this is a nightmare. Suddenly, he really is an underdog.

Europeans Switch to Malley’s Old Positions on Iran
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/July 06/2022
Since Joe Biden assumed the US presidency, his administration has been rushing to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran. This resulted in internal and foreign criticism being leveled against US Special Representative for Iran Robert Malley for his desire to strike an agreement with Iran at any cost.
Today, there is a discrepancy in the rhetoric about the nuclear agreement. The difference becomes specifically apparent between Malley and the French, who represent the European drive to conclude an agreement with Tehran in a hasty manner as well. This resulted in the failure of the Doha talks.
During a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “We must defend this agreement (Iran nuclear deal) and take into account the interests of our friends in the region, foremost among them is Israel.”
In an interview to the Washington-based National Public Radio (NPR), Malley said : “They (Iranians) have and, including in Doha, added demands that I think anyone looking at this would be viewed as having nothing to do with the nuclear deal, things that they've wanted in the past.”
“The discussion that really needs to take place right now is not so much between us and Iran, although we're prepared to have that; it's between Iran and itself, that they need to come to a conclusion about whether they are now prepared to come back into compliance with the deal,” he added.
Of course, Malley’s originally biased position cannot be completely relied upon to hasten the nuclear agreement with Iran, even if he admitted in his interview on Tuesday that Tehran is very close to possessing enough fissile material to manufacture a nuclear bomb. However, here we are faced with an important paradox. Europeans, especially the French, have now adopted Malley’s previously lenient position that focused on achieving a nuclear deal with Iran at any cost and without any regard for regional worries.
Meanwhile, Malley has become more vigilant when talking about the nuclear file in Washington. His caution has a clear reason. It stems from difficulties the US administration is facing with internal issues. Moreover, Malley is factoring in midterm elections and President Biden's inability to make concessions to Iran now.Europeans, led by France, can’t represent any weight in reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, as Europe combined can’t pledge to the commitment of any new US administration to any agreement with Tehran.
Also, the Europeans combined can’t convince Washington to lift sanctions on Iran.
Therefore, this European role, under French leadership, will only complicate matters and help Iran manipulate the nuclear file.
This could lead to Iran declaring its possession of a nuclear bomb. Not only will its possession of nuclear arms surprise the world, but it will also launch a catastrophic arms race in the region. If manifested, the French role would shake the region once again. The first tremor had struck the region when Ayatollah Khomeini disembarked from the French plane in Iran. The second wave would hit after Tehran announces its possession of a nuclear bomb.
The European position, and the French rhetoric, does not lead to solutions, as much as it encourages Iran to go beyond the pale and continue its aggression, which brings the region closer to an open war.

Maybe AI Isn’t as Scary as We Thought
Tyler Cowen/Bloomberg/July 06/2022
One of the longstanding worries about the technologies of artificial intelligence is that they will enable surveillance, autocracy and maybe even totalitarianism. These views no longer seem so convincing. The world’s autocratic states are not exactly turning these technologies to their advantage, and meanwhile artificial intelligence is taking some individualistic turns.
Consider the program called DALL-E, which allows the user to generate digital sketches and images, derived from natural language instructions, using the power of artificial intelligence. The quality and diversity of the images is truly impressive. It is like having a world-class team of illustrators at your disposal.
DALL-E (the name is a portmanteau of the painter Salvador Dali and the movie WALL-E) remains the property of OpenAI, but its use is spreading and of course the basic technology will be copied and adapted. There is now an open source version of DALL-E.
First and foremost, DALL-E is a tool for boosting individual creativity, not autocracy. People and small enterprises will have many more ways to make images and tell stories. This kind of AI will boost decentralization, not control.
GPT-3 and its pending offshoots, which allows people to use AI to generate remarkably realistic-sounding texts, seem to be pushing in similar directions. This will likely shift the balance of power further toward individuals and smaller enterprises. Autocracies already could hire all the copy writers and editors they need. One of the fears with GPT-3 is that students will use it to generate realistic-sounding term papers. That may well be a problem (could the oral exam make a comeback?). But it also shows how the technology can encourage decentralized idea production and the subversion of authority. It is the opposite of centralized control of everything.
Perhaps the biggest political fear is that AI supports vast amounts of surveillance. Governments use facial and gait surveillance to trace people’s movements in public, for example. That is a valid concern, but it is not clear that AI has given today’s major autocratic governments such a big boost.
Russia, for one, was supposed to be such an impressive cyberpower, able to cripple entire societies with its cyberattacks. Maybe Russia has yet to show what it is capable of, but as the Ukraine war proceeds its cybercapabilities seem less scary. (Cyber is not synonymous with AI, but both are advanced and interrelated technologies that Russia seems to be failing at.)
Russia has proved it can use a lot of heavy artillery in a very destructive fashion. It has not shown it can mobilize AI technologies to deploy very effective forms of targeted warfare. It seems once again that brute force, not advanced technology, is the friend of autocracy.
The No. 1 autocratic AI power, of course, is China, but here too the course of events is uncertain. The Chinese government uses an impressive array of AI technologies to monitor its population, but to what end have the Chinese turned these technologies?
China has been doubling down on its Covid Zero policy, at great expense to the Chinese economy. These policies are possible only because the Chinese state had such advanced tracking and monitoring capabilities in the first place. At first those technologies were used to limit the spread of Covid, often quite effectively. But the current Covid strains are harder to control and it is difficult to see exactly what the Chinese endgame looks like. China has taken an AI asset and turned it into an AI liability. That flip should not come as a surprise, considering the benefits and costs of autocracies. Autocracy typically is a “high variance” form of government: It can have major successes, such as the building of Chinese infrastructure, but the relative absence of checks and balances means that major failures are also likely, in this case the persistence of Covid Zero policy.
In essence, the advent of advanced AI raises the stakes. But if autocracy is a high-variance form of government, raising the stakes is risky.
The ultimate political implications of AI are by no means clear, and the technology is likely to see many further major advances. But for now, the worry that AI will deliver the world to totalitarianism seems overstated. Half of AI is “intelligence” — and that is usually a virtue, for liberty as well as other things.

