English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For February 14/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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Bible Quotations For today
Everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God
Saint Luke 12/08-12/:”‘And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 13-14/2023
The 18th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri
Ambassadors of states who took part in Paris meeting from the Grand Serail: Failure to elect a president will entail the reconsideration of all ties...
Berri chairs Parliament Bureau meeting
Berri meets US, French, Egyptian, Qatari Ambassadors, Saudi Embassy Representative
Mikati visits Martyr Rafic Hariri’s tomb in Central Beirut
Reports: Paris meeting nations fail to agree on statement, candidate
Envoys of Paris meeting nations meet with Berri, Mikati
Free Patriotic Movement to boycott legislative session
Hezbollah sends aid to Syria's quake-hit Latakia
Mikati broaches media, political affairs with Makary, meets “Democratic Gathering” bloc delegation, MP Abdel Massih, congratulates new...
Saad Hariri visited Darian and was assured of his health
The head of the Phalange Party visited Hariri at the Wasat House
President Aoun called Hariri again, condoling him on the martyrdom of his father, and wished him to return to Lebanon
Appointment of Lisa Johnson as the new US Ambassador to Lebanon
The 18th Anniversary of Lebanese Civil War: Updated 2005 Edition/Sam Menassa/Asharq Al Awsat/February 13/2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 13-14/2023
Objects shot down over North America 'all connected'
White House defends decision to shoot down flying objects
UN aid chief: Quake rescue phase ‘coming to a close’
Death toll rises above 35,000 in Turkey, Syria quake
Syria's Mikdad, Pederson discuss boosting role of the UN in responding to effects of the earthquake
US says not flying any balloons over China
Germany says Finland, Sweden NATO bids must be ratified without delay
'Our Losses Were Gigantic': Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave
'Little by little they are winning': Russian offensive underway as tide turns in key Ukraine city. Updates.
White House mocks Putin's mismanagement of the war in Ukraine, saying he changes generals like 'socks'
Iran’s Raisi to Visit Beijing to Revive ‘Partnership’ with China
US-GCC meetings in Riyadh seek to counter Iranian threats
Thousands march in Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu’s allies push overhaul
Missiles linked to Iran by failure to erase data from drone, MoD officials say

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 13-14/2023
Captagon: Assad’s Deadly Drug Of Choice Expands To Israel/Natalie Ecanow/1945 web site/February 13/2023
Is the two-state solution for Israel, Palestine dead? Maybe. But what's the alternative?/Tracy Wilkinson/LA Times/February 13/2023
Europe's Proxy War against Israel....How The EU Ignores Hamas' Crimes/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/February 13, 2023
Apocalyptic quake exploited for cheap propaganda/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 13, 2023
Macron seeks allies from among those who would replace him/Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/February 13, 2023
More weapons, less refugees: Is Israel a neutral party in the Russia-Ukraine war?/Ramzy Baroud/Arab News/February 13, 2023
War Propaganda And Ideology At The Edge Of Oblivion/Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez*/ MEMRI Daily Brief No. 455/February 13, 2023|

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on February 13-14/2023
The 18th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri
LCCC/February 14/2023
Today, Lebanon remembers the eighteenth year of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Saad Hariri, the son of the martyr, returned to Lebanon to participate in the commemoration of the painful memory. Our prayers go for the souls of Lebanon's martyrs.


Ambassadors of states who took part in Paris meeting from the Grand Serail: Failure to elect a president will entail the reconsideration of all ties...
NNA /February 13/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati received, at the Grand Serail on Monday, with the representatives of the five states who took part in the Paris meeting on Lebanon, namely French Ambassador Anne Grillo, US Ambassador Dorothy Shea, Egyptian Ambassador Yasser Alawi, Qatari Ambassador Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Sahlawi, and the Counselor at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, Fares Al-Amoudi. The ambassadors stressed that no final statement was issued following the Paris talks since the meetings are still "open and ongoing in order to support Lebanon and encourage the election of a new president of the republic.""The real support for Lebanon will begin after the election of the new president, and then the enaction of the required reforms," they said. They also warned that the failure to elect a president will entail the reconsideration of all ties with Lebanon. "If the MPs do not assume their duties, the foreign states will not be keener than the Lebanese officials themselves," they underlined.

Berri chairs Parliament Bureau meeting

NNA /February 13/2023
House Speaker Nabih Berri on Monday chaired a meeting for the Parliament Bureau, attended by MPs Alain Aoun, Hadi Aboul Hosn, Hagop Pakradounian, Abdel Karim Tabbara and Michel Moussa, as well as the Parliament Secretary General Adnan Daher.
The Bureau decided to resume discussions in a meeting to be held at 2:00 pm on Monday, February 20.

Berri meets US, French, Egyptian, Qatari Ambassadors, Saudi Embassy Representative
NNA /February 13/2023
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Monday met at the Second Presidency in Ain El-Tineh, with US Ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, French Ambassador, Anne Grillo, Egyptian Ambassador, Dr. Yasser Alawi, Qatari Ambassador Ibrahim Abdulaziz Al-Sahlawi, and the Counselor at the Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Lebanon, Fares Al-Amoudi

Mikati visits Martyr Rafic Hariri’s tomb in Central Beirut
NNA /February 13/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, on Monday visited the tomb of Martyr Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in downtown Beirut, marking the anniversary of his assassination. Premier Mikati read the "Fatihah" for the souls of the late Prime Minister Hariri and his companions to rest in peace

Reports: Paris meeting nations fail to agree on statement, candidate
Naharnet /February 13/2023
The latest Paris meeting on Lebanon witnessed “general discussions and no presidential candidate was endorsed, knowing that the deliberations involved names of candidates,” a media report said on Monday. “As France said that it was not opposed to any candidate on whom there might be consensus, be him Suleiman Franjieh or Joseph Aoun, while being in favor of keeping Najib Mikati at the head of the coming government, the Saudi side expressed clear opposition to Franjieh and Mikati, stressing that the government and the presidency are linked,” al-Akhbar newspaper said. The Saudi delegation meanwhile called for “electing a sovereign, incorrupt president for Lebanon who would restore Lebanon’s ties with the Arab and Western countries,” the daily added. The Saudis also demanded “imposing sanctions on those obstructing the presidential election, but this demand did not receive consensus,” the newspaper said. Informed diplomatic sources meanwhile told al-Joumhouria newspaper that “no closing statement was issued after the five-party meeting after French diplomacy failed to win the support of the other four parties for a draft statement that it had proposed and distributed to them.”

Envoys of Paris meeting nations meet with Berri, Mikati
Naharnet /February 13/2023
Envoys from five countries that took part in the latest Paris meeting on Lebanon – U.S., France, Egypt, Qatar and KSA – met Monday in Beirut with Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker PM Najib Mikati. The foreign delegation was comprised of U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea, French Ambassador to Lebanon Anne Grillo, Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Yasser Elwy, Qatari Ambassador to Lebanon Ibrahim Abdul Aziz al-Sahlawi and Saudi Embassy Counselor Fares al-Amoudi. Ain el-Tineh sources meanwhile told al-Jadeed TV that the ambassadors put Berri in the picture of the Paris meeting and did not tackle names of presidential candidates. “They rather urged the election of a president, the formation of a government and cooperation with the International Monetary Fund,” the sources added.

Free Patriotic Movement to boycott legislative session
Naharnet /February 13/2023
MP Alain Aoun of the Free Patriotic Movement will inform the Parliament Bureau on Monday that the Strong Lebanon bloc will not take part in an upcoming legislative session, MTV reported. The Bureau is scheduled to meet later on Monday to discuss possible consensus on the legislative session’s agenda, which includes 81 articles, most notably the capital control law and the extension of the terms of directors general and security chiefs, topped by General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who reaches the age of retirement next month. FPM chief Jebran Bassil meanwhile told al-Akhbar newspaper that the Strong Lebanon bloc “certainly will not take part” in the session, noting that “what applies to the caretaker cabinet amid the presidential void also applies to parliament, which is considered an electoral body except for emergency and utmost necessity situations.”The FPM’s boycott and the Lebanese Forces’ rejection mean that the session will not be attended by the country’s biggest two Christian blocs, which might push Speaker Nabih Berri to refrain from calling for the session. Forty-six MPs – the LF bloc, the Kataeb bloc, the Change bloc and independents – had on Saturday declared their boycott of the session, vowing to file appeals against its resolutions. Al-Akhbar meanwhile reported that a meeting will be held Tuesday at MP Nabil Bader’s residence and will be attended by the MPs Bilal Hshaimi, Mohammed Suleiman, Imad al-Hout, Abdul Aziz al-Samad, Ahmed al-Kheir and Walid al-Baarini. The conferees will mull their participation in the session. The Tashnag Party will also hold a meeting to discuss its possible participation. Political sources meanwhile told al-Akhbar that “contacts are ongoing to introduce agenda amendments that would meet the conditions that the blocs are putting, especially the FPM, in a bid to convince them to participate.”

Hezbollah sends aid to Syria's quake-hit Latakia
Agence France Presse /February 13/2023
Hezbollah has sent a convoy of 23 trucks carrying food and medical aid to Syria's quake-stricken province of Latakia, a stronghold of the group's allies. "This the moment of support, the moment of assistance," senior Hezbollah official Sayyed Hashem Safieddine told reporters in Beirut. It comes six days after a devastating earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 33,000 people in total, including over 3,500 in Syria. Latakia, located in Syria's northwestern region, is a stronghold for President Bashar al-Assad. The Iran-backed Hezbollah is a key ally of Assad's regime and has openly been fighting alongside his forces since April 2013. Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian conflict has helped tip the scales in favor of Assad on many fronts. Adnan Moqadem, general director of civil defense in Hezbollah's health authority, said this first convoy "will be followed by others."The convoy, carrying "food, health and household supplies," will be delivered to the Red Crescent and Syrian officials, Moqadem said. The trucks carried banners marked with both the Syrian flag and of Hezbollah. Lebanon has adopted a policy of dissociation from Syria's years-long war but on Wednesday, it sent its first high-level official delegation and rescue team to Damascus since the start of the conflict.The delegation met with Assad and expressed readiness to open Lebanon's air and sea ports to help send aid to Syria. On Saturday, two Italian planes arrived at Beirut airport, carrying medical aid to be sent to Syria.

Mikati broaches media, political affairs with Makary, meets “Democratic Gathering” bloc delegation, MP Abdel Massih, congratulates new...
NNA /February 13/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, on Monday with Caretaker Minister of Information, Ziad Makary, with whom he broached an array of national, political and media affairs. Caretaker Minister Makary indicated that he briefed Premier Mikati on the atmosphere of his impending visit to Paris to meet with officials of the Ministry of Culture, UNESCO and prestigious French media institutions in order to support Television of Lebanon (TL). Premier Mikati also received Head of the “Democratic Gathering” parliamentary bloc, MP Taymour Jumblatt, accompanied by the Bloc MPs Wael Abu Faour and Akram Chehayeb. On emerging, MP Jumblatt said that they thanked Premier Mikati for the efforts made to secure the return of students to schools, and to give teachers their rights in the educational domain. In response to a question, MP Jumblatt said that they conducted a tour d’horizon bearing on all political issues, hoping that there will be a dialogue to reach a consensus president as soon as possible. In response to another question whether the Democratic Gathering will attend the legislative session, MP Jumbaltt said: “If a legislative session is called for, and there are topics that serve the people in their issues and concerns, we will not fail to carry out our duty, but we will have our opinion within the sessions.” Mikati later met with MP Adib Abdel Massih, who said after the meeting that they discussed an array of general national affairs, especially those related to the Koura district and its needs.On the other hand, the Prime Minister contacted by phone the new Cypriot President, Nikos Christodoulides, and congratulated him on his election as Cyprus’s President and wished him success in his duties.

