Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 21-22/2024
You are invited to watch a film about the life of Blessed Brother Estephan Nehme, the Lebanese Maronite monk, on April 24, 25, 27
Gallant: We Are Approaching a Decisive Point on the Northern Border
Patriarch Al-Rahi calls on Lebanese officials to work towards a 'unified national goal'
Audi: The Emperors of Our Time Are Worshippers of Wealth and Power
Shelling from Lebanon hits Western Galilee: Israeli Channel 12 reports
Israeli Cabinet Discusses Prisoner Exchange Amidst Intelligence Concerns
Al-Qassam Brigades in Lebanon Target Israeli Settlement
Israel-Hezbollah clashes: Latest developments
Fneish to LBCI: Field situation is completely separate from presidential elections
Cypriot President Set to Visit Lebanon
MP Ali Hassan Khalil Stresses Dialogue as Key to Resolving Lebanon's Crises
The LF Party Organizes a 1701 Implementation Conference/Bassam Abou Zeid/This is Beirut/April 21/2024
Hamas rockets from the south again and members of "Amal" fall
Hezbollah rejects Macron's demands, and Israel threatens an imminent settlement with Lebanon
The “quintet” is in a hurry to put pressure on Berri
Lebanese Gangs Control Crossings on Syria Border

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 21-22/2024
US House Passes $95 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package
Ukrainian, Western Leaders Laud US Aid Package as Kremlin Warns of 'Further Ruin'
Five rockets fired from Iraq towards U.S. military base in Syria, security sources say
Israel indicts sister of Hamas leader Haniyeh on terrorism incitement
Iran, Israel appear to pull back from brink as US approves military aid
Gaza officials say at least 50 bodies exhumed at hospital in Khan Yunis
Will US sanction Israeli battalion? Netanyahu will 'fight it with all my strength'
US-Israel: Netanyahu to fight any sanctions on army units
Israeli Strikes on Southern Gaza City of Rafah Kill 22, Mostly Children
Israeli leaders criticize expected US sanctions against military unit that could further strain ties
Khamenei meets with Iranian soldiers, praises its Israel strike
Russia's military is allergic to the deep reforms it needs
Graham warns Putin ‘will not stop’ if successful in Ukraine
Russia says it has taken Bohdanivka in eastern Ukraine
Ukrainian and Western leaders laud US aid package while the Kremlin warns of 'further ruin'
China's scenarios for invading Taiwan could be altered following Iran's failed attack on Israel, report says
Türkiye Detains 36 People over Alleged ISIS Ties
Iran Ramps up Crackdown as Regional Tensions Rage

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on April 21-22/2024
Where Is Our Plan?/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
Access to Gaza vital if there is to be accountability/Chris Doyle/Arab News/April 21, 2024
Good Friday Agreement in Peril/Ali A. Hamadé/This is Beirut/April 21/2024
‘Absolute Security:’ Iran, Israel, and... the World/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
Earth Day a chance to unite for a sustainable future/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 21, 2024
Tensions in the Middle East may continue for some time/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/April 21, 2024
'The Most Secure Election in American History'/John Eastman/Gatestone Institute/April 21, 2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 21-22/2024
You are invited to watch a film about the life of Blessed Brother Estephan Nehme, the Lebanese Maronite monk, on April 24, 25, 27
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/128930/128930/
لشراء بطاقات الدخول اتصل بشربل باسيل على الرقم التالي 399-7931 (416

Gallant: We Are Approaching a Decisive Point on the Northern Border
This Is Beirut/April 21/2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant referred to the conflict with Hezbollah on the Lebanese southern border as Israel’s “biggest challenge arena,” stating, “we are approaching a decisive point.” He added during his statement on Sunday from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, “We have not yet achieved our goals in the war, but we have not given up on achieving them.”

Patriarch Al-Rahi calls on Lebanese officials to work towards a 'unified national goal'
LBCI/April 21/2024
Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi presided over Sunday Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa. During his sermon, Al-Rahi called on political and civil officials "to strive for a unified national goal and to compete in means and ways to achieve this goal, based on a healthy democracy that forms Lebanon's system as a 'parliamentary democratic republic' (Preamble to the Constitution, Section C)." He said, "Based on this democracy, you must compete for the sake of the people and the state."

Audi: The Emperors of Our Time Are Worshippers of Wealth and Power
This Is Beirut/April 21/2024
The Metropolitan of Beirut, Elias Audi, stated in his sermon on Sunday that “the emperors of our time claim faith and defend it, but they are nothing but worshippers of wealth and power.”“Where are the accountable representatives of this nation when it comes to addressing the profound concept of true martyrdom, which embodies the ideals of love, sacrifice and duty entrusted upon them?” he asked. Audi said that “a big part of the Lebanese population are hungry and suffering from poverty, fear, humiliation and death, and may become martyrs, while the parliamentary representatives sit on their thrones, far from exercising true authority, service and responsibility.” “Ultimately, they will be answerable before the Divine, where the marginalized and neglected may precede them into the afterlife, echoing the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We all seek divine mercy and forgiveness, but do we truly merit it?” he asked. Moreover, Audi expressed his continuous surprise about encountering races, marathons or other events on a Sunday during prayer time which “obstruct believers from attending.” He added that “when questioned, the city governor feigned ignorance. Shouldn’t they be aware of what occurs in the capital?”“Sunday holds sacred significance for Christians, much like Friday for Muslims,” he said, adding, “Today’s obstruction of priests and worshippers from accessing the church is unacceptable. This negligence is a sin attributed to city authorities, and we trust it won’t recur.”

Shelling from Lebanon hits Western Galilee: Israeli Channel 12 reports
LBCI/April 21/2024
The Israeli Channel 12 reported on Sunday that several shells were launched from Lebanon. It added that those shells fell in open areas in the Western Galilee without causing any injuries.

Southern Front: Israeli Bombing Resumes on Sunday Morning
This Is Beirut/April 21/2024
Daily Israeli bombing continues on the southern front. On the ground, the neighborhood of Karkazan north of the town of Mays al-Jabal was subjected to intermittent artillery shelling on Sunday morning, while Aita al-Shaab was subjected to heavy machine gun fire. The Israeli Channel 12 reported that rockets fired from southern Lebanon fell in the vicinity of Shlomi in western Galilee. Moreover, Israeli reconnaissance aircraft hovered overnight, launching flares over border villages adjacent to the Blue Line. For its part, Hezbollah announced targeting on Sunday morning “a building used by Israeli army soldiers in the Shumera settlement in the Lebanese town of Tarbikha and the newly established espionage equipment around the Dofiev barracks.”On the other hand, Israeli warplanes raided around midnight a three-story house in the town of Tayr Harfa in the western sector, destroying it and causing serious damage to property, infrastructure, surrounding houses and causing serious damage to a fuel station. However, no human casualties were reported after inspection. Meanwhile, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced on X that the Israeli army “attacked targets belonging to Hezbollah in three different areas in southern Lebanon,” adding, “In one of the raids, an element was spotted from inside a military building belonging to Hezbollah in Tayr Harfa, where warplanes raided the building and destroyed it.”“Among the other targets attacked were a reconnaissance site in the Odaisseh area and two military buildings belonging to Hezbollah in the Khiam area.”