Netanyahu ‘Doomsday’ coalition looms over Israeli elections
Ben Lynfield/The Arab Weekly/July 06/2022
Wedged between militarism and an expansionist religious nationalism, Israel, in the view of its dwindling peace camp, has clearly failed to become the just society envisioned by some of its founding fathers, albeit at the expense of the Palestinians.
But in the current era in which extremism is increasingly entering the mainstream, especially dark days loom for Israel and by extension its Arab neighbours.
With last week’s dissolution of parliament, the Knesset, Israel edges towards elections on November 1. It faces the dire possibility of divisive, hard-right Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu returning as prime minister at the head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history. During his protracted political career, Netanyahu has not hesitated to incite against Israel’s Arab citizens and to delegitimise Jewish advocates of compromise with the Palestinians.
Setting an alarming tone in advance of Likud’s election campaign, one of Netanyahu’s close associates last month warned Arab students to stop raising Palestinian flags, stressing this would lead to “another Nakba.” The comments made by Yisrael Katz in the Knesset referred to mass expulsions of Palestinians at Israel’s creation, when more than 700,000 people became refugees.
But it is not just Likud that is threatening to further radicalise a society that has never recovered its balance since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist in 1995.
Netanyahu would bring with him incendiary anti-Arab extremists into the corridors of power as coalition partners. This would replace the hodgepodge right-centre-left coalition that over the last year intensified the occupation in the West Bank even as, with the inclusion of an Arab party in the government, it introduced a somewhat calmer tone into domestic discourse.
The Netanyahu doomsday development could still be averted by a victory for the caretaker prime minister, Yair Lapid, a centrist with relatively moderate pronouncements who in theory supports the emergence of a Palestinian state and as foreign minister sought to deepen ties with Arab countries.
One of the extremists who could play the role of kingmaker for Netanyahu is Itamar Ben-Gvir, a legislator who proposes building a synagogue in the esplanade housing Islam’s third holiest shrine, Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The area is also revered by Jews as the site of the biblical temples.
Over the last year, his provocative acts in Jerusalem included supporting the expulsions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and promoting Jewish prayer in the mosque compound. This has kindled tensions regionally, especially in Jordan. Ben Gvir describes the Jordanian-appointed officials who oversee the mosque as “terrorists.”
After the election, there is no reason Ben Gvir should not become a minister since he shares core Likud principles, key Netanyahu ally Miki Zohar said last week.
Then there is Bezalel Smotrich, who has a history of statements implying a desire to carry out genocide against Arabs. In 2017, he unveiled a plan that said if Arabs do not leave the occupied territories or accept second class status “the Israel Defence Forces will know what to do.”
American-Israeli political scientist and pollster Dahlia Scheindlin says Smotrich’s statements must not be overlooked. “Israel won’t do this. But it places a burden on relations with the Arab world and Arab citizens. Such a government wouldn’t hold back on spouting hateful things against the Palestinians every day and saying Arabs are all terrorists.”
On a regional level, such a poisonous atmosphere “would mean a souring, not breaking, of ties with the UAE, not a backing off from the Abraham Accords but a cold peace. Saudi Arabia would be less likely to normalise relations,” Scheindlin says. Netanyahu is seen as particularly dangerous since he is liable to indulge in any policy, no matter how immoral or damaging, in order to stay in power and avoid being jailed for alleged corruption scandals.
Daniel Seidemann, director of the NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem, which supports the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, has a bleak vision that a Netanyahu-led government could engage in large-scale displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. This, he believes, would go well beyond the current alarming actions by the military to coerce 1,200 Palestinian men, women and children in the Masafer Yatta region to leave their villages to enable intensified use of a military firing zone.
Although it is too early to predict what will happen, a Netanyahu triumph is a distinct possibility. A recent poll by the Maariv newspaper indicated that if Ayelet Shaked, the hard-right former interior minister, threw her weight behind Netanyahu, he would return to power.
Thabet Abu Rass, co-executive director of the Abraham Initiatives NGO that promotes coexistence, views that as a disaster in the making.
He recalled that during the late 1970s, then Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin treated the unabashedly racist lawmaker Meir Kahane as a pariah. Begin led a walkout of the Knesset chamber whenever Kahane, who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel, rose to the podium. “Now the children of Kahane will be in the coalition. This is very dangerous for Israeli society,” Abu Rass said.