Saad Hariri visited Darian and was assured of his health
NNA-LCCC/February 13/2023
This evening, Prime Minister Saad Hariri visited the Grand Mufti of the Lebanese Republic, Sheikh Abd al-Latif Darian, and was assured of his health.

The head of the Phalange Party visited Hariri at the Wasat House
NNA-LCCC/February 13/2023
The head of the Lebanese Kataeb Party, Representative Sami Gemayel, visited Al-Wasat House, where he met Prime Minister Saad Hariri. A statement by the brigades stated that "during the meeting, developments were discussed."

President Aoun called Hariri again, condoling him on the martyrdom of his father, and wished him to return to Lebanon
NNA-LCCC/February 13/2023
The media office of President General Michel Aoun announced that Aoun "conferred this evening with President Saad Hariri, renewing his condolences for the martyrdom of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and his companions. President Aoun wished Hariri to return to Lebanon after a long absence, because the country needs all its people and energies today."More about this source textSource text required for additional translation information

Appointment of Lisa Johnson as the new US Ambassador to Lebanon
Al-Modon-LCCC/February 14, 2023
US President Joe Biden appointed Lisa Johnson as the new ambassador of the United States of America to Lebanon, to succeed the current ambassador Dorothy Shea, who was approved for transfer to the United Nations, to be the deputy head of the US mission in New York. This is considered an upgrade to chia. It is assumed that the US Congress will approve this decision to determine the date for Johnson's assumption of her new duties in Lebanon. It is noteworthy that Johnson holds the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Asia in the Office of Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement. Johnson has moved in key positions within her diplomatic work, as she was the ambassador of her country in Namibia, as well as her country's representative in the office of the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels. Within the United States, she has been appointed Director of the National Security Council for Middle Eastern Affairs since 2001, Director of the Political-Military Bureau of Israel in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, Observer in the Operations Center in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Deputy Commander of the US National War College and his advisor for international affairs, and Director The Africa and Middle East Bureau of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Johnson knows Lebanon well, as she served in her country's embassy in Beirut between 2002 and 2004. She also has her friendships and relations with various Lebanese levels. Johnson will serve as a chargé d'affaires until a president is elected to present her credentials to him.
Johnson was born in Washington in 1967. After obtaining a BA in Political Science from Stanford University, she majored in International Affairs at Columbia University, before completing her studies in National Security Strategy at the National War College. She entered the US diplomatic service in 1992, and holds the position of Senior Adviser to South and Central Asia in the Office of the US Vice President, Director of the National Security Council for Middle East Affairs since 2001, and Deputy Director of the Office of Canadian Affairs. She served in Lebanon between 2002 and 2004 when Vincent Battle was ambassador to his country. In Beirut, and witnessed the handover process between him and his successor, Jeffrey Feltman.

The 18th Anniversary of Lebanese Civil War: Updated 2005 Edition
Sam Menassa/Asharq Al Awsat/February 13/2023
The first edition of the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, after the Syrian army entered the Baabda Palace and ministry of defense, with General Michel Aoun, the country’s prime minister at the time, fleeing to the French Embassy.
February 14, the day Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated in 2005, marks the 18th anniversary of the outbreak of this war’s second edition.
We will not get into the debate about whether the first war (1975 - 1990) had been a civil war or, as some claim, a war waged on Lebanese territory by others. The real question is whether the first edition of the war actually ended in 1990 or became latent until Hariri’s convoy was blown up, in what was a political earthquake that changed the form and trajectory of its predecessor after the circumstances in Lebanon, the region and the world had changed.
We start with the repercussions of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq that “sparked” extremist Islamic groups into existence and almost handed the country over to Iran. Then came the Arab Spring and its last stage that was the 2011 revolution against the Bashar al-Assad regime and the ensuing Russian reentry into the region. We also have the outbreak of the conflict between Iran and the Gulf that broke out after the Velayet-e-Faqih’s sectarian expansion into the Levant. Lebanon was the focal point, and the assassination of a Lebanese and Arab Sunni figure of the stature of Hariri was only a sign of this project’s ultimate goals crystalizing. All of this culminated in the US retreating from the region, Europe meekly standing aside, the souring of US relations with its Arab allies, and a radical shift in the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Abraham Accords and normalization.
The new edition of the war rages on, and no solutions or potential settlements are on the horizon. Some may ask, why should we consider this phase an extension of the Lebanese war that broke out in 1975? This is a valid question. Indeed, the 1975 war witnessed armed clashes, conflict lines, kidnappings, foreigners being taken hostage, mass liquidations, car bombings, and assassinations that took the lives of two presidents, a prime minister, and several politicians and clerics, including the grand mufti.
This edition of the war also saw two Israeli invasions, one in 1978 and another in 1982, when the Jewish state’s forces entered the capital, Beirut. It saw several Arab and international peace initiatives, and military interventions by Arab and international forces, ending with the Taif Agreement and the entry of the Arab Deterrent Force, which was subsequently reduced to the Syrian army.
The new edition of the Lebanese war is more complex and difficult than the first for internal and external factors. The latter will be discussed on another occasion. First and foremost, among the internal factors is the introduction of armed Palestinian groups, which remained in the country until 1982, and the entry of the Assad regime’s army and intelligence services, which remained in the country for over 29 years (1976 - 2005).
Today, we have a totally different state of affairs on our hands. Iran’s hegemony is evident but difficult to approach and deal with because it is hidden under a Lebanese cloak.
When the Palestinians and Syrians were in the country, demanding that these foreigners leave was easy, legitimate and natural. In the end, this call received direct international support, especially from France and the US. This led to the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon, with its ally Iran taking direct control. Demanding that the foreign actor withdraw tomorrow is difficult. This fact may have never been more evident as emphatically as it was in Paris last week. The five participants could not agree on a statement. They thus left it to the Lebanese, calling on them to elect a president and implement reforms, making no reference to Hezbollah. They cannot deny that it is a Lebanese actor despite its total dependence on Iran.
The second factor is that the current war is of a political, not sectarian, nature. Despite the dominance of Hezbollah, which has military, financial and intelligence capabilities that have allowed this sectarian political force to exert unprecedented influence in the modern history of Lebanon. It was mindful of the importance of giving other sects a kind of safety and security, as well as allowing Beirut to remain a diverse space that maintains a minimal degree of its former luster.
Nonetheless, we should bear in mind that the capital has been subjected to profound cultural and social changes as a result of Iran’s role and its influence on the Shiite community, which it exerts through Hezbollah, and its implication for every segment of Lebanese society. Indeed, Hezbollah has appealed to a segment of Christians through a delusional project, the alliance of minorities, under the pretext of protecting them and safeguarding their rights.
The third factor is the unprecedented disruption and paralysis of state institutions. In fact, things have become so dire that we can now call the country a failed state. During the 1975 war, state institutions continued to function when security conditions permitted, and political disputes did not, in themselves, hinder presidential elections or the formation of governments.
The fourth factor is that only one militia has its hands on an illegitimate arsenal. This has other parties marginalized. At the very least, it has undermined their influence. Meanwhile, the one armed party has become stronger than most of the region’s regular armies. The latent threat of its use is always there. At times, this threat is explicit. This arsenal casts a shadow over the internal balance of power, granting those who possess it the reigns of political power.
The fact that a single party has a monopoly on illegitimate arms is one of the reasons that the acute political conflict has not morphed into a military conflict or a militia war like the one that began in 1975. Nonetheless, a mafia war continues through the assassinations of opposition figures.
The fifth factor is that Lebanon’s economy and society have changed over the past 18 years. We have seen a transfer of wealth that left the middle class losing out. This class is suffering from a decline that threatens its political, economic, social and cultural influence. This shift culminated with the collapse of the national currency and banking sector, and the evisceration of bank deposits, as well as the collapse, to different degrees, of the health and education services and tourism
The sixth factor is that over one million displaced Syrians are in the country. It is difficult to imagine these persons returning to Syria in the near or even the medium term due to many factors. The most notable of these considerations is the unprecedented degree of violence, which has reached the point of ethnic cleansing at times, that the country has seen. Cities, villages, and infrastructure have been wiped out. We should also account, here, for the demographic shift engendered by the emigration of the Lebanese. The majority of those leaving the country are young, educated professionals and other well-off segments of society, as well as mostly Christians.
The Lebanese missed the opportunity to end the 1975 war when they replaced the armed Palestinian groups with the Syrian regime’s army, which fully controlled Lebanon until 2005. They also missed the opportunity to end it through the implementation of the Taif Agreement after Aoun refused to hand over power to the elected president, Rene Moawad, choosing to wage his reckless wars instead.
Another opportunity was squandered in 2005, when, on the one hand, US and French interest was at its peak and, on the other, the Syrian army left the country.
At this juncture, in 2005, a historic opportunity to end the Lebanese crisis that could have contained Hezbollah through the implementation of Resolution 1559 arose. It was lost because of the Quadripartite Alliance and the miscalculations of all Lebanese parties. Because of Hezbollah’s strength and the fact that other parties made the losing bet of Lebanonizing the party, the party managed to turn against everyone and replicated the role that had previously been played by the Syrian regime. The war thus continued.
In conclusion, the ongoing war that began in 2005 has most of the disadvantages of the 1975 war. However, it added another form of violence to the political and military violence - economic, social, financial, educational and healthcare violence. Much of what we had seen during the first phase of the war witnessed was seen again in the second phase, albeit in different ways.
This time, the violence was manifested in targeted assassinations of the foundational figures of the state and the country. With all the domestic, regional and international developments that have unfolded since 2005, the local and international settlements that had been tenable for a long time have become outdated. They will have no core impact on the Lebanese crisis.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on February 13-14/2023
Objects shot down over North America 'all connected'
Nick Allen/The Telegraph/Mon, February 13, 2023
Justin Trudeau said the four objects shot down over North America in recent days displayed a “pattern” and were connected in some way.
It came as US and Canadian officials struggled to explain the origin of three of the objects that were downed in the wake of a Chinese spy balloon being destroyed on Feb 4 off the South Carolina coast. The Canadian prime minister said: “Obviously there is some sort of pattern in there – the fact we are seeing this in a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention.” Mr Trudeau did not elaborate on what the “pattern” was. On Sunday, US military fighter jets shot down an octagonal object over Lake Huron. The day before, a cylindrical object was destroyed over Canada’s Yukon and investigators are still hunting for the wreckage. A day before that, on Friday, an object was shot down over sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska. Mr Trudeau, speaking in Whitehorse, Yukon’s capital, said winter weather was hampering recovery efforts. He said it was a “very serious situation” and he would discuss the issue of aerial objects with Joe Biden when they meet next month. Asked why Canada itself did not shoot down the object over Yukon, Trudeau said: “Norad (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is a joint command, which means we do things together over North America, and there were Canadian and American fighter jets scrambled to intercept the object and to take it down.
“Our focus was not on which side gets credit for what.”John Kirby, the White House National Security Council spokesman, said he could not elaborate on the “pattern” Mr Trudeau referred to. He suggested it could mean that all the objects were moving in the same direction, with the prevailing winds, west to east across North America. Mr Kirby also said that the US will ask allies to provide any details of similar unidentified objects over their air space. The US president has directed Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, and Avril Haines, the Director of National intelligence, to speak to their counterparts in order to “share what we’re learning, but also get their perspectives,” Mr Kirby said. He added: “We’re going to have those kinds of conversations with allies and partners, what kind of experiences they have had, to see what we can learn from them, and also what they can learn from us. “Our friends and our partners are dealing with this as well. This is an issue that affects everyone around the world. The president has made this a very top priority.” Mr Kirby denied allegations by Beijing that the US had flown spy balloons over China. He added that there were no US surveillance aircraft of any kind in Chinese air space. He said that US radar had been reset in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon to pick up high-altitude, slow-moving objects. Mr Kirby said: “One of the reasons we think we’re seeing more is because we’re looking.”Some of the payload from the Chinese spy balloon, including some of its electronics, had been recovered from 45ft of water off South Carolina, he said. Asked if the incidents had set back relations with China, Mr Kirby said: “It has certainly not helped us move forward in the way that we wanted to move.” Mr Kirby officially ruled out that any of the objects shot down were of extraterrestrial origin. He said: “I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these craft. Period.” Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, said: “I know there have been questions and concerns about this but there is no, again no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”On Sunday, a US Air Force general had said he could not rule out aliens, or any other explanation.