Israeli Cabinet Discusses Prisoner Exchange Amidst Intelligence Concerns
LBCI/April 21/2024
Amidst fervent calls for an immediate prisoner exchange agreement and the anticipation of early elections, the Israeli Security Cabinet convened a special session to explore avenues for resolving the impasse in the prisoner exchange negotiations.
The gathering unfolded against the backdrop of intelligence reports indicating that the remaining number of Israeli prisoners held by Hamas, still alive, does not surpass forty individuals. This revelation heightened public outcry and bolstered demands for swift action towards securing a prisoner exchange deal. Simultaneously, former security officials presented a plethora of proposals and strategic frameworks to their current counterparts, offering a nuanced and holistic approach to addressing the crisis. Of particular emphasis was the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of all fronts, with special attention directed towards the northern front. These proposals surfaced at a juncture when a classified military document from the Israeli army, entitled "Assessment of Hamas Rule," came to light. The document shed light on Hamas's endeavors to revitalize its military and civilian operations, as well as its governance of the Gaza Strip. The document also contested Hamas's purported activities in the Strip, highlighting:
- Its role in significantly curbing the pilferage of humanitarian aid trucks destined for Gaza, with the daily count reaching up to a hundred trucks in recent months.
- The quelling of protests against the movement, interpreted by the document as indicative of Hamas's firm control over the territory.
- The administration of civil affairs in densely populated areas, inclusive of infrastructural projects such as road construction.
- The imposition of judgments against dissenting voices.
This document was presented at a time when the army affirmed that the activities of military units have significantly declined, indicating an inability to resort to using force against Hamas as a pressure tactic for a prisoner exchange deal.
The biggest dilemma remains the issue of an attack on Rafah, which requires a minimum period of a month to begin its implementation. For some Israelis, the attack on Rafah could cost the lives of the remaining prisoners.
Moreover, it may strain relations between Tel Aviv and Washington, which did not agree to a plan to evacuate civilians from the city, threatening to divert twenty-six billion dollars approved by the US Congress to support Israel, making Tel Aviv more vulnerable in facing the security situation on various fronts, not just in Gaza.

Al-Qassam Brigades in Lebanon Target Israeli Settlement
This Is Beirut/April 21/2024
The Al-Qassam Brigades in Lebanon announced on Sunday afternoon that they bombed the military barracks of Shomera in the western sector of the Upper Galilee with a salvo of 20 Grad-type rockets. Additionally, Hezbollah announced that it targeted and destroyed espionage equipment at the Misgav Am site. Earlier in the afternoon, the Israeli air force attacked the village of Aita al-Shaab with two air-to-ground missiles and launched intense raids on the villages of Naqoura and Majdel Zoun.

Israel-Hezbollah clashes: Latest developments
Agence France Presse/April 21/2024
Hezbollah on Sunday announced an attack on a building used by Israeli troops in the Israeli settlement of Shomera in response to Israeli attacks on civilian homes in the south. It also attacked and "destroyed" newly-installed surveillance equipment at the Dovev Israeli post. Israel meanwhile fired artillery rounds at the southern border towns of Houla and Mays al-Jabal. Three Hezbollah fighters were killed Saturday in an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon, the group said in a statement. A source close to the group told AFP earlier on Saturday that "three Hezbollah fighters were killed and two others seriously wounded in an Israeli air strike on a house in the area of al-Jebbayn."Hezbollah later confirmed the toll, adding that it had attacked "two buildings used by the enemy soldiers" in Metula and Shlomi in northern Israel, "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks."In earlier statements, Hezbollah said it had fired on several Israeli targets, including soldiers and spy equipment. The Israeli military separately said that it had struck a "compound and the terrorist operating from it" in the area of Aita al-Shaab. It also said it had struck a "terrorist who operated in Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in the area of Kfarkela."
Since Hamas' unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza, there have been near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally. The violence has killed at least 375 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but including 70 civilians, according to an AFP tally. In northern Israel, 10 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed, according to the army. In recent days, Hezbollah has intensified its attacks against Israeli military positions, with tensions across the Middle East surging. On April 13, Iran, which supports both Hezbollah and Hamas, launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel in retaliation for a deadly April 1 air strike which leveled its consulate in Damascus.

Fneish to LBCI: Field situation is completely separate from presidential elections
LBCI/April 21/2024
Former Hezbollah minister and deputy, Mohammad Fneish, emphasized on Sunday that the participation of the resistance in supporting the people of Gaza is a humanitarian and ethical act. He considered the US administration a partner in all the injustices and massacres against the Palestinian people. Fneish pointed out in an interview on LBCI’s "Naharkom Saïd" TV show that "the Israeli enemy still harbors hostile intentions towards Lebanon and continues to think expansively, not only within Lebanon. “The war on Gaza came, and therefore Hezbollah's decision was that given all these circumstances, we cannot stand idly by," he added. He said, "If this criminal war against the people of Gaza stops, automatically, our role as resistance in supporting the people of Gaza ends, and we return to preparing to confront any Israeli violation."He added, "The resistance obliges Israel not to exceed its limits because if it does, it will be responded to in a way that deters and prevents it from overstepping."On the other hand, Fneish clarified that "Hezbollah does not determine Lebanon's borders, but rather the Lebanese state," indicating that the party has never negotiated on behalf of its country separately from the Lebanese state. He said, "Our role is to support the state in regaining its full sovereignty."He considered that the US mediator has not succeeded and does not fulfill its role in restoring rights to their owners, saying, "The US mediator always seeks to ensure Israel's security and how to meet Israeli interests."Regarding the presidential election, Fneish stressed that the field situation is completely separate from the issue of the presidential election. He said, "We are in favor of dialogue without conditions and under the presidency of the Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, and this has no relation to the field situation. We do not wait for regional settlements or the results of field confrontation."

Cypriot President Set to Visit Lebanon
This Is Beirut/April 21/2024
President Nikos Christodoulides of Cyprus stated that he will visit Lebanon with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on May 2 to announce an initiative for a larger financial package from the EU to deal with Lebanon’s refugee crisis. He emphasized the need for both sides to uphold their commitments for the initiative to succeed. President Christodoulides also announced in an interview with the German network Al-Tahrir on Sunday his dissatisfaction with the European Union’s commitments in the Middle East. He stressed the need for a better leadership and geopolitical role, emphasizing that the crisis in the Middle East has consequences for European security through the illegal migration that raises concerns. He called for tangible measures as the number of ships carrying Syrian migrants from Lebanon to Cyprus has increased. He clarified that Cyprus cannot afford to accept more refugees and has reached its maximum capacity, hence the request for EU assistance. He suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrians until further notice, emphasizing the need to protect the country’s interests. Regarding the agreement, he explained that its goal is not only to assist Lebanon but also to demonstrate EU support and to halt excessive migration to the island. He noted that even if recognized as political refugees in Nicosia, they would not be able to move to another EU country. He also pointed out that certain areas in Syria are now safe, calling for their classification as safe zones. Last month, the Cypriot Interior Minister visited countries like Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Greece to promote such initiatives within the EU. It’s worth mentioning that in March, the EU signed a partnership agreement with Egypt worth €7.4 billion, similar to agreements signed with Tunisia and Mauritania, aimed at curbing irregular migration to Europe in exchange for financial resources from the EU.