White House defends decision to shoot down flying objects
Sam Cabral - BBC News, Washington/Mon, February 13, 2023
The White House has said its decision to shoot down three objects flying over North American airspace this weekend was "out of an abundance of caution". The objects posed a threat to commercial flights and were downed in the "best interests" of the American people, spokesman John Kirby said. The US is scrutinising its airspace more closely since the recent incursion of a suspected spy balloon from China. Beijing has alleged that Washington is flying its own balloons over China. China's foreign ministry said on Monday that the US has flown balloons into its airspace more than 10 times in the past year. "It's not uncommon as well for the US to illegally enter the airspace of other countries," spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters. Speaking from the White House, Mr Kirby denied the allegation: "We are not flying surveillance balloons over China. I'm not aware of any other craft we're flying into Chinese airspace."
On 4 February, a high-altitude balloon was downed off the coast of South Carolina after moving for days over the continental US. US officials said it originated in China and had been used to monitor sensitive military sites, but China denied the object was used for spying and said it was a weather monitoring device that had blown astray. Since that first incident, American fighter jets have shot down three further high-altitude objects in as many days - over Alaska, Canada's Yukon territory, and Michigan - and the administration has been under pressure to explain what the objects were. Mr Kirby, who leads communications for the president's National Security Council, said there were differences between the alleged Chinese spy balloon and the three objects downed over the weekend. He said the latter did not pose "any direct threat to people on the ground" but were taken down "to protect our security, our interests and flight safety". Efforts are currently under way to collect debris from where the objects fell, but Mr Kirby noted the objects in Alaska and Canada are in remote terrain and will be difficult to find in winter weather conditions, while the object in Michigan lies in the deep waters of Lake Huron.
Officials have not yet been able to "definitively assess" what these objects are but have not ruled out the possibility they were conducting surveillance, he said. He claimed that Beijing is operating a "balloon programme for intelligence collection" that has ties to the Chinese military and was not detected during the Trump administration. "We detected it. We tracked it, and we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can," he said.


UN aid chief: Quake rescue phase ‘coming to a close’
Reuters/February 13, 2023
ALEPPO: The phase of the rescue after the major earthquake struck Turkiye and Syria a week ago is “coming to a close” with urgency now switching to shelter, food, schooling and psychosocial care, the UN aid chief said during a visit to Syria on Monday. “What is the most striking here, is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment ... was about the worst that these people have experienced,” Martin Griffiths said from the government-held northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo that was a major front line in the Syrian civil war. The Feb. 6 earthquake struck a swathe of northwest Syria, a region partitioned by the 11-year-long war, including insurgent-held territory at the Turkish border and government areas controlled by President Bashar Assad. Griffiths said the United Nations would have aid moving from government-held regions to the rebel-held northwest, a front line across which aid has seldom passed during the conflict. Aid appeals would be issued for all the regions hit by the disaster, he added. “We’ll have assistance moving from here into the northwest but the northwest is only one part of Syria ... it’s also very important that we take care of the people here,” Griffiths said. The death toll in Syria jumped on Monday. The United Nations said more than 4,300 had been reported killed in the northwest, and more than 7,600 injured. The death toll in Syrian government stands at 1,414. Griffiths said he had heard traumatic accounts of the disaster from survivors in Aleppo. “People who lost their children, some of whom escaped, others stayed in the building. The trauma of the people we spoke to was visible and this is a trauma which the world needs to heal,” he said.

Death toll rises above 35,000 in Turkey, Syria quake
Agence France Presse /February 13/2023
The death toll from a catastrophic earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria climbed above 35,000 on Monday, with search and rescue teams starting to wind down their work. Officials and medics said 31,643 people had died in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria from last Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 35,224.

Syria's Mikdad, Pederson discuss boosting role of the UN in responding to effects of the earthquake
NNA /February 13/2023
Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Dr. Fayssal Mikdad discussed Monday with the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, and the accompanying delegation efforts that could be undertaken to enhance the role of United Nation in responding to the devastating effects of the earthquake in Syria, with emphasizing on the need not to politicize the humanitarian issue and respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Pedersen expressed his deep condolences for the earthquake victims, affirming readiness to do everything poosible to help Syria overcome the effects of this disaster. Mikdad, in turn, thanked the UN Secretary-General and the Special Envoy for their solidarity with Syria in light of this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. He stressed Syria’s keenness to provide all possible support to people affected by the earthquake and deliver humanitarian aid to all those in need in all areas without any discrimination. Mikdad asserted Syria’s readiness to work closely with various United Nations agencies to strengthen and support the efforts of the Syrian state in facing the catastrophic repercussions caused by the earthquake. Mikdad pointed out the need to lift all unilateral coercive measures imposed on the Syrian people. -- SANA News Agency

US says not flying any balloons over China
Agence France Presse /February 13/2023
The White House on Monday denied Beijing's accusation that the United States has been sending balloons over China to conduct surveillance, as tensions about espionage rise between the two superpowers. "Any claim that the U.S. government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false," National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said on Twitter. "It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the U.S. and over 40 countries across 5 continents."The State Department responded with a similar rejection, and called Beijing's accusation "the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control." "It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the United States was a weather balloon and to this day has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. Earlier Monday China hit back against U.S. charges of balloon espionage, accusing the United States of having sent more than 10 balloons into its airspace since January 2022. Washington's response marked the latest development in an increasingly tense saga that included the downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month, after it had traversed much of the United States. The U.S. military subsequently shot down three other unidentified objects over North America in recent days, sparking widespread jitters and speculation as to their origins. Only the first object has been officially attributed to China, with Beijing insisting it was a civilian craft that had blown off course. On Monday, White House spokesman John Kirby said U.S. authorities "haven't been able to gain access" yet to the latest three objects shot down, due largely to weather conditions which have slowed search and recovery operations.

Germany says Finland, Sweden NATO bids must be ratified without delay
HELSINKI (Reuters)/Mon, February 13, 2023
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on Turkey and Hungary to pave the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO, stating she expects all NATO members to ratify their bids to join the defence alliance "without further delay". The accession of the two countries would strengthen the alliance as a whole and the two should join together, Baerbock told a news conference in Helsinki with her Finnish counterpart, Pekka Haavisto. Finland and Sweden sought membership after Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year and have said they want to join "hand in hand", but while most member states have given the applications the green light, Turkey and Hungary are yet to ratify them. Ankara said this month it supported Finland's application but wants Stockholm in particular to take a tougher line against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the European Union, and another group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt. It suspended talks last month as tensions rose following protests in Stockholm in which a far-right Danish politician burned a copy of the Koran. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban said in November 2022 the country's parliament would ratify NATO membership for the two countries early this year.

'Our Losses Were Gigantic': Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave
Andrew E. Kramer/The New York Times Company/February 13, 2023
LVIV, Ukraine — Creeping forward along a tree line late at night toward an entrenched Ukrainian position, the Russian soldier watched in horror as his comrades were mowed down by enemy fire.
His squad of 10 ex-convicts advanced only a few dozen yards before being decimated. “We were hit by machine-gun fire,” said the soldier, a private named Sergei.
One soldier was wounded and screamed, “Help me! Help me, please!,” the private said, although no help arrived. Eight soldiers were killed, one escaped back to Russian lines and Sergei was captured by Ukrainians.
The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault. There are two main uses of the conscripts in this tactic: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters, and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery.
Either way, they have become an integral component of Russia’s military strategy as it presses a new offensive in Ukraine’s east: relying on overwhelming manpower, much of it comprising inexperienced, poorly trained conscripts, regardless of the high rate of casualties.
In interviews last week, a half-dozen prisoners of war provided rare firsthand accounts of what it is like to be part of a sacrificial Russian assault. “These orders were common, so our losses were gigantic,” Sergei said. “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.”
Of his combat experience, he said, “It was the first and last wave for me.” By luck, the bullets missed him, he said. He lay in the dark until he was captured by Ukrainians who slipped into the buffer area between the two trench lines.
The New York Times interviewed the Russians at a detention center near Lviv, in Ukraine’s west, where many captured enemy soldiers are sent. From there, some are returned to Russia in prisoner exchanges. The Times also viewed videos of interrogations by the Ukrainian authorities. The prisoners are identified only by first name and rank for security reasons, because of the possibility of retribution once they are returned.
Although they are prisoners of war overseen by Ukrainians, the Russians said they spoke freely. Their accounts could not be independently corroborated but conformed with assessments of the fighting around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut by Western governments and military analysts.
The soldiers in Sergei’s squad were recruited from penal colonies by the private military company known as Wagner, whose forces have mostly been deployed in the Bakhmut area. There, they have enabled Russian lines to move forward slowly, cutting key resupply roads for the Ukrainian army.
Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut.
In the early phases of the war, the Russian army had copious armored vehicles, artillery and other heavy weaponry but relatively few soldiers on the battlefield. Now, the tables have turned: Russia has deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. An additional 150,000 are in training camps, officials said, meaning there is the potential for a half-million soldiers to join the offensive.
But using infantry to storm trenches, redolent of World War I, brings high casualties. So far, the tactic has been used primarily by Wagner in the push for Bakhmut. Last week, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said he would end the practice of recruiting convicts. But Russia’s regular army this month began recruiting convicts in exchange for pardons, shifting the practice on the Russian side in the war from the Wagner private army to the military.
Some military analysts and Western governments have questioned Russia’s strategy, citing rates of wounded and killed at about 70% in battalions featuring former convicts. On Sunday, the British defense intelligence agency said that over the past two weeks, Russia had probably suffered its highest rate of casualties since the first week of the invasion. Interviews with former Wagner soldiers at the Ukrainian detention center aligned with these descriptions of the fighting — and shed light on a violent, harrowing experience for Russian soldiers.
“Nobody could ever believe such a thing could exist,” Sergei said of Wagner tactics. Sergei sat, shoulders slumped, on the sofa in the warden’s office of the Ukrainian detention center. He was balding and wore shoes without laces.
The soldiers arrived at the front straight from Russia’s penal colony system, which is rife with abuse and where obedience to harsh codes of conduct in a violent setting is enforced by prison gangs and guards alike. The same sense of beaten subjugation persists at the front, Sergei said, enabling commanders to send soldiers forward on hopeless, human wave attacks. “We are prisoners, even if former prisoners,” he said. “We are nobody and have no rights.”Sergei said he had worked as a cellphone tower technician in a far-northern Siberian city, living with his wife and three children. In the interview, he admitted to dealing marijuana and meth, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020.
In October, he accepted an offer to fight in exchange for a pardon. The arrangement, he said, was not offered to rapists and drug addicts, but murderers, burglars and other prisoners were welcome.
“Of course, any normal person fears death,” he said. “But a pardon for eight years is valuable.”
The fighting would turn out to be far more dangerous than he had imagined. In three days at the front south of Bakhmut, Sergei first served as a stretcher bearer, carrying out mangled, bloody former prisoners who had been killed or wounded in an omen of what awaited him when ordered to join an assault. On the night of Jan. 1, they were commanded to advance 500 yards along the tree line, then dig in and wait for a subsequent wave to arrive. One soldier carried a light machine gun. The others were armed with only assault rifles and hand grenades. The sequential assaults on Ukrainian lines by small units of former Russian prisoners have become a signature Russian tactic in the effort to capture Bakhmut. “We see them crawl for a kilometer or more,” toward Ukrainian trenches, then open fire at close range and try to capture positions, Col. Roman Kostenko, chair of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s parliament, said in an interview. “It’s effective. Yes, they have heavy losses. But with these heavy losses, they sometimes advance.” It could be, Kostenko said, that such infantry assaults on entrenched defenses will remain mostly confined to the fight for Bakhmut and that they are being used to conserve tanks and armored personnel carriers for the expected offensive. But they could also serve as a template for wider fighting.
The former convicts, Kostenko said, are herded into the battlefield by harsh discipline: “They have orders, and they cannot disobey orders, especially in Wagner.”A private named Aleksandr, 44, who shaved three years off a sentence for illegal logging by enlisting with Wagner, said that before deploying to the front he was told he would be shot if he disobeyed orders to advance. “They brought us to a basement, divided us into five-person groups and, though we hadn’t been trained, told us to run ahead, as far as we could go,” he said of his commanders.
His dash toward Ukrainian lines in a group of five soldiers ended with three dead and two captured. Another captured Russian, Eduard, 22, enlisted to get four years cut from a sentence for car theft. He spent three months at the front as a stretcher bearer before being ordered forward. He was captured on his first human wave assault. From his time as a stretcher bearer, he said, he estimated that half of the men in each assault were wounded or killed, with shrapnel and bullet wounds the most common injuries. Sergei said he had initially been pleased with the offer of a pardon in exchange for service in Wagner. “When I came to this war, I thought it was worth it,” he said. But after his one experience in an assault, he changed his mind. “I started to think things over in a big way,’’ he said. “Of course, it wasn’t worth it.”