MP Ali Hassan Khalil Stresses Dialogue as Key to Resolving Lebanon's Crises
LBCI/April 21/2024
Member of the "Development and Liberation" Bloc MP Ali Hassan Khalil emphasized on Sunday that "the time is not in anyone's favor, and experience has shown that there is no solution to our crises except through dialogue. Dialogue alone opens the way to a solution in the presidential issue and in all the crises facing Lebanon," considering that rushing into dialogue will not lead to any result. Speaking at a commemorative event in the town of al-Ghazieh, Khalil said, "We are keen on sovereignty and independence, just as we have been keen on national unity and not drifting into a war desired by the enemy according to its rules. Our resistance to it and its project was not a luxury but a commitment to defend the homeland, its borders, and its sovereignty. The south is not the borders of a human group or a sect; defending these borders is defending Lebanon and all Lebanese."

The LF Party Organizes a 1701 Implementation Conference
Bassam Abou Zeid/This is Beirut/April 21/2024
In the coming days, Security Council Resolution 1701 will resurface once again through the conference organized by the Lebanese Forces. Multiple Lebanese parties, who firmly believe in the necessity of implementing this resolution, will be invited, as this remains the sole pathway to achieving enduring stability in the southern region of the Litani River. According to sources closely following the matter, while the US, along with European and Arab nations, persist in urging for the implementation of Resolution 1701, the Lebanese authorities stay idle. They offer verbal support for enforcement but refrain from taking tangible steps. For instance, they could call for Hezbollah to engage in dialogue on the matter, even amidst the ongoing war in Gaza. Such a move would show Lebanon’s goodwill towards the international community, and affirm its readiness to address all concerns and perspectives on implementing this resolution at the opportune moment. Furthermore, the conference organized by the Lebanese Forces marks a first large-scale political move in Lebanon, highlighting the stance of substantial Lebanese factions against war and in favor of sustainable peace in the south through the implementation of Resolution 1701. Recommendations and messages in this regard will also be raised to the United Nations, particularly to the five permanent members of the Security Council (the US, China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom), as well as to Arab states interested in Lebanon’s stability.
The key message of this conference is that the genuine implementation of Resolution 1701, through sincere cooperation and coordination between the Lebanese army (LAF) and UNIFIL forces, is the sole pathway to prevent Lebanon from plunging into a full-scale war, both now and in the future. It ensures that the people of southern Lebanon will not endure another ordeal and will not pay the price with their lives and possessions. In the discourse surrounding Resolution 1701, the conference or certain participants will discuss the question of Hezbollah’s arsenal — an issue currently skirted by the Americans and the French, as stipulated in Resolution 1559 which Resolution 1701 built upon. The focus will underscore that any presence of arms or armed forces outside the bounds of legitimacy serves as a persistent blown fuse, both internally and at the borders. In approaching Resolution 1701, the Lebanese Forces (LF) regard it as protected by the international community and supported within Lebanon as well. Unanimously approved by all 15 members of the UN Security Council, this resolution has garnered consent from all Lebanese factions, with Hezbollah at the forefront, without any party disavowing it. Consequently, it remains the sole pathway for long-term resolution in southern Lebanon and ensuring enduring stability across the country, extending to the borders with Syria.

Hamas rockets from the south again and members of "Amal" fall
Hezbollah rejects Macron's demands, and Israel threatens an imminent settlement with Lebanon
Nedda Al-Watan/April 22, 2024 (Google translation)
The return of the escalation in threats between Israel and Hezbollah yesterday seemed to contradict the French-Lebanese talks last Friday, especially since it was expected that an internal movement would be launched in light of the outcome of the visit of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun. The most important thing in this move, which was expected, is to demand that Hezbollah withdraw from the border in order to avoid the Israeli dangers that have begun to loom. In parallel, there was an effort to translate the Army Commander’s talks with his French and Italian counterparts in terms of strengthening the army’s capabilities in preparation for the implementation of Resolution 1701. But the winds of escalation blew in a way that was not desired by stability efforts on the southern front. Which means that the “party” has said its word, which is “no” to what French President Emmanuel Macron asked of Mikati to transfer him to the southern suburbs. Amid this escalation in positions, the field appearance of the “Hamas” movement was renewed on the southern front. The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced in a statement that it bombed yesterday “from southern Lebanon the Shomera military barracks in the western sector of the Upper Galilee, north of occupied Palestine, with 20 Grad missiles.”In parallel, and in the introduction to its evening broadcast, Al-Manar Channel said to “the Israeli who is betting on time, on war, and on political solutions with Lebanon,” that the resistance that exterminated life in his northern settlements must take into account when the resistance is able to exterminate life in all the lands. “occupied.” The head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safi al-Din, announced in this context: “We have not used all of our weapons and we are ready to repel any aggression.” The Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah also repeated in an interview with the American channel NBC News: “We have no discussion of any solution that will stop the confrontation in the south, while it continues in Gaza.”
On the other hand, the Minister in the Israeli war government, Benny Gantz, announced in a speech before the Knesset yesterday: “On the northern front, we are approaching a decisive point (with Lebanon) in how to move forward in our military approach. This is the operational front that faces the biggest and most urgent challenge, and we must deal with it on this basis. I appeal from here to the evacuated citizens, who will also celebrate Easter Eve outside their homes, I promise you. We see you, we recognize the enormous difficulty you face and your great courage. We will work to get you home safely, even before the start of the next school year.” For his part, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said near the Israeli-Syrian border after a meeting with military leaders: “We are preventing the rise of Hezbollah forces and Iranian forces that are trying to reach the borders of the Golan Heights.” From escalation in positions to field confrontations. In the latest developments yesterday evening, an Israeli air raid launched on the center of the town of Kafr Kila. Information stated that members of the Amal Movement were killed in the raid. On the Israeli side, the army announced yesterday evening the death of an officer with the rank of major, who served as deputy commander of Company 8103 of the “Etzioni Brigade” (Sixth Brigade), and was wounded in the attack on Arab Al-Aramshe. It is called Dor Zemel. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack on April 17, and said it was “a combined attack using missiles and drones on the headquarters of the new military reconnaissance company in Arab Al-Aramsha.”

The “quintet” is in a hurry to put pressure on Berri
Nedda Al-Watan/April 22, 2024 (Google translation)
Yesterday, there was conflicting information about an invitation sent by French President Emmanuel Macron to Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri to visit France. But what is certain, according to information received by “Call of the Nation” from diplomatic circles, is that the Five-Year Committee is in the process of pressuring Berri in order to complete the presidential election. This will appear in the meeting that will be held tomorrow in Ain al-Tineh between Berri and members of the committee. What else is the information? These circles answer that US Ambassador Lisa Johnson has recently persisted in raising the issue of accelerating the holding of presidential elections, especially after the murder of Pascal Suleiman, the coordinator of the “Lebanese Forces” in Jbeil, and despite saying that the crime does not have political backgrounds, American diplomacy I sensed the dangers of “sedition” being pushed. She added: “The American ambassador presented to her colleagues in the “quintet” the idea of setting a timetable for holding the presidential elections, but they asked to wait while waiting for the completion of communications with the Speaker of the Parliament tomorrow, Tuesday.” The circles explained that after Berri’s meeting, the “quintet” will meet again with the “National Moderation” bloc and a number of ministers. In a related context, an informed source stated that the “National Moderation” bloc is heading to announce “the cessation of its initiative coupled with a high-level presidential political position, the bottom line of which is the positioning of the members of the bloc presidentially on the side of those who support and support their initiative and vote for them.”