'Little by little they are winning': Russian offensive underway as tide turns in key Ukraine city. Updates.
John Bacon, USA TODAY/February 13, 2023
Russia has already begun its anticipated spring offensive in Ukraine, sending thousands of additional troops in an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine's defenses, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. "The reality is that we have seen the start already," Stoltenberg said. "We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities."Stoltenberg, speaking ahead of a two-day meeting of defense ministers in Brussels, Belgium, confirmed Ukraine claims that Russian troops appeared to be pushing forward with little regard for their own heavy losses. And he said NATO plans to increase its ammunition stockpiles that have been depleted by the war. A proposal to provide fighter jets to Ukraine would be discussed, Stoltenberg said, denying Russian assertions that providing them would make NATO countries "direct" parties to the conflict.
FIGHTER JETS COULD BE KEY: Ukraine sets its sight on warplanes
Developments:
►In the the Luhansk region of the Donbas, Russian troops pulled back after several days of intense fighting near Kreminna, Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai told Ukrainian TV.
►In the partially occupied southern region of Kherson, artillery hit more than 20 cities and villages – including the regional capital that was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in November.
Russia gains ground in Bakhmut: 'Little by little they are winning'
The battle for the pivotal city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region has seen some of the fiercest fighting of the invasion. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office said the situation in Bakhmut's northern suburb of Paraskoviivka was “difficult" amid intense shelling and storming actions by Russian troops.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said the shelling was intensifying and that Russian forces appeared to be adding manpower: “We’re seeing a very tough battle in which the Russians aren’t sparing neither themselves nor us.”
Moscow controls both main roads into the city, leaving one back route left – a slender supply line, the BBC reports.
"They have been trying to take the city since July," Iryna Rybakova, press officer for Ukraine's 93rd Brigade, told BBC. "Little by little they are winning now. They have more resources, so if they play the long game they will win. I can't say how long it will take.
"Maybe they will run out of resources. I really hope so."
Ukraine officials blast Italian ex-premier Berlusconi
Ukraine officials took Italian ex-prime minister Berlusconi to task Monday after the ex-prime minister blamed Zelenskyy for the war. Belusconi, breaking with current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on the issue, said Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Zelenskyy “would have ceased attacking the two autonomous republics of Donbass."Meloni’s office, which said her government maintains "solid and unwavering" support for Ukraine. Kyiv officials were more dramatic in their dissent.
"Berlusconi's senseless accusations against Zelenskyy are an attempt to kiss Putin's hands, bloodied up to the elbows," Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook. He accused Berlusconi, a Putin supporter, of trying to "show his loyalty to the Russian dictator.".
*Contributing: The Associated Press

White House mocks Putin's mismanagement of the war in Ukraine, saying he changes generals like 'socks'
John Haltiwanger/Business Insider/February 13, 2023
The White House mocked Putin's handling of the Ukraine war on Monday. NSC spokesperson John Kirby said Putin changes generals like "I change socks."Russia has already had several commanders in charge in Ukraine in less than a year of fighting.
The White House mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin's handling of the war in Ukraine on Monday, pointing to the frequent turnover among the generals placed in charge of the ongoing invasion. "Clearly Mr. Putin is not making good decisions," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. "It's borne out by the fact that he continues to change generals the way I change socks." The war in Ukraine has not yet lasted a full year, but there's already a growing list of generals who've been tapped to spearhead Russian operations before getting fired or demoted.
In April, Gen. Aleksandr Dvornikov was given the top job in Ukraine. Dvornikov lasted until June, before being replaced by Gen. General Gennady Zhidko,who was also only the top commander for a matter of months. Putin then tapped Gen. Sergei Surovikin for the job in October, but he ultimately replaced him with Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia's highest-ranking military officer, in January. "It's kind of like a reality TV show," Colin H. Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, said to reporters last month while speaking on the shuffle among Russian generals in Ukraine. "And I think it's more indicative that the Russians have still not figured it out about how they intend to command the fight, and I think the dysfunction among Russian commanders is pretty profound," he added. When the invasion began last February, Russia was initially expected to easily defeat Ukrainian forces. But the war has been disastrous for Russia on multiple levels. Though estimates vary, Russian forces are believed to have suffered as many as 200,000 casualties so far, and they've made few gains in the process. Russia has begun a new spring offensive in eastern Ukraine, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said, but Kyiv's forces have been bracing for this fight. Putin appears willing to continue throwing bodies at the front line — even if it means sending them in poorly trained and ill-equipped — in hopes of eventually wearing out Ukrainian forces. Putin is "sending thousands and thousands of more troops, accepting a very high rate of casualty, taking big losses, but putting pressure on the Ukrainians," Stoltenberg said, adding, "What Russia lacks in quality, they try to compensate in quantity." The NATO chief went on to underscore that Russia's willingness to endure high casualties is indicative of the need for the West to supply weapons to Kyiv at a faster pace.
"The faster we can deliver weapons, ammunition, spare parts, fuel to the Ukrainian front the more lives we save, and the better we support efforts to find a peaceful, negotiated solution to this conflict," he said. NATO countries have provided Ukraine with billions in military aid, including vital weapons, since the war began. But some NATO allies have been reluctant to send more advanced arms to Kyiv, such as long-range weapons that could potentially strike deep into Russian territory, worrying about the potential for the conflict to escalate. But there are also Western leaders and officials who say that Ukraine should be provided with what it needs to win the fight, contending that there would be reverberating consequences for the world if Putin was victorious.

Iran’s Raisi to Visit Beijing to Revive ‘Partnership’ with China
London, Beijing - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 13 February, 2023
China’s Foreign Ministry announced Sunday that Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi will begin a three-day visit to China on Tuesday, at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. Raisi’s trip to China comes after diplomatic tensions arising due to a Gulf-Chinese statement made last December. The joint statement called on Iran to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, ensure the peaceful nature of its nuclear program, and find a peaceful solution to the disputed ownership of three islands in the Strait of Hormuz. Raisi’s visit, however, will focus on strengthening economic cooperation with China. The state news agency IRNA also reported that during the trip, "cooperation documents" will be signed between the two countries, and Ebrahim Raisi will participate in a joint meeting of Iranian and Chinese businesses. In turn, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed in a statement that Raisi is scheduled to visit from February 14-16, without disclosing further details. Raisi and Xi met for the first time in September on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan, where the Iranian president called for strengthening cooperation between the two countries. China had sent Vice Premier Hu Chunhua for a major meeting in Tehran last December, which was seen at the time as a sign that Beijing was distancing itself from the large-scale protests in Iran. Unlike his previous visit in 2016, Xi did not stop in Iran during his tour of the region last December. A joint statement between China and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries drew condemnation from Tehran. The Gulf-Chinese statement emphasized the need for relations between Arab Gulf states and Iran to follow the principles of good neighborliness and non-interference in internal affairs of others. It also promoted respect for the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of states, and resolving disputes by peaceful means.

US-GCC meetings in Riyadh seek to counter Iranian threats
Ray Hanania/Arab News/February 13, 2023
CHICAGO: A senior US delegation led by Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley is participating in meetings in Riyadh this week focused on confronting the increasing threats posed by Tehran in the region.
During a press briefing on Monday attended by Arab News, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Dana Stroul laid out the network of Iranian terror activity that is spreading worldwide and especially targeting members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.
Stroul said the US-GCC meetings that began on Monday are focused on countering Iran’s continued threats to Saudi Arabia, the wider Gulf, and American forces stationed in Iraq and Syria to combat Daesh.
“Iranian aggression … is a serious concern,” she said, adding: “Increased Iranian and Russian military cooperation … has serious implications for security in the Middle East.”
Regarding threats faced by Saudi Arabia from the Houthis, she said the Yemeni militia has not shown an interest in peace and has used the recent truce to rearm with Iranian weapons.
“We’ve seen no change in Iranian willingness or activity to transfer weapons to the Houthis,” Stroul added. “We haven’t seen the Houthis be good-faith actors in extending the truce ... or take genuine movements toward a political process.”
She said the danger of Iran providing weapons to Russia is that Tehran can see how they are used in Ukraine, make improvements, and apply them to their violence against Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Stroul added that US forces in Iraq and Syria “are under constant threat from Iranian allied militia groups that seek to constantly harass our forces,” which “undermines” their ability to combat Daesh.
“It also directly undermines, threatens and jeopardizes the recovery efforts of those local communities who only a few years ago were under … caliphate rule experiencing the worst depravities and atrocities. It’s truly destabilizing,” she said. “We hold Iran accountable and responsible for these attacks because Iran is arming, training, equipping and guiding these groups.”The US-GCC meetings, which are scheduled to continue until Feb. 16 in Riyadh, are focused on four areas of concern: air and missile defenses, maritime security, an Iran Working Group focused on Tehran-sponsored violence, and a Terrorism Working Group. American Gen. Bradley Cooper, who participated in the briefing, said US-GCC cooperation has resulted in the confiscation of arms being shipped by Iran, much of them to its allied militias in Yemen. “In just the last two months alone, five major interventions at sea have resulted in US and partner maritime forces seizing more than 5,000 weapons, 1.6 million rounds of ammunition, 7,000 proximity fuses for rockets, over 2,000 kg of propellant used for rocket-propelled grenades, and $60 million in illegal drugs,” Cooper said.
“In 2021, we seized over $1 billion in illicit drugs and 15,000 illegal arms, all headed toward Yemen.”The US is working this week with GCC partners to expand the offshore monitoring region to protect those countries from Iranian terrorism.