Lebanese Gangs Control Crossings on Syria Border
Baalbek : Hussein Darwish/Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
The story of Lebanese Forces coordinator Pascal Sleiman’s murder on April 7 is still unfolding. His body was found in a Syrian village near Lebanon’s Hermel district, where stolen cars often cross into Syria from Lebanon due to lax border control. This incident isn’t isolated; investigations show the perpetrators moved freely from Jbeil to Lebanese villages near Hermel. Recently, during daylight hours, unidentified individuals kidnapped Syrian Mohammed Ghasab on the international road between the Lebanese towns of Riyaq and Baalbek, near Brital town’s entrance. They took him into Syria through an illegal crossing, having lured him via social media ads about traveling to Europe. The General Directorate of Internal Security Forces had warned against such traps set by professional gangs. Ghasab’s wife, Nariman Al-Munawar, received a ransom demand of $35,000 to release him, with instructions to send photos of the cash. Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Al-Munawar reaffirmed that she’s struggling to provide for her five children and wonders how she’ll come up with the ransom money. Lebanon still struggles to control its border with Syria, where Syrian villages have become havens for criminal gangs involved in drug trafficking, car theft, and even human trafficking. These areas, inhabited mostly by Lebanese, operate independently from state control. They're connected to Lebanon and Syria by 17 illegal crossings, each with names like Alam Crossing and Nasser al-Din Crossing. Lebanese authorities can only access these areas by coordinating with Syrian security, and vice versa. Around 8,000 people live in these villages. An unnamed security source told Asharq Al-Awsat that smuggling of humans, food, and stolen cars between Syria and Lebanon is rampant through these border crossings. Gangs dealing in drugs and weapons operate freely in these areas, with visible weapons and no authority to stop them. This activity spans a 22-kilometer border stretch from Al-Qaa to Saqiet al-Jisr, reaching the North Lebanon Governorate’s borders. Despite efforts to control the borders, the situation remains chaotic.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 21-22/2024
US House Passes $95 Billion Ukraine, Israel Aid Package
Asharq Al Awsat/April 21/2024
The US House of Representatives on Saturday with broad bipartisan support passed a $95 billion legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, over bitter objections from Republican hardliners. The legislation now proceeds to the Democratic-majority Senate, which passed a similar measure more than two months ago. US leaders from Democratic President Joe Biden to top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell had been urging embattled Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring it up for a vote. The Senate is set to begin considering the House-passed bill on Tuesday, with some preliminary votes that afternoon, Reuters reported. Final passage was expected sometime next week, which would clear the way for Biden to sign it into law. The bills provide $60.84 billion to address the conflict in Ukraine, including $23 billion to replenish US weapons, stocks and facilities; $26 billion for Israel, including $9.1 billion for humanitarian needs, and $8.12 billion for the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed his thanks, saying US lawmakers moved to keep "history on the right track." "The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger," Zelenskiy said on X. The Biden administration is already finalizing its next assistance package for Ukraine so it can announce the new tranche of aid soon after the bill becomes law in order to meet Ukraine’s urgent battlefield needs, a White House official said. It was unclear how quickly the new military funding for Ukraine will be depleted, likely causing calls for further action by Congress. Biden, who had urged Congress since last year to approve the additional aid to Ukraine, said in a statement: "It comes at a moment of grave urgency, with Israel facing unprecedented attacks from Iran and Ukraine under continued bombardment from Russia." The vote on passage of the Ukraine funding was 311-112. Significantly, 112 Republicans opposed the legislation, with only 101 in support. "Mike Johnson is a lame duck ... he's done," far-right Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told reporters afterward. She has been a leading opponent of helping Ukraine in its war against Russia and has taken steps that threaten to remove Johnson from office over this issue. Greene stopped short of doing so on Saturday, however. During the vote, several lawmakers waved small Ukrainian flags as it became clear that element of the package was headed to passage. Johnson warned lawmakers that was a "violation of decorum."

Ukrainian, Western Leaders Laud US Aid Package as Kremlin Warns of 'Further Ruin'
Asharq Al Awsat/April 21/2024
Ukrainian and Western leaders welcomed a desperately needed aid package passed by the US House of Representatives, as the Kremlin claimed the passage of the bill would “further ruin” Ukraine and cause more deaths. The House swiftly approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion. With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who had warned that his country would lose the war without US funding, said that he was grateful for the decision of US lawmakers. “We appreciate every sign of support for our country and its independence, people and way of life, which Russia is attempting to bury under the rubble,” he wrote on social media site X. “America has demonstrated its leadership since the first days of this war. Exactly this type of leadership is required to maintain a rules-based international order and predictability for all nations,” he said. The Ukrainian president noted that his country’s “warriors on the front lines” would feel the benefit of the aid package. One such “warrior” is infantry soldier Oleksandr, fighting around Avdiivka, the city in the Donetsk region that Ukraine lost to Russia in February after months of intense combat. “For us it’s so important to have this support from the US and our partners,” Oleksandr told The Associated Press. He did not give his full name for security reasons. “With this we can stop them and reduce our losses. It’s the first step to have the possibility to liberate our territory.”
Ammunition shortages linked to the aid holdup over the past six months have led Ukrainian military commanders to ration shells, a disadvantage that Russia seized on this year — taking the city of Avdiivka and currently inching towards the town of Chasiv Yar, also in the Donetsk region. “The Russians come at us in waves — we become exhausted, we have to leave our positions. This is repeated many times,” Oleksandr said. “Not having enough ammunition means we can’t cover the area that is our responsibility to hold when they are assaulting us.”Other Western leaders lauded the passing of the aid package. “Ukraine is using the weapons provided by NATO Allies to destroy Russian combat capabilities. This makes us all safer, in Europe & North America,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on X. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “Ukraine deserves all the support it can get against Russia.” In Russia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the approval of aid to Ukraine “expected and predictable.” The decision “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Ria Novosti. “The new aid package will not save, but, on the contrary, will kill thousands and thousands more people, prolong the conflict, and bring even more grief and devastation,” Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, wrote on Telegram. The whole aid package will go to the US Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

Five rockets fired from Iraq towards U.S. military base in Syria, security sources say
Sun, April 21, 2024
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) -At least five rockets were launched from Iraq's town of Zummar towards a U.S. military base in northeastern Syria on Sunday, two Iraqi security sources told Reuters. The attack against U.S. forces is the first since early February when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped their attacks against U.S. troops. The attack comes on the same day Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani returned from a visit to the United States and met with President Joe Biden at the White House. Two security sources and a senior army officer said a rocket launcher fixed on the back of a small truck had been parked in Zummar border town with Syria. The military official said the truck caught fire with an explosion from unfired rockets at the same time as warplanes were in the sky. "We can't confirm that the truck was bombed by U.S. warplanes unless we investigate it," said a military official on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the incident. The attacks came one day after a huge blast at a military base in Iraq early on Saturday killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iran-backed groups. The force commander said it was an attack while the army said it was investigating and there were no warplanes in the sky at the time.

Israel indicts sister of Hamas leader Haniyeh on terrorism incitement
Reuters/April 21, 2024
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's State Attorney on Sunday indicted the sister of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on charges of incitement and showing solidarity with a terror group, after she allegedly praised Hamas' Oct. 7 attack that sparked the six-month old war in Gaza. Sabah al-Salem Haniyeh, 57, lives in the southern Israeli town of Tel Sheva. Her brother is based in Qatar, as are other officials from Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh has been held in custody since her arrest on April 1, Israel's justice ministry said. There was no immediate comment from her lawyer.
According to the indictment, in the days after Hamas' Oct. 7 killing spree in southern Israel, Haniyeh sent messages to dozens of contacts, including to her brother, praising the cross-border assault and calling for further "slaughter".One of her messages mentioned in the indictment includes the line: "Oh God, count them and kill them and don't leave any of them, Oh God." Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in the Oct. 7 attack, sparking the war, in which Gaza's health authority says more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Iran, Israel appear to pull back from brink as US approves military aid
Agence France Presse/April 21, 2024
Iran and Israel appeared to step back from the brink of broader conflict as lawmakers in the United States approved new Israeli military aid despite growing criticism of its ally's war in Gaza. Iran downplayed Israel's reported retaliation for its unprecedented drone and missile attack, tamping down fears that escalating attacks between the arch enemies could tip over into a broader war in the Middle East. However a deadly blast at an Iraqi military base underlined the persisting tensions in the region, as did more deadly Israeli strikes in Gaza and intensifying clashes in the West Bank. Aiming to bolster Israel's defenses including its Iron Dome air defense system, the U.S. House of Representatives approved $13 billion in new military assistance for Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the aid bill, writing on X, formerly Twitter, that it "demonstrates strong bipartisan support for Israel and defends Western civilization". But the Palestinian presidency condemned it as "an aggression against the Palestinian people" and a "dangerous escalation". The money would "translate into thousands of Palestinian casualties in the Gaza Strip" and the West Bank, said Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Iran plays down Israel attack
After Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones a week ago in Tehran's first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory, Israel had warned it would hit back. The Iran attack was itself in retaliation for an air strike -- widely blamed on Israel -- that leveled the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards on April 1. The Israeli retaliation appeared to come on Friday, when Iranian media reported blasts in the central province of Isfahan. Fars news agency reported "three explosions" close to Qahjavarestan, near Isfahan airport and the 8th Shekari army airbase. "What happened last night was no attack," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told NBC News. "It was the flight of two or three quadcopters, which are at the level of toys that our children use in Iran," he added. "As long as there is no new adventure on behalf of the Israeli regime against Iran's interests, we will have no response."
No Israeli comment
Israeli officials have made no public comment on what -- according to a senior U.S. congressional source who spoke to AFP -- were retaliatory Israeli strikes against Iran. While tensions rose after the attack on Iran's consulate, violence involving Iran-backed groups had already been surging across the Middle East since the outbreak of the Gaza war. Officials in Iraq said one person was killed and eight wounded in an explosion at a military base south of Baghdad housing pro-Iranian armed groups. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Iran-backed Hezbollah said three of its fighters were killed in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon on Saturday. The Hamas ally has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since the Gaza war began. Violence has also flared in the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank. The Palestinian Red Crescent said at least 14 people had been killed during a 40-hour Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the northern West Bank. The Israeli army said it killed 10 militants during the raid on Nour Shams camp. The Palestinian health ministry said 11 people were wounded, including a paramedic who was shot trying to reach earlier casualties
Nine members of one family killed -
Israel has faced increasing global opposition over its military offensive in Gaza, which has reduced vast areas of the besieged Palestinian territory to rubble. Iranian political expert Hamid Gholamzadeh said that Netanyahu -- who is under pressure over the civilian toll -- needs "further escalation and another war to distract the world attention" away from suffering in Gaza. There have been particular fears about Israel's intention to send troops into the southernmost city of Rafah, where most of the population is now sheltering, having fled violence elsewhere. Foreign ministers of the G7 group of developed economies meeting in Italy on Friday, said they opposed a "full-scale military operation in Rafah" because of the "catastrophic consequences" for civilians. But even without a full operation, the city has been under regular bombardment. On Saturday, Gaza's Civil Defense agency said several areas of Rafah had been hit overnight, including one Israeli strike that killed nine members of a family including six children. The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that allegedly resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people according to Israeli official figures.Israel has responded with a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,049 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.
Famine fears
Israel's military said it had struck dozens of militant targets over the past day, including the site in north Gaza from which a rocket was fired into the Israeli city of Sderot. Witnesses in the central Nuseirat refugee camp said the Israeli army had told them to evacuate one home, then several were destroyed. "They instruct us to evacuate and return later, but where do we go back? To ruins?" asked resident Abu Ibrahim. A U.N. report on Friday said "multiple obstacles" continued to impede delivery of urgently needed aid. Despite some recent aid convoys reaching Gaza, the World Food Programme cited "the real possibility of famine" in the north. Efforts to seal a long-sought-after truce have stalled, according to mediator Qatar. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a staunch critic of Israel's war in Gaza, met with Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday, calling for unity among Palestinians.
After Washington vetoed a Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member state earlier this week, President Mahmoud Abbas said his West Bank-based Palestinian Authority would "reconsider" its relationship with the U.S. The Israeli foreign ministry said it was summoning the ambassadors of the 12 countries that voted for the Palestinian bid "for a protest talk" on Sunday.

Gaza officials say at least 50 bodies exhumed at hospital in Khan Yunis
AFP/Sun, April 21, 2024
Gaza's civil defence said Sunday health workers had uncovered at least 50 bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces at a hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis. Israel's military said it was checking the reports. In a statement to AFP, the civil defence agency said the remains were discovered in the courtyard of Nasser Medical Complex. "Inside the Nasser Medical complex there are mass graves dug by the Israeli occupation ... we were shocked by the presence of bodies of 50 martyrs in one of the pits yesterday," Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP. "We are continuing the search operation today and are waiting for all graves to be exhumed in order to give a final number of martyrs."He alleged some of those killed had been tortured. "There were no clothes on some bodies, which certainly indicates (the victims) faced torture and abuse," Bassal said. Intense fighting raged in mid-February in the area of the hospital, and Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded it on 26 March. In a separate statement on Sunday, Hamas condemned what it said was a "mass grave of those executed in cold blood and buried with military bulldozers in the hospital's courtyard". It said more than 50 bodies had been recovered there.Several of the bodies wrapped in white shrouds were later collected by relatives, said an AFP photographer who reported that civil defence workers were seen exhuming bodies from the courtyard on Sunday.