Thousands march in Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu’s allies push overhaul
AP/February 13, 2023
JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Israelis — hoisting flags, blowing on horns and chanting “democracy” and “no to dictatorship”— protested outside the parliament building on Monday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government formally launched a contentious plan to overhaul the country’s legal system. It was the largest protest outside the Knesset in years and reflected the deep divisions over the plan. The proposed changes have triggered weeks of mass demonstrations, drawn cries of protests from influential business leaders and former military men and even prompted a statement of concern from President Joe Biden. Despite a plea from the nation’s figurehead president to put the legislation on hold, Netanyahu’s allies approved a series of legislative changes during a stormy committee meeting Tuesday. The vote now sends the legislation to the full parliament for a series of votes — an opening salvo in a battle expected to stretch on for weeks. “They hear our cry. They hear the strong voice of truth,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said from the stage outside parliament. “They hear it and they’re afraid.”Netanyahu and his supporters say the proposed changes are needed to rein in a judiciary that wields too much power. But his critics say the judicial overhaul is tantamount to a coup and will destroy Israeli democracy. They also say that Netanyahu, who is on trial for a series of corruption charges, has a conflict of interest. The protesters came from across the country. Organizers said that upwards of 100,000 people were in attendance. Trainloads of people arrived in Jerusalem on packed trains, streaming up escalators in the city’s main train station chanting, “democracy,” cheering and whistling, and waving the national flag. A few hundred others gathered in protest at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, before marching toward the Knesset. In parliament, opposition lawmakers vocally protested the proposed reform to judge appointments ahead of a committee vote that would send the bill to the full parliament for a vote. During an unruly session, members of the opposition stood on the conference table and shouted as a key Netanyahu ally tried to hold the vote. The motions passed in a 9-7 committee vote.
Throngs of people marched to the Knesset, the Israeli legislature, a day after the country’s figurehead president urged Netanyahu’s government to delay its proposed changes to the judiciary — moves that critics say will weaken the country’s Supreme Court and erode democratic checks and balances.
Many protesters carried the blue and white Israeli flag and posters decrying what they saw as attack on the country’s democratic institutions. “Shame! Shame!” and “Israel will not be a dictatorship!” they chanted.
Other demonstrations were held outside schools around the country. Netanyahu and his allies took office in December after the country’s fifth election in less than four years. That election, like its predecessors, focused on Netanyahu’s fitness for office at a time when he is facing serious criminal charges.
Netanyahu has lashed out at the country’s police, prosecutors and judges, saying he is the victim of a deep-state style conspiracy to oust him. His critics say he is motivated by a personal grudge and his campaign will destroy Israel’s democratic system of checks and balances. The legislation approved in committee Monday would give Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority the authority for appointing all of the country’s judges — a step that critics say could pave the way for his trial to be dismissed. A second change would take away the Supreme Court’s authority to review the legality of major pieces of legislation, known as Basic Laws. His coalition also plans on passing another law that would give parliament the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions it dislikes. Taken together, critics say this will destroy the country’s system of checks and balances and unleash a process similar to those in authoritarian countries like Poland and Hungary. Eliad Shraga, chairman of the Movement for Quality Government, a civil-society group that organized Monday’s demonstration, said the gathering was meant to send a message of support to the Supreme Court and a warning to the Knesset. “We will fight to the end,” he told The Associated Press. “They want to change Israel from a liberal democracy to a dictatorship, a fascist dictatorship.”Late Sunday, President Isaac Herzog appealed to Netanyahu to put the legislation on hold and open a dialogue with the opposition. Netanyahu has not responded to the appeal.

Missiles linked to Iran by failure to erase data from drone, MoD officials say
Sam Blewett/PA Media: UK News/Mon, February 13, 2023
A haul of missiles allegedly destined for Houthi rebels has been linked to Iran by a failure to wipe the data from an accompanying drone packaged in a speed boat which was seized by the Navy. The connection is detailed in a dossier of evidence provided to the United Nations (UN) by Britain in an attempt to prove Tehran is breaching its rules by supplying weapons to the war in Yemen. The seizures from within international waters south of Iran early last year included surface-to-air-missiles and engines for land attack cruise missiles.Britain handed over its file to the UN as Iranian-made attack drones are used by Russia to pummel Ukraine in Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Officials argue the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has gone to lengths to obscure the components’ origins, some of which are copies of Western weapons.Their quality was assessed to be inferior to the legitimate products and there were clues in the form of miscopied letters. A picture in the dossier shows one chipboard with what was assessed to be errors: “version” spelt with a lower case l instead of an i and “The Netherlands” spelled with a 1 instead of an l.One key piece of evidence linking the missiles’ to Iran came from a reconnaissance drone found in the February boat alongside surface to air missiles and land attack cruise missile components.A Ministry of Defence official said: “Whilst the external SD card slots on the DJI quadcopter were empty, the internal hard drive had not been wiped.
“We found 22 test flights, all within the confines of the IRGC Aerospace Force HQ in Tehran. “This is the first time we have been able to present evidence to the UN that indicates a direct link between the Iranian state and the supply of these weapons.”
Marines on the HMS Montrose detained the vessels crewed by smugglers identifying themselves as Iranian on January 28 and February 25 last year. The downwash of a Wildcat helicopter was used to force the crews of the high-speed boats onto the deck so marines could board, according to the evidence passed to the UN. The smugglers, who are also suspected of running drugs, were released back to their vessels, after it was ascertained there was no grounds to detain them.
Officials believe some parts in the missiles are genuine and have been procured from US, French, German, Dutch and Czech businesses. But the UN is expected to speak to the manufacturers involved to warn them their components are apparently ending up in Iranian weapons programmes.
A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Iran-backed Houthis since 2015, and Tehran’s capabilities are believed to be ever improving. The UN report on possible security council violations is expected to be published shortly. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: “The UK is committed to upholding international law and will continue to counter Iranian activity that contravenes United Nation security council resolutions and threatens peace across the world. “That is why we have a permanent Royal Navy deployment in the Gulf region, conducting vital maritime security operations and working in support of an enduring peace in Yemen.” Middle East minister Lord Ahmad added: “Once again the Iranian regime has been exposed for its reckless proliferation of weapons and destabilising activity in the region. “Iran’s sustained military support to the Houthis and continued violation of the arms embargo has stoked further conflict and undermined UN-led peace efforts.“The UK will continue to act to protect the security of our partners and hold Iran to account.”

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 13-14/2023
Captagon: Assad’s Deadly Drug Of Choice Expands To Israel
Natalie Ecanow/1945 web site/February 13/2023
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/02/captagon-assads-deadly-drug-of-choice-expands-to-israel/
Israel’s Ministry of Defense thwarted an attempt to smuggle thousands of captagon tablets into the Gaza Strip last week. The news was overshadowed by soaring tensions, amidst continued unrest in the West Bank and the firing of rockets out of the Hamas controlled-Gaza Strip.
The pills, hidden inside a shipment of office refrigerators, were en route from the West Bank when they were seized by Israeli security forces at the Tarqumiyah border crossing. Israel’s exposure to the captagon trade can no longer be ignored.
What is Captagon?
Captagon, known colloquially as the “poor man’s cocaine,” is an amphetamine-type stimulant illicitly produced in the Levant. While it is primarily trafficked in Jordan and the Gulf states, the captagon trade has started to spill beyond its traditional borders. Captagon is slowly but surely evolving into a broader regional problem that merits a coordinated intervention. The drug bust in Israel this week validates this changing reality.
Originally, “Captagon” was the brand name for a legal drug containing fenethylline and prescribed to treat conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, narcolepsy, and depression. Fenethylline, however, was made widely illegal in the 1980s, forcing captagon production underground. Since then, counterfeit captagon production has proliferated; today’s highly addictive pills bear little, if any, chemical resemblance to their predecessors.
Today, the captagon industry is concentrated in Syria and Lebanon, where civil war, financial collapse, and the crippling effects of US and European sanctions left Iranian proxies strapped for cash. In search of new revenue streams, the Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah resorted to captagon production and sales. And it proved to be a financial boon.
Regional seizure data from 2021 valued the captagon trade at over $5.7 billion, eclipsing the total value of Syria’s legal exports combined. The profits are pumped straight into the coffers of Assad and his cronies, providing a financial lifeline to an otherwise economically moribund regime. According to the former US special envoy for Syria, “the Assad regime would not survive the loss of the Captagon revenues.”
From its production centers in Syria and Lebanon, captagon is primarily trafficked overland through Jordan onward to the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia is widely considered to be the largest consumer market.
In Jordan, the growing scale and sophistication of overland smuggling operations poses a serious security risk and may even portend a burgeoning public health crisis. Last year, Jordanian officials intercepted over 54 million captagon pills; by April, they had seized more pills than in all of 2021 combined. The uptick in smuggling operations prompted Jordanian officials to institute a “shoot-to-kill” policy along the Syrian border; one skirmish left 27 smugglers dead.
Alarmingly, the consumer market for captagon in Jordan is expanding. “We used to be a proud that Jordan was a transit country,’ lamented the Secretary General of Jordan’s Economic and Social Council, “but now it is a host country.” Jordanian youth are consuming the addictive pill, which fetches a lower price than elsewhere in the Gulf. The decision to sell there appears to be a strategic one on the part of Iran’s allies, given how much more the pill can fetch in the Gulf, where high unemployment and swaths of disenchanted youth fuel demand.
The United States took legislative action in December when Congress passed the Captagon Act, which requires the government to develop an inter-agency strategy to “deny, degrade and dismantle” the Levantine captagon trade. Still, more can be done.
As Assad, Hezbollah, and their Iranian benefactors fill their coffers with captagon revenue, Jordan and the Gulf states are looking to bring the Syrian regime back into the regional fold. In early January, the Emirati foreign minister paid a visit to his Syrian counterpart in Damascus. The meeting came less than a year after Mohamed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, became the first leader to host Assad since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. Jordan has also made overtures to the Syrian regime, as evidenced by a phone call between King Abdullah and Assad in October 2021.
A Mistake in Policy
Rather than normalizing with the region’s biggest drug pusher, Washington should make clear that regional cooperation in countering narcotics is a better approach. The administration can leverage the structures of the Abraham Accords to develop a regional strategy for combatting the captagon trade and expand the partnership between Israel and the Gulf. This could include establishing processes for law enforcement to exchange information outside of INTERPOL, which Syria rejoined in 2021. Jordan’s International Police Training Center can house a multilateral interdiction center to help provide real-time information on smuggling operations.
The shared threat of captagon also gives Israel and Jordan reason to jumpstart their often cold and tenuous peace. And, as policymakers anticipate bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords, Washington should remind the region that Jerusalem and Riyadh both care deeply about the stability of Jordan, which the Assad-linked narcotics trade threatens to undermine.
Finally, the Biden administration should take additional action to punish the Assad regime for its role in the production and trafficking of captagon. The White House excluded Syria from its list of major illicit drug producing countries for 2023, and the State Department failed to account for captagon in its congressionally mandated report on Bashar al-Assad’s wealth. The drug bust in Israel is a wakeup call that Assad’s captagon tentacles are spreading their reach. It’s time for the Biden administration to crack down.
*Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at FDD focusing on Lebanon, Jordan, and geopolitics of the Levant. Prior to joining FDD, she worked on Middle Eastern affairs at the Hudson Institute and was a summer fellow with the Tikvah Fund. Natalie holds a B.A. in political science with minors in Middle Eastern studies and history from Duke University.