Will US sanction Israeli battalion? Netanyahu will 'fight it with all my strength'
John Bacon, USA TODAY/Sun, April 21, 2024
Some Israeli leaders are lashing out at reported plans by the Biden administration to sanction an ultra-Orthodox Israeli combat unit that for years has faced claims of abuse against Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the intention to impose sanctions on the Netzah Yehuda Battalion as "the height of absurdity and a moral nadir."“If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a (military) unit, I will fight it with all my strength," Netanyahu said in a statement. Axios and the Israeli media outlet Haaretz, citing U.S. government sources they did not name, reported the battalion could be banned from receiving U.S. military assistance or training. The battalion, among other issues, was linked in the death of an 80-year-old Palestinian-American in 2022. Haaretz said the Biden administration is considering sanctions against other military and police units in Israel. War cabinet minister Benny Gantz asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reconsider the reported plan, saying sanctions are a dangerous precedent that "sends the wrong message to our common enemies in a time of war." The State Department, which has been investigating human rights violation claims against the battalion and other Israeli units for more than a year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said sanctions while Israel is fighting for its existence were "absolute madness." "This is part of a planned move to force the State of Israel to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state and abandon Israel's security," Smotrich said. But Israeli Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli dismissed the government's outrage as "yet another dose of denial and smearing, lies and covering-up the bitter reality." Michaeli described the battalion as a "regiment of ... those who see religion as an excuse to attack Arabs."House passes aid for Israel: Ukraine, Taiwan also in package after months of fierce debate
Developments:
∎ Hamas condemned "in the strongest terms" U.S. House approval of a security bill that includes $26 billion for military and other assistance for Israel. The vote confirmed "the collusion and official American partnership in the extermination war" against Palestinians in Gaza, the militant group said in a statement.
∎ Fourteen militants were killed, 15 were arrested, "a large amount" of ammunition and explosives were confiscated and two explosives laboratories were destroyed Sunday in an operation at the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank, the Israeli military said. Nine soldiers were wounded, the statement said.
∎ A Palestinian woman who attempted to stab soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank's Jordan Valley was "neutralized," the Israeli military said. No troops were wounded at the Beka’ot Checkpoint. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei lauded his military on Sunday for "minimizing costs and maximizing gains" in its retaliatory strike on Israel a week ago as tensions between the two nations appeared to be easing. "How many missiles were launched and how many of them hit their target is not the primary question," Khamenei said Sunday while addressing military leaders in Tehran. "What really matters is that Iran demonstrated its power."Tensions that were already high grew more dangerous three weeks ago when Israel bombed an Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing several high-ranking Iranian military leaders. Iran struck back a week ago with its "Operation True Promise," attacking Israeli territory with more than 300 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles. Most were shot down and little damage was reported, but several days later Israel targeted the Iranian city of Isfahan. Iran said little damage resulted and seemed to dismiss the possibilty of further strikes. Khamenei thanked the armed forces for its efforts and stressed that innovation in weapons and methods must "always be on the agenda."
Child saved from womb of dead mother after Gaza bombing
A baby girl was delivered from the womb of a Palestinian killed in Rafah as Israeli bombing intensified in the southern Gaza city, Palestinian health officials said. The baby, weighing a little over 3 pounds, was delivered by emergency C-section, was stable and was improving, Dr. Mohammed Salama said. At least 19 people, including 13 children, died when two houses were struck overnight, authorities said. Gaza is home to more than 1 million people, including hundreds of thousands who fled fled fighting elsewhere in the enclave. "Here is the biggest tragedy − even if this child survives, she was born an orphan," Salama said.
Hamas leader's sister indicted on terrorism charges
An Israeli prosecutor has indicted an outspoken sister of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on charges of aiding a terrorist organization and incitement to terrorism, the Times of Israel reported. The indictment against Sabah al-Salem Haniyeh, 57, accuses her of sending two WhatsApp messages to dozens of her contacts, including her brother, “praising, encouraging and supporting” Hamas for its role in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed almost 1,200, resulted in more than 250 people kidnapped and ignited the war in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The state attorney asked a court to hold her until legal proceedings have concluded. She faces a total of more than 20 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Contributing: Reuters

US-Israel: Netanyahu to fight any sanctions on army units
Tom Bateman - BBC News, Washington/April 21, 2024
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to fight any sanctions on the country's military following reports that the US is planning to cut aid to one unit. "I will fight it with all my strength," he said on Sunday. Earlier, the Axios news site said the US would target Israel's Netzah Yehuda battalion over alleged human rights violations in the occupied West Bank. The BBC understands any move would come under a US ban on aid to foreign units credibly implicated in violations. When asked last week about reports that US military aid to the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) units could be cut over allegations of human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: "I've made determinations; you can expect to see them in the days ahead". Washington - Israel's main ally - has never suspended aid to an IDF unit before. The Israeli military said Netzah Yehuda was operating in accordance with international law. "Following publications about sanctions against the battalion, the IDF is not aware of the issue," the military is quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "The IDF works and will continue to work to investigate any unusual event in a practical manner and according to law.""If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, I will fight it," Mr Netanyahu said [Reuters] On Saturday, Axios cited three US sources with knowledge of the issue as saying that Mr Blinken was expected to announce measures against Netzah Yehuda within days. It said the move would be over alleged abuses in the West Bank, including one incident in which a Palestinian-American man, 80-year-old Omar Assad, died after being bound and gagged by Israeli soldiers during a search in the West Bank in January 2022. At the time the US called for a "thorough criminal investigation and full accountability" in the case. The IDF later said it regretted Mr Assad's death and that the Netzah Yehuda commander would be "reprimanded"over it. It added that two soldiers would barred from serving in senior positions for two years, but would not be prosecuted. It said Mr Assad's death had been caused by a pre-existing medical condition. Mr Assad's family, many of whom are based in the US, condemned the decision to close the case. All the alleged violations took place before the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. Any decision to bar an IDF unit from US military assistance would be made under the "Leahy Law", sponsored in 1997 by then-Senator Patrick Leahy. It prevents US funding or training being used for foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. Last year, a group of US officials known as the "Israel-Leahy vetting forum" looked into at least a dozen allegations made against Israeli units, including the Netzah Yehuda battalion, a former senior US official told the BBC. "We believed that in most cases, these were un-remediated - in other words, the perpetrators had not been properly held to account," said Josh Paul, former director of the state department's Political-Military Affairs bureau, which oversees US arms transfers. "When we tried to advance these recommendations to the secretary [of state] we were never able to get them through the political level," he added. Mr Paul resigned from his position in November in protest at what he saw as a lack of accountability over weapons transfers to Israel. Asked whether the recommendations he mentioned had since reached Mr Blinken's desk, he cited the recent media reports suggesting they had. Formed in 1999, Netzah Yehuda is a special men-only unit where ultra-Orthodox Jews serve. Earlier this week, the state department imposed sanctions on Israeli far-right activist Ben Zion Gopstein. It said his organisation, Lehava, had "engaged in destabilising violence affecting the West Bank".

Israeli Strikes on Southern Gaza City of Rafah Kill 22, Mostly Children
Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday. Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the US. The first Israeli strike in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and the doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said. The second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from an extended family, according to hospital records. Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among those killed. Her husband's second wife and their three children were still under the rubble, al-Beheiri said. The Israel-Hamas war has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, devastated Gaza's two largest cities and left a swath of destruction across the territory. Around 80% of the population have fled their homes to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave, which experts say is on the brink of famine.

Israeli leaders criticize expected US sanctions against military unit that could further strain ties
JOSEF FEDERMAN/AP/April 21, 2024
Israeli leaders on Sunday harshly criticized an expected decision by the U.S. to impose sanctions on a unit of ultra-Orthodox soldiers in the Israeli military. The decision, expected as soon as Monday, would mark the first time the U.S. has ever imposed sanctions on a unit inside the Israeli military and further strains relations between the two allies, which have grown increasingly tense during Israel’s war in Gaza. While U.S. officials declined to identify the sanctioned unit, Israeli leaders and local media identified it as Netzah Yehuda — an infantry battalion founded roughly a quarter of a century ago to incorporate ultra-Orthodox men into the military. Many religious men receive exemptions from what is supposed to be compulsory service. Israeli leaders condemned the decision as unfair, especially at a time when Israel is at war, and vowed to oppose it. “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit in the IDF, I will fight it with all my might,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Netzah Yehuda, or Judea Forever, has historically been based in the occupied West Bank and some of its members have been linked to abuses against Palestinians. It makes up just a small part of Israel’s military presence in the territory.
The unit came under heavy American criticism in 2022 after an elderly Palestinian-American man was found dead shortly after he was detained at a West Bank checkpoint. A Palestinian autopsy said Omar Assad, 78, had underlying health conditions, but had suffered a heart attack caused by “external violence.”
It said doctors found bruises on his head, redness on his wrists from being bound and bleeding in his eyelids from being tightly blindfolded. A military investigation said that Israeli soldiers assumed that Assad was asleep when they cut off the cables binding his hands. They didn’t offer medical help when they saw that he was unresponsive and left the scene without checking to see if he was alive.
Assad had lived in the U.S. for four decades. After an outcry from the U.S. government, the Israeli military said the incident “was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” It said one officer was reprimanded and two other officers reassigned to non-commanding roles, over the incident. But the army decided against criminal prosecution, saying military investigators could not directly link their actions to the death of the U.S. citizen. Human rights groups long have argued that Israel rarely holds soldiers accountable for the deaths of Palestinians.
Investigators said soldiers were forced to restrain Assad because of his “aggressive resistance.” Assad’s family has expressed skepticism that the behavior of an ailing 78-year-old could justify such harsh treatment. Amid the uproar with the U.S., Israel moved Netzah Yehuda out of the West Bank in late 2022 and reassigned it to northern Israel. The battalion was moved to the southern border with Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the ongoing war.
In a statement Sunday, the army said its Netzah Yehuda soldiers “are currently participating in the war effort in the Gaza Strip.”
“The battalion is professionally and bravely conducting operations in accordance to the IDF Code of Ethics and with full commitment to international law,” it said. It said that if the unit is sanctioned, “its consequences will be reviewed.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that he had made a decision on reviews of allegations that several Israeli military units had violated conditions for receiving U.S. assistance outlined in the so-called Leahy Law and that they would soon be made public. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, said in a statement that he spoke Sunday evening with Blinken and told him the decision is a “mistake” because it would harm Israel's international legitimacy during wartime and because Israel's judicial system is “strong and independent.” Two U.S. officials familiar with the situation said the U.S. announcement could come as soon as Monday. The officials said about five Israeli units were investigated and all but one had been found to have taken action to remedy the violations. The Leahy Law, named for former Sen. Patrick Leahy, bars U.S. aid from going to foreign military units that have committed human rights abuses.
A reservist in the Netzah Yehuda unit, Sgt. Maj. Nadav Nissim Miranda, said the Assad death was “an unfortunate incident” but also an aberration. He told Channel 12 TV that targeting the battalion would hurt efforts to encourage religious men to enlist. But Yesh Din, an Israeli legal advocacy group, said the case was not isolated. It said one out of every five soldiers convicted of harming Palestinians or their property since 2010 comes from Netzah Yehuda, making it the unit with the highest conviction rate for such cases. The U.S. review was launched before the Hamas war and not connected to recent Israeli actions inside Gaza or the West Bank — which has experienced a dramatic spike in deadly violence since the Gaza war erupted. The U.S. has also recently imposed sanctions against violent settlers. Gadi Shamni, a retired general who once served as the military’s commander over the West Bank, said a main problem with the unit is that it was traditionally assigned exclusively to the West Bank. Violence between troops and Palestinians and settlers and Palestinians has surged there in recent years. In contrast, he said other units regularly rotate in and out of the volatile area. He said the exposure to nonstop friction and violence had caused a level of “tiredness” among the troops. Nonetheless, he said it was a stereotype to punish the entire unit and it would have been better to target specific individuals or commanders. But Ori Givati, the director of advocacy at Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group of former combat soldiers critical of Israel’s occupation, said the problems run much deeper than any particular unit. He said abuses of power by soldiers toward Palestinians are systematic and the lack of repercussions for wrongdoings are fueling incidents like the death of Assad. Israeli hard-liners blasted the expected U.S. decision. Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said the U.S. crossed a “red line,” and Tally Gotliv, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, accused the U.S. of antisemitism. But even the head of the opposition, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, rejected the move. He said the sanctions are “a mistake and we must act to cancel them.” He noted that “the source of the problem is not at the military level but at the political level.”

Khamenei meets with Iranian soldiers, praises its Israel strike
Adam Schrader/UPI/April 21, 2024
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met with Iranian soldiers on Sunday as he praised Iran's direct strike on Israel, largely foiled by the iron dome, which came in retaliation for Israel's unprovoked aggression in Damascus, Syria. "I sincerely appreciate the armed forces efforts and achievements in Operation 'True Promise' that was carried out against the Zionist regime," Khamenei said in a statement on social media. "In Operation True Promise, the armed forces showed a good image of their capabilities and power and an admirable image of the Iranian nation. They also proved the emergence of the power of the Iranian nation's determination at the international level." Khamenei said that the achievements of the Iranian military have "created a sense of splendor and magnificence" among international observers. His comments made no reference to an alleged Israeli air strike on the city of Isfahan in Iran on Friday. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli politician who lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, had blasted the strike against Isfahan as "feeble." Israel threatened to again attack Iran after the latter launched some 300 rockets and drones prompted by Israel's unprovoked decision to bomb a consulate building in Damascus, killing a top Iranian general. Amid its war in Gaza, Israel has been escalating broader tensions with its Middle Eastern neighbors -- which has led even the United States to call for restraint. The United States, however, did respond with fresh sanctions to punish Iran for retaliating against Israel.