Is the two-state solution for Israel, Palestine dead? Maybe. But what's the alternative?
Tracy Wilkinson/LA Times/February 13/2023
The intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over land, rights and safety has entered a new phase, one plumbing new depths of hatred and radical intransigence that the U.S. government no longer seems in a position to resolve or even mitigate.
Now, an increasing number of experts are sounding the death knell for the two-state solution.
Dennis Ross, the former special envoy who has negotiated Middle East peace issues for both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations, says Israelis and Palestinians have reached “the lowest ebb” he has ever seen.
“There’s a complete loss of hope on both sides,” Ross recently told a television interviewer.
Three of the administration’s most senior officials — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, CIA Director William Burns and White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan — made urgent trips to the region in recent days in a bid to deescalate rising violence and find common ground on which to build peace. But they came away unable to offer any reason to be less pessimistic than Ross.
They spoke of a “shrinking horizon” of possibility, bad governance on both sides and the likelihood of major outbreaks of deadly fighting.
During Blinken's trip to the Middle East last month, the repeated mantra from Israelis and Palestinians, and the left and right, was that the two-state solution — the proposed creation of sovereign Palestinian and Israeli states that for decades had consensus support internationally and locally — was dead.
Some in the new, far-right Israeli government — the most extreme and religiously conservative in the nation's history — want to see the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, expulsion of many Palestinians and confiscation of most West Bank land, where the Palestinian state would have been created.
Many Palestinians see their government as weak and useless — President Mahmoud Abbas has overstayed his term by a decade and refused to hold elections — and have watched as Jewish settlers have expanded their occupation. The heavily guarded settlements have effectively made the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.
Meanwhile, Abbas has lost control over a northern swath of the West Bank, including cities such as Jenin and Nablus, giving rise to armed militant groups, which in turn has led to regular, deadly incursions by Israeli troops.
And yet the Biden administration, like most U.S. governments except for that led by former President Trump, continues to promote the two-state solution as the way to resolve the Middle East’s most stubborn and complex conflict.
"The United States is committed to working toward our enduring goal of ensuring that the Palestinians and Israelis enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, opportunity, justice and dignity," Blinken said on his last day in the Middle East after zipping through Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah in late January. "The only way to achieve that goal is through preserving and then realizing the vision of two states for two peoples."
U.S. officials “keep talking about their desire for a two-state solution, but they do nothing to implement it,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian attorney who once advised the Palestinian Authority. Implementation, she said, would have to include blocking settlement expansion along with the confiscations, demolitions, and evictions of Palestinians by Israel that have become routine.
“It is a fantasy,” Buttu said from her home in Haifa, Israel. “ ‘It will happen, it will happen,’ they say. In reality, it is as dead as a dodo bird.”
Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Middle East special envoy, said the administration cannot declare the two-state solution dead because there is no viable alternative.
One oft-mentioned option is a single state of Israelis and Palestinians with equal rights. Some polling of Palestinians has shown growing support for the arrangement.
But the prospects for that happening are perhaps even dimmer than for the two-state solution. What would such a state be called? Who would be in charge of security?
It would be neither Israeli nor Palestinian and wouldn't satisfy the nationalist aspirations of either side. And because of higher birth rates among Palestinians, Israeli Jews might be a minority in such a state.
"Once you have equal rights, it's not a Jewish state anymore," said Indyk, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "What Israeli prime minister is going to hand the keys over to the Palestinians?
"Neither side is ready for the other side to rule."
A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released last month found what the pollsters called disturbing trends of intolerance and hatred exacerbated by separation, collapsed diplomacy and dehumanization, with each side less willing to recognize the other.
The survey was conducted by Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, and Dahlia Scheindlin, a fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Century International, a liberal think tank, and sponsored in part by the U.S. Institute for Peace. They focused on surveying a younger-than-usual cohort, Israelis and Palestinians aged 15 and older. The median age in Israel is 30, and is 21 in the Palestinian territories.
The poll showed support at an all-time low for the two-state solution: 20% among Israeli Jews aged 18-34 and around 30% for Palestinians in the same age group. The survey also found that, for the first time, support in Israel for a nondemocratic regime — unequal rights between Israelis and Palestinians — is stronger than that for a two-state solution.
According to the poll, a majority on each side rejects the other's historical connection to the land and believes that violence is the only way to resolve the conflict.
"It's become a zero-sum game that has left room only for people with maximalist positions, extremists on both sides," said Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, director of the United States Institute of Peace’s program for Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The new Israeli government is led by returning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who formed a coalition with some of the country's most radical, anti-Arab parties that were once taboo in Israeli politics. The Cabinet, which is predominantly male with several ultra-Orthodox officials, includes supporters of Meir Kahane, a radical rabbi branded a terrorist by the United States who was assassinated in 1990.
The Biden administration is hoping Netanyahu will curb some of his colleagues' more radical, precedent-breaking tendencies as he tries to further Israel's acceptance in the region among Arab and Gulf states. Seizing more Palestinian-claimed land or excessive repression would jeopardize such efforts.
"I've got my two hands on the steering wheel," Netanyahu has told foreign media on several occasions, insisting he, not his allies, will call the shots.
But Netanyahu also needs his Cabinet to support fundamental changes to the judiciary that could dash his own trial on corruption charges. He has denied that his challenge to the court system is self-motivated.
On the Palestinian side, youth militias have sprung up that carry out attacks, particularly on settlers, and Abbas is said to be reluctant to crack down on them.
The Palestinian Authority has also pursued an international campaign, attempting to carry its grievances to forums including the International Criminal Court to obtain judgments against Israel. The moves have infuriated Israel, and have also been condemned by the U.S.
In his trip to the region, Blinken subtly chided both Netanyahu and Abbas for straying from democracy, urging that free expression, civil rights and "values" be respected in their respective countries.
At the same time, however, the Biden administration would like to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off the top of its to-do list, preferring to focus on China and Ukraine. U.S. officials acknowledge the dynamic in the Middle East is too volatile and the diplomatic distances too great to make progress. And Blinken and other senior U.S. officials have repeatedly told Israelis and Palestinians that it is incumbent on them to resolve their own problems.
"You need leadership in three places, and you don’t have it," said Daniel Kurtzer, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt. "Israel thinks it can destroy the Palestinians’ violence infrastructure. The Palestinians think they can stop Israeli settlement and confiscation of land. Both have failed. There is no political outcome — just killing."
When CIA director Burns returned from his trip to the Middle East, he gave a troubling assessment to a group of foreign service students at Georgetown University.
He warned of "even greater fragility, even greater violence" between Israelis and Palestinians, saying conditions resembled the eve of the second intifada. The Palestinian uprising that began in the year 2000 left nearly 5,000 people dead and is widely regarded as the end of the peace process.

Europe's Proxy War against Israel....How The EU Ignores Hamas' Crimes
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/February 13, 2023
What is even more painful and humiliating for the Palestinians, is that EU officials who regularly visit the Gaza Strip intentionally ignore the suffering of the Palestinians living under Hamas.
On February 2, fifteen EU Heads of Mission visited the Gaza Strip without saying a single word about any of the victims of Hamas's crimes and human rights violations.
Notably, the EU did not state that it is Hamas, whose wealthy leaders live comfortable lives in Qatar, Turkey and other countries, that is mainly responsible for the bad "humanitarian situation" in the Gaza Strip.
Instead of working to strengthen the economy after it violently seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has since been investing the millions of dollars it receives in building tunnels, and manufacturing and smuggling weapons to attack Israel.
Hamas, in addition to its disproportionately large military budget, also diverts aid money from Europe and the US to fund its military ventures.
When Hamas threatens that Israel will "pay the price," the Iranian-backed group is actually saying it will continue to murder Jews for daring to enforce the law against those who violate the law.
The EU show of solidarity with the residents of Khan al-Ahmar not only emboldens Hamas, it also incentivizes Palestinians to pursue their illegal attempts to seize territory that, in the Oslo Accords, they had agreed did not belong to them, as well as to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel.
Recently, a confidential document composed by the EU mission in east Jerusalem revealed that Brussels is actively working with the Palestinians to take over all of Area C by building scores of other illegal "facts on the ground." By doing so, the EU has disqualified itself from playing the role of an honest broker in any future peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
What right does any European official have to tell Israel that it is not permitted to enforce the law against illegal squatters? Would any European official tolerate it if, for example, an Israeli government official told the authorities in Paris or Madrid that they are not entitled to take action against those who break the law in their cities?
The actions of the EU finally expose its deep hostility toward Israel in Europe's proxy war against the Jewish state, as well as its undisguised bias in favor of the Palestinians.
By obsessing about Israel and ignoring the crimes of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the EU is doing a massive disservice to the two million Palestinians living there. The EU's actions always seem more about hating Israel than helping the Palestinians.
If the Europeans truly cared at all about the Palestinians, they would raise the roof about the crimes committed by Hamas against the residents of the Gaza Strip. And they would be calling out their cohorts in the Palestinian Authority for abusive governance, corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and especially the Palestinian crackdown on human rights activists and journalists, who are trying to tell the EU, the international community and the so-called human rights groups about the brutal conditions under which their leaders keep forcing them to live.
By obsessing about Israel and ignoring the crimes of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the EU is doing a massive disservice to the two million Palestinians living there. The EU's actions always seem more about hating Israel than helping the Palestinians. Pictured: Head of the European Union's mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff (R) visits the illegally-built Palestinian community of Khan al-Ahmar near Jerusalem, on January 30, 2023. (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
On January 30, representatives of the European Union and several other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Spain and Sweden, visited the Palestinian community of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank "to express their concern at the threat of demolition facing the village."
Khan al-Ahmar, home to 38 Palestinian families, was illegally built more than a decade ago as part of the Palestinian Authority's plan to illegally seize land near Jordan in Area C of the West Bank, which is exclusively controlled by Israel in accordance with the Oslo Accords signed between the Palestinians and the Israeli government.
A few days before the EU officials and diplomats visited the village, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, demolished dozens of houses on the other side of Israel, near Egypt, in the Gaza Strip, as part of a plan to expand a coastal highway. Some of the homeowners expressed outrage over the Hamas demolitions. One of them described the them as a new catastrophe and a death sentence for scores of families. Another Palestinian denounced the demolitions as a "crime" and said they were "carried out by Hamas under the threat of arms."
The EU officials and other foreign diplomats -- who had come to the Middle East to express solidarity with the residents of the illegal village in the West Bank -- did even bother to comment at all on the demolition of the homes Hamas had destroyed. Without question, they would have heard of the demolitions from Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip or through the Palestinian media, but the foreign officials chose to ignore the "new catastrophe" and "crime." Why? Their hatred for Israel permits them to give Hamas a pass for the atrocities they commit against their own people, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but then to accuse the Israelis of defending what is rightfully theirs.
The plight of the families in the Gaza Strip, like other human rights violations committed by Hamas, are being ignored not only by the EU, but the international community as well. Unfortunately for these families, the bulldozers that destroyed their homes belong to Hamas, not Israel.
One can only imagine the uproar in the international community had Israel sent bulldozers to raze dozens of homes in the Gaza Strip. If those homes been demolished by Israel and not by Hamas, the same EU officials who visited Khan al-Ahmar would have rushed to the Gaza Strip to meet with the distraught families. What is even more painful and humiliating for the Palestinians, is that EU officials who regularly visit the Gaza Strip intentionally ignore the suffering of the Palestinians living under Hamas.
On February 2, fifteen EU Heads of Mission visited the Gaza Strip without saying a single word about any of the victims of Hamas's crimes and human rights violations.
After the tour, the EU said in a statement:
"Gaza remains a priority for the EU and its Member States. The humanitarian situation is of great concern. It is high time to end the closure of the Strip and achieve Palestinian reconciliation."
Notably, the EU did not state that it is Hamas, whose wealthy leaders live comfortable lives in Qatar, Turkey and other countries, that is mainly responsible for the bad "humanitarian situation" in the Gaza Strip.
Instead of working to strengthen the economy after it violently seized the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has since been investing the millions of dollars it receives in building tunnels, and manufacturing and smuggling weapons to attack Israel. As if that were not enough, two years ago Hamas imposed a slew of new taxes on imported goods, sparking rare protests by many Palestinians.
Hamas allocates 55% of its budget to fund its military needs, but the share of the budget for restoring the Gaza Strip is less than 5%.
Hamas, in addition to its disproportionately large military budget, also diverts aid money from Europe and the US to fund its military ventures.
As the EU officials were voicing support for the illegal village of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank, residents of the town of Bet Lahiya, also on the other side of Israel in the Gaza Strip, were protesting the theft of their lands by Hamas. According to the residents, Hamas was illegally transferring large parts of land that belonged to them, the residents, to Hamas loyalists without telling anyone. A statement issued by the residents said that they are determined to thwart the Hamas "conspiracy."
This is the same Hamas that warned the EU delegation to insist on Israel permitting the Arabs illegally occupying Khan al-Ahmar not to evacuate it. Israel, by the way, had even built a new town not far away from Khan al-Ahmar, for these Arabs to move to and that would allow them "to maintain the same texture of life," but the Arabs would have none of it. "The aggression on Khan al-Ahmar is rejected and [Israel] will pay the price, sooner or later," said Hamas spokesperson Mohammed Hamadeh.
When Hamas threatens that Israel will "pay the price," the Iranian-backed group is actually saying it will continue to murder Jews for daring to enforce the law against those who violate the law by illegally seizing land and building houses without permits, as in Khan al-Ahmar.
The EU show of solidarity with the residents of Khan al-Ahmar not only emboldens Hamas, it also incentivizes Palestinians to pursue their illegal attempts to seize territory that, in the Oslo Accords, they had agreed did not belong to them, as well as to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel.
What right does any European official have to tell Israel that it is not permitted to enforce the law against illegal squatters? Would any European official tolerate it if, for example, an Israeli government official told the authorities in Paris or Madrid that they are not entitled to take action against those who break the law in their cities?
The Europeans are further encouraging the Palestinians to violate the law by illegally building in violation of the Oslo Accords. Recently, a confidential document composed by the EU mission in east Jerusalem revealed that Brussels is actively working with the Palestinians to take over all of Area C by building scores of other illegal "facts on the ground." By doing so, the EU has disqualified itself from playing the role of an honest broker in any future peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
The actions of the EU expose its deep hostility toward Israel in Europe's proxy war against the Jewish state, as well as its undisguised bias in favor of the Palestinians.
By obsessing about Israel and ignoring the crimes of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the EU is doing a massive disservice to the two million Palestinians living there. The EU's actions always seem more about hating Israel than helping the Palestinians.
If the Europeans truly cared at all about the Palestinians, they would raise the roof about the crimes committed by Hamas against the residents of the Gaza Strip. And they would be calling out their cohorts in the Palestinian Authority for abusive governance, corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and especially the Palestinian crackdown on human rights activists and journalists, who are trying to tell the EU, the international community and the so-called human rights groups about the brutal conditions under which their leaders keep forcing them to live.
*Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
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Apocalyptic quake exploited for cheap propaganda

Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/February 13, 2023
Only someone responsible for the killing and displacement of millions of his own citizens would see an earthquake that has claimed tens-of-thousands of lives as an opportunity for a public-relations blitz.
After years hiding away in his palaces, Assad has been out visiting Latakiya and Aleppo. Syrian diplomats are meanwhile insisting that all aid be diverted via Damascus. Yet we have witnessed this scam repeatedly; with aid channeled to pro-regime demographics, while pro-opposition populations are starved and bombed into submission. The regime’s first action after the earthquake was to bomb the stricken region of Marea — as if to ensure there were no survivors. Assad officials say that they will block any aid going to “terrorist groups” — the language the regime habitually uses for those in rebel-held areas. There are already anecdotal reports of aid being stolen and resold by this criminal regime.
Lebanese clients of Syria and Iran have meanwhile been staging pilgrimages to Damascus in support of efforts to normalize Assad. How was Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib allowed to embark on a disgraceful visit to Damascus when what was required was a show of solidarity with the victims?
Statements from Hezbollah — which controls substantial areas of Syrian territory — also exploited the quake to condemn “hypocrisy” for the world’s principled refusal to engage with the blood-soaked Assad regime. “It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people . . . gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured,” a US State Department spokesperson said — and for once, I find myself agreeing with US diplomats.
While aid is belatedly entering northern Syria via the single, badly damaged Bab Al-Hawa crossing route, Russia and China have repeatedly vetoed opening other crossings. With so many Syrian refugees having previously fled to quake-epicenter areas of southern Turkiye, we now see lorryloads of body-bags returning toward Syria, repatriating these poor souls.
The earthquake returns Syria to the top of the global agenda, while serving as a reminder of Assad’s fundamental inhumanity.
Assad has denied Netanyahu’s claim that Damascus asked Israel for help, with both sides exploiting the quake for propaganda. There are meanwhile concerns that Iran will capitalize on the US temporary alleviation of sanctions to use aid convoys for transporting arms and other contraband goods.
In a related context, I had a conversation last week with several senior European Middle East diplomats who sketched out various scenarios for electing a Lebanese president and containing Iran.
They noted that Hezbollah was coming under increasing pressure as its grassroots support weakened, the broader population became awakened to the threats it poses, and the group’s alliance with the FPM’s Michel Aoun and Gibran Bassil became ever-more fragile. They expressed hope for a scenario where Hezbollah had no option but to sign onto a consensus candidate (who in any case the group would seek to bend to their will), allowing Lebanon to advance toward an IMF deal.
However, they also sketched out a scenario without consensus on a president or a government, in which the country descended into anarchy. They noted that with the cessation of nuclear negotiations, it could be a matter of time before Netanyahu took military action to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program. Hezbollah may not be in a position to refuse embarking on a war with Israel at Tehran’s behest, which would quickly become regionalized and highly destructive.
While many Lebanese Shiites still see Hezbollah as their nominal representative, they don’t buy into the hard-line anti-national elements of its agenda. They are also sick of poverty and the degradation of the country’s situation, and they experienced more than enough of the 2006 conflict to embrace Hezbollah’s readiness to take on the “Zionist enemy” again.
People who regularly engage with Lebanese leadership figures remark on their complete disregard for the suffering of ordinary Lebanese and their reluctance to be drawn into conversations on such themes, while obsessing over regional rivalries and forcibly repatriating Syrian refugees. The earthquake, the 2020 port explosion, IMF negotiations and the presidential standoff consequently become negotiating cards to exploit in a broader jostling for position. Decisions currently being taken, or indefinitely postponed, impact the lives of millions and will ultimately influence whether or not the region teeters into renewed conflict.
My Western interlocutors noted that the increased animosity toward Tehran was ironically more due to its arming of Moscow, rather than its continuing crimes in the region. They also noted that increased vigilance along national borders had reined in Hezbollah and Assad’s ambitions of fulling their coffers by dominating the narcotics trade, particularly with little prospect of their Iranian benefactors reaping windfalls from sanctions relief following a nuclear deal. After months of protests, this is a period of exceptional weakness for Iran, and hence also its proxies.
Hezbollah’s tanking of the economy means that within Lebanon itself there is “nothing left to steal,” hence Hassan Nasrallah’s uncustomary flexibility on lucrative issues of borders and gas exploitation, as he perceives the opportunity for profit.
Assad will never be fully rehabilitated: His tenuous grip on a portion of Syria is only thanks to a fateful alliance with Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. The families of millions of people whose lives he destroyed will never forget. In the context of growing global animosity toward Moscow and Tehran, as Iran-made drones are used in new onslaughts against Ukraine, Assad is likely to remain permanently frozen out from the international community.
The earthquake temporarily returns Syria to the top of the global agenda, while serving as a reminder of Assad’s fundamental inhumanity. He and his Lebanese and Iranian allies can spin for all they are worth, but the passing of time does not render Assad any less of a war criminal.
Syrians impacted by the earthquake are no less deserving of global support than the tragic victims in Turkiye. It is not their fault that the world abandoned this conflict and left Syria frozen as a handful of dysfunctional cantons.
The onus therefore lies heavily on the international community to atone for its accumulated failings of the Syrian people, and move heaven and earth to heed their cries in their latest hour of need.
*Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.

Macron seeks allies from among those who would replace him
Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/February 13, 2023
In an EU where working hours can peak at 48 hours a week and commonly average 40, France’s 35-hour working week is a very comfortable arrangement. However, even the prospect of a growing budget deficit and unsustainable public spending has not discouraged France’s workers from robustly opposing urgent reforms to their sacred (and similarly generous) pension system.
A fortnight of strike action and the raucous collapse of a debate at the National Assembly are where French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambitious reforms to the pension system currently stand. Without political support from unlikely allies, the president’s reforms, and indeed his prime minister’s government, will falter as the economy lurches forward meeting the demands of increasingly burdensome retirees, numbering around 15 million.
Contrary to the expected strike fatigue, public opinion is a staggering 69 percent against reforms. A day after France’s National Assembly started to debate an overhaul of pensions, workers walked off the job and took to the streets in nationwide strikes. The fourth time such major demonstrations have taken place since the new year, people are angered at the prospect of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and separately increasing the number of years that people must make contributions to receive a full state pension.
The president has said that this “balancing of the system” is urgent as the current age is dragging on public finances. His chief opponents, France’s vigorous left, spear-headed by its restive unions, have called the reforms “dangerous for democracy.” The reforms not having not waned, French unions and major political figures protested in their hundreds and thousands on Saturday (Feb. 11). Though the Interior Ministry and the government have been keen to highlight that the weekend protests in place of further strikes show decreased resolve, in reality they were planned by the unions to allow a larger section of the population who cannot usually join weekday strike action to attend. With as many attendees as the first three days of action, this weekend’s disruption on the streets is likely to be replicated in parliament where the government lacks the numbers to proceed.
Macron’s government is facing a harsh political battle in parliament that could last weeks or months. France’s pensions — widely considered to take up to a staggering 13.64 percent of gross domestic product in a country that already has the largest government expenditures in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development — are unsustainable. As a reform-minded president, the proposed changes are an opportunity to get his agenda back on track. However, as the lower house began debating the reforms, it is clear that Macron is risking his presidency with a highly unpopular campaign pledge that his public accounts minister is calling a stark choice between “reform or bankruptcy.”
Without political support from unlikely allies, the president’s reforms, and indeed his prime minister’s government, will falter.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has yet to assemble the necessary support to give her a majority to pass the draft law. Not only was the debate suspended as the labor minister was shouted down, more than 20,000 amendments have been proposed by opposition lawmakers to stall proceedings. With the president’s centrist alliance only holding 250 seats, Borne needs to win over opposition politicians, or convince them to abstain, to reach the necessary 289 votes. If she cannot assemble the votes, she can use the government’s emergency power under Article 49.3 to impose legislation without a vote, though it is highly unlikely she would, given that pension reform is such a sensitive subject.
The most likely quarter to come to the government’s aid is France’s erstwhile party of government, Les Republicains. A shadow of its former electoral self, the party is split between two factions, each looking to outdo the other in their representation of middle- and low-income voters who they have lost to the far left and right in recent elections. One group has all but signed up to the reforms, albeit that Borne agree to some changes, another rebel faction is seeking changes that would protect those who started working at younger ages. Their leader, MP Aurelien Pradie, has been intransigent on the issue, saying “if they do not accept our amendment without changing a single comma, they will not get the votes they need.”
The very public struggle of Macron’s party to hold the centrist coalition together is intentional. The presidential ambitions of his allies and opponents are superseding his reform agenda as they jockey to replace him in 2027. Nevertheless, Macron has too much riding on pension reform to abandon it quietly — though should he succeed, his reforms will only serve to embolden the extremists of French politics who have grown in importance in recent years. The reforms will not be seen as a crucial 18 billion euros ($19.5 billion) in annual savings for the French treasury but rather the work of a small elite that compromises the circumstances of the working many.
• Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator and an adviser to private clients between London and the GCC.
Twitter: @Moulay_Zaid

More weapons, less refugees: Is Israel a neutral party in the Russia-Ukraine war?

Ramzy Baroud/Arab News/February 13, 2023
For a whole year, Israel has struggled in its attempts to articulate a clear and decisive position regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. The reason behind the seemingly confused Israeli position is that it stands to lose, regardless of the outcome. But is Israel a neutral party?
Israel is home to a population of almost one million Russian-speaking citizens, one-third of them arriving from Ukraine shortly before and immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those Israelis, with deep cultural and linguistic roots in their actual motherland, are a critical constituency in Israel’s polarized political scene. After years of marginalization following their initial arrival in Israel, mostly in the 1990s, they managed to formulate their own parties and, eventually, exert direct influence on Israeli politics. Russian-speaking ultranationalist leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu, Avigdor Lieberman, is a direct outcome of the growing clout of this constituency.
While some Israeli leaders understood that Moscow holds many important cards, whether in Russia itself or in the Middle East, others were more concerned about the influence of Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan Jews in Israel itself. Soon after the start of the war, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid stated a position that took many Israelis, and, of course, Russia by surprise. “The Russian attack on Ukraine is a serious violation of the international order. Israel condemns this attack,” Lapid said.
The irony in Lapid’s words is too palpable for much elaboration, except that Israel has violated more UN resolutions than any other country in the world. Its military occupation of Palestine is also considered the longest in modern history. But Lapid was not concerned about “international order.” His target audience consisted of Israelis — about 76 percent of them were against Russia and in favor of Ukraine — and Washington, which dictated to all of its allies that half positions on the matter are unacceptable.
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland warned Israel plainly in March that it must have a clear position on the issue, and “join the financial sanctions” against Russia if “you (meaning Tel Aviv) don’t want to become the last haven for dirty money.”
As Russia and Iran heightened their military cooperation, Israel felt justified in becoming more involved.
As millions of Ukrainians escaped their country, thousands landed in Israel. Initially, the news was welcomed in Tel Aviv, which has been worried about the alarming phenomenon of “yordim,” or reverse immigration out of the country. Since many of the Ukrainian refugees were not Jews, this created a dilemma for the Israeli government. The Times of Israel reported on March 10 that “footage aired by Channel 12 news showed large numbers of people inside one of the airport’s terminals, with young children sleeping on the floor and on a baggage carousel, as well as an elderly woman being treated after apparently fainting.” In January, the Israeli Aliyah and Integration Ministry decided to suspend the special grants for Ukrainian refugees.
Meanwhile, Israel’s political position seemed conflicted. Whereas Lapid remained committed to his anti-Russian stance, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett maintained a more conciliatory tone, flying to Moscow on March 5 to consult with Russian President Vladimir Putin, purportedly at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Later on, Bennett alleged that Zelensky had asked him to obtain a promise from Putin not to assassinate him. Though the claim, made several months after the meeting, was vehemently rejected by Kyiv, it illustrates the incoherence of Israel’s foreign policy throughout the conflict.
During the early phase of the war, Israel wanted to participate as the mediator, repeatedly offering to host talks between Russia and Ukraine in Jerusalem. Hence, it wanted to communicate several messages: To illustrate Israel’s ability to be a significant player in world affairs; to assure Moscow that Tel Aviv remains a neutral party; to justify to Washington why, as a major US ally, it remains passive in its lack of direct support to Kyiv and, also, to score a political point, against Palestinians and the international community, that Occupied Jerusalem is the center of Israel’s political life.
The Israeli gambit failed, and it was Turkiye, not Israel, that was chosen by both parties for this role.
In April, videos began emerging on social media of Israelis fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Though no official confirmation from Tel Aviv followed, the recurring event signaled that a shift was underway in the Israeli position. This position evolved over the course of months to finally lead to a major shift when, in November, Israel reportedly granted NATO members permission to supply Ukraine with weapons that contained Israeli technology.
Moreover, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel has agreed to purchase millions of dollars’ worth of “strategic materials” for Ukrainian military operations. Therefore, Israel had practically ended its neutrality in the war.
Moscow, ever vigilant about Israel’s precarious position, sent messages of its own to Tel Aviv. In July, Russian officials said that Moscow was planning to shut down the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the main body responsible for facilitating Jewish immigration to Israel and Occupied Palestine.
Netanyahu’s return to the office of prime minister in December was meant to represent a shift back to neutrality. However, the rightwing Israeli leader pledged during interviews with CNN and French LCI channel on Feb. 1 and Feb. 5 respectively, that he would be “studying this question (of supplying Ukraine with the Iron Dome Defense System) according to our national interest.” Again, the Russians warned that Russia “will consider (Israeli weapons) to be legitimate targets for Russia’s armed forces.”
As Russia and Iran heightened their military cooperation, Israel felt justified in becoming more involved. In December, Voice of America reported on the exponential growth in Israel’s arms sales, partly due to a deal with the US Lockheed Martin Cooperation, one of the major US weapon suppliers to Ukraine. The following month, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that “Israel is cautiously opening its arsenal in response to Kyiv’s pressing demands.”
The future will further reveal Tel Aviv’s role in the Russian-Ukraine war. However, what is quite clear for now is that Israel is no longer a neutral party, even if Tel Aviv continues to repeat such claims.
*Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for more than 20 years. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books, and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. Twitter: @RamzyBaroud

War Propaganda And Ideology At The Edge Of Oblivion
Amb. Alberto M. Fernandez*/ MEMRI Daily Brief No. 455/February 13, 2023|
Within the coming days the cruel Russia-Ukraine War will enter its second year. Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has triggered a series of global consequences not yet fully understood.[1] Despite intense scrutiny and speculation, no one really knows how it will turn out.[2] One hopes and prays that it will not lead to a nuclear exchange but even that dire eventuality cannot be discounted. Both Russia and Ukraine are supposedly preparing new armies aimed to deliver a knockout blow, both place hope in new weapons, both are desperately looking for more men, both have freed convicts to fight and you can find videos of forced conscription on both sides. Atrocities abound. Both sides search for allies and sources of support worldwide, no matter how marginal.
And aside from the two belligerents, other powers are heavily involved. The war has brought Russia even closer to China and Iran than it already was (these close relations were already there before the war). Meanwhile, NATO and especially the United States – at least the ruling elites – have taken up the cause of Ukraine with a passion not seen since the days after 9/11. Naturally, it is also in Ukraine's interest to involve NATO even more forcefully into the conflict, without limits or redlines, and the inertia toward that direction seems slow but inexorable. It is hard to believe that it was only seven years ago that an American President, Barack Obama, was described as believing that "Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there."[3] No one in the Biden Administration seems to believe this, at least publicly.
My own interests in this conflict are more narrowly limited to the issues of propaganda and ideology, topics I have both studied and worked on in government and out of it for many years. The focus is less on morality, who is just or unjust, or who will win but rather on the war of narratives and beliefs, including as expressed beyond the borders of the two immediate belligerents.
As the underdog and the victim of a Russian invasion, Ukraine has naturally benefited from considerable worldwide sympathy, particularly in the West. Ukrainian propaganda has been relentless and quite successful but like Western messaging about the conflict, it is less about the actual quality of the messaging than pushing against an open door, the Russians were already regarded as great villains in the West even before they invaded. War propaganda is much easier when it occurs among populations already conditioned (sometimes for very good reasons) to believe it. Before sympathetic audiences, Russian losses are played up and Ukrainian losses are played down, stories that seem almost too good to be true, usually are.[4] In the West, Ukraine became more than a terrible war or a tragedy, it became "the latest thing."
American and pro-Ukraine messaging has been somewhat less successful in regions such as Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia. The reasons seem obvious. In all of those regions, there is a built-in disposition in some quarters against Western messaging because there are many, both historic and recent, of what are viewed as examples of Western imperialism, invasion, and hegemony. Just as it does not take much to convince a Pole about Russian evil intentions, it does not take much for an Arab to be skeptical about anything the Americans are promoting when it comes to war, invasion, and international law.
American pro-Ukraine messaging seems more successful when it sticks to basic issues – Russia attacked Ukraine and seeks to annex its territory across an internationally recognized border – rather than sweeping pious intonations about the liberal democratic order or human rights or whatever fashionable enthusiasm is sweeping the Acela Corridor and the Eurocrats in Brussels.[5] The latter resonate in that part of the world already dominated by the United States and its closest allies but not everywhere. Soberly labeling actual Russian-controlled or leaning sources as such, without exaggeration, works better than moral hyperventilating.
As far as Russian propaganda, that oft-cited bogeyman of American elites, it has been shown to be as overrated in its effectiveness as the Russian Army on the battlefield. Indeed, looking at the past decade, never has so much (in Western efforts both in the public and private spheres) been spent over so little. Russia's propaganda successes are mostly either because of the previously cited complicated past of the West itself in certain regions of the world or because of self-inflicted wounds by Western propagandists.
When a U.S. official claimed that Ukrainian missiles falling in Poland were actually Russian or when the destruction of Russia's Nord Stream pipeline is spun as actually having been done by the Kremlin, it is Western credibility that is "devalued" by the West itself.[6]
Moscow's biggest propaganda success in recent years was not done by Moscow at all but by the American national security state and then by elite opinion, supposedly in trying to counter the Russians. The cure has been deadlier than the disease and it is the West, through overuse and misuse, that has fatally damaged the term "disinformation." First in the campaign against the legitimacy of the 2016 election results and throughout Donald Trump's presidency, then in the rise of unhinged "woke" advocacy against American society, history, and institutions, then in the campaign by the intelligence community against supposed Russian disinformation on American social media in the 2020 elections, it is America that, in a way undreamed of by the Russian Internet Research Agency, has waged a devastating campaign against itself. The discrediting of institutions, the levels of polarization and chaos achieved, dwarf anything Moscow has ever done. It is also no surprise then when Russia or China or Iran mirror and amplify narratives and tropes – left and right – that originated domestically by Americans using them against the United States. The internal damage from our own turmoil and from our ham-fisted response to Kremlin propaganda will likely be more consequential in the long run to America's destiny than whatever happens to Russia on the battlefield.
As far as the ideological dimensions of the Russian-Ukraine War, both the aggressor and the defender rely to a great extent on older sources of ideological mobilization and legitimacy. Anything and everything are grist for the propaganda mill but this is a war about blood and soil, on both sides. Nationalism, history, religion, sacrifice, flags, icons, and statues all are enlisted in a sacred cause.[7] Regardless of Western talk about Russian fascists and Russian talk about Ukrainian Neo-Nazis, both sides look decidedly martial and nationalistic in ways that seem to put them at variance with the Western zeitgeist. This reality will have consequences after the war for both sides no matter who wins. And while the willingness of the brave Ukrainians to fight and die has been one of the great surprises of the war, it is hard to believe that Western armies would do better than either the Ukrainians or the Russians in fighting the type of grinding war that has been fought, at the siege of Mariupol or in the trenches of Bakhmut. Both sides seem equally weary and equally committed, both are holding on and either one could crack under such pressure. Both sides warn of future escalation.[8]
Western armies, especially the Europeans, but even the more experienced Americans, are designed not to have to take such casualties or fight in such close quarters for so long because the lack of ideological motivation and the rigors of electoral democracy make them unsustainable. Western technological advances aim to make such sacrifices unnecessary. The West is doing in the war in Ukraine what it seems conditioned to do best these days: Sending money and shipping weapons.
Fighting for the Glory of Ukraine or for Mother Russia, for survival, even fighting for money and bloodlust, are cruder, more basic and stronger motives than fighting for the much touted "rules-based international order."[9] There are those people – mostly non-Westerners – still willing to fight in these existential ways, as we have witnessed in insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and see in Ukraine, and there those who are not. The atavistic ways seen on both sides in this war terrify because they point to mindsets and values that the West had thought were gone, or should be gone, but that remain vividly present and important.
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.
[1] See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 395, Wars Of Multiple Miscalculations, June 27, 2022.
[2] See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 451, Prospects Of Russia's War In Ukraine For 2023, January 24, 2023.
[3] Theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/#3, April 2016.
[4] See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 374, The Latest Propaganda Wars, April 14, 2022.
[5] See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 375, That 'Liberal, Post-Modern' Life, April 19, 2022.
[6] Dw.com/en/the-propaganda-war-for-ukraine/a-64282924, February 6, 2023.
[7] Grid.news/story/global/2023/01/26/russian-propaganda-responds-to-german-tank-deployment-to-ukraine-nazis-swastikas-and-talk-of-world-war-iii, January 6, 2023.
[8] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10476, Senior Russian Columnist Rostovsky: Budanov's Appointment As Ukrainian Defense Minister Presages Further Escalation By Ukraine, February 9, 2023.
[9] Editorials.voa.gov/a/6472165.html, March 6, 2022.