Russia's military is allergic to the deep reforms it needs
Michael Peck/Business Insider/April 21, 2024
Can the Russian military can be reformed to better achieve Putin's revanchist aims?
Yes, but the drastic changes will not be easy, an expert on Russia's military says.
"The appearance of success may be more important than truly making progress," she argues.
Whatever the outcome of the Ukraine war, one thing seems certain: the Russian military needs drastic changes.
A country recently thought to be a top military power, with the jets, tanks and warships to match, has been forced to slog it out in conventional battle with a country a fifth its size and has suffered an estimated 500,000 casualties without victory in sight after two years. What few innovations the Kremlin has made, such as using convicts as suicide infantry, are dubious and ad hoc at best. The question is whether the Russian military can actually change in the near-future, which would impact the current war in Ukraine and the wider grasp for conquest under Russian President Vladimir Putin. Armies tend to be conservative institutions that resist change, particularly in Russia's armed forces that date back to Tsarist and Soviet times and are rife with corruption and abuse. Yet Russia's enemies can't complacently assume that Moscow's military will always be stuck in a rut, warns a US expert.
"The Russian military is capable of reform, especially of a structural nature," wrote researcher Katherine Kjellström Elgin in a report for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank in Washington, D.C. "That does not mean, however, that reform will be easy. Indeed, Russia's tendency to seek top-down structural reforms matched with enduring characteristics of the Russian military suggest that a transformation of the Russian military will be difficult." "The Russian military is unlikely to substantially reform in the short- to medium-term," predicted Elgin, who believes "it is unlikely that its future force will be drastically different in character from the Russian military that exists today."It's not that Russia can't adapt to failure. Reforms occurred after the Crimean War of 1853-1856, yet the Soviet military was able to adapt quickly enough to transform the disaster of 1941 — when Nazi German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow — into the triumph of 1945. Today, Russia has displayed skill in waging drone and electronic warfare in Ukraine. But these are small innovations compared to the agile, NATO-style army that some Western experts claimed Russia had created before the Ukraine war Putin ordered in 2022. "Instead, the early stages of the Russian invasion exposed low morale, brittle logistics, overly centralized command and control, deficiencies in equipment, rampant corruption, and an overreliance on esoteric doctrine, revealing that the reform efforts that began in 2008 had failed to fully deliver on many of their core objectives," Elgin pointed out. Historically, when the Russian military does change, it tends to be top-down reforms such as reorganizing military districts or modernizing equipment, rather than low-level tactics, Elgin wrote. Even when leaders order reforms, change is blocked by "military culture that does not encourage authority, a lack of talented and empowered middle management, inaccurate information, and a lack of flexibility to adjust course."
The system also encourages pleasing superiors and "conveying the appearance of success may be more important than truly making progress." To be fair, such complaints about style over substance are not unheard of in the US or other militaries. But this problem is especially acute in Russia's highest echelons, where apparatchiks stifle the feedback and criticism needed to identify what's hampering its systems and operations, including the Ukraine war. This doesn't rule out the unlikely possibility that Russia can change the overall culture of its military. However, according to Elgin, this can only happen if two conditions are met: high-level and sustained political support and adequate resources are made available. Given that observers so misjudged Russian military capabilities prior to the Ukraine war, how can the West accurately determine whether reforms are occurring? One sign is whether top Russian leaders only make an occasional speech about military improvement, or whether they continually address the issue. Another is the grievances and recommendations voiced by younger officers fresh from the battlefields of Ukraine and which officers are being promoted or ignored. And despite Russia's authoritarian crackdown on dissent, voices outside the military are a good indicator. "These voices could emerge from military blogs, the intelligence services, or private military companies," Elgin wrote. However, it is also important to study not just Russian officers, but also how ordinary soldiers are trained, Elgin told Business Insider. "What are they teaching in military schools? How are troops being trained on a daily basis? In other words, how are reforms being rolled out not just at the top levels, but how are they affecting the experience of every service member?"Reform doesn't necessarily translate into battlefield performance. Despite reforms instituted after the Crimean War, the Russian army still suffered from command control and other flaws in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. "It is possible to successfully achieve the goals you set out in a reform program, but to reform in ways that do not result in success on the battlefield," Elgin said. Any reforms today might only create a military with a new look but old problems. "It may have new equipment, new formations, and potentially new doctrine," said Elgin. "but its enduring weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and tendencies are likely to remain the same. And this is something that NATO, Ukraine, and others can prepare for and take advantage of."
**Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Graham warns Putin ‘will not stop’ if successful in Ukraine
Miranda Nazzaro/The Hill./April 21, 2024
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday stressed the urgency of support to Ukraine, warning Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not stop,” even if successful in Russia’s war with Kyiv. “Here’s what I will tell you. If you give Putin Ukraine, he will not stop,” Graham said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “This is not about containing NATO and if you give him Ukraine, there goes Taiwan because China’s watching to see what we do.” Graham, a vocal supporter of Ukraine, was discussing the Senate’s two-year reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program. The legislation extends the government’s ability to spy on foreigners located abroad for another two years. The process has faced some scrutiny from privacy hawks as it also sweeps up communications of Americans they are in contact with. “I want to know what they’re talking about over there before they kill us here. And if you shut this thing down, you’ve turned the war into a crime,” Graham said. “We’re not fighting our crime, we’re finding a bunch of people who would kill all of us if they could get here. So, when you intercept information from a foreigner overseas talking about America, I want to know what they’re talking about.” Graham’s remarks regarding the threats of foreign adversaries and Putin come one day after the House passed a massive foreign aid bill after months of stalemate and division among lawmakers. The package — passed in four separate votes — includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, $8 billion for allies in the Indo-Pacific and a package of other national security measures, including a potential ban on the TikTok app. The package now goes to the Senate, which is expected to pass it in the middle of the week. “The Ukranian military, with our help, has killed about 50 percent of the combat power of the Russians,” Graham said Sunday. “This is the year [of] more. They’re going to have more weapons, but we also want them to have new weapons.” “So, this idea ‘give up on Ukraine makes the world safer…’ if you pull the plug on Ukraine cause you don’t have enough capability. There goes Taiwan. Ukrainians are fighting like tigers,” he continued. “So this idea that we can’t help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan at the same time, I reject that. I reject it totally.”

Russia says it has taken Bohdanivka in eastern Ukraine
Reuters/April 21, 2024
Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Bohdanivka in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, Russia's defence ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Control of Bohdanivka, located just to the west of the city of the Russian-held city of Bakhmut, has been in doubt for some time. The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, in its Sunday evening report, mentioned Bohdanivka as one of a series of villages where it said Ukrainian forces repelled 13 enemy attacks. But it gave no specific details. Ukraine's Defence Ministry denied last week that Russia had captured all of Bohdanivka, while acknowledging it had lost some positions in the village in eastern Donetsk region. Unofficial Ukrainian sources have suggested Bohdanivka is in Russian hands, based on video footage of the village and the town of Chasiv Yar, to the southwest. Ukraine has focused attention on defending Chasiv Yar, describing it as an important post in keeping the Russians from advancing westward through Donetsk region to the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Maksym Zhorin, a commander on the frontline in the area, told national television on Sunday that all positions around Chasiv Yar were under full Ukrainian control. Bakhmut was captured by Russian troops in May 2023 after months of fierce fighting that levelled what was once a city of about 70,000. (Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, Ron Popeski

Ukrainian and Western leaders laud US aid package while the Kremlin warns of 'further ruin'
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)/April 21, 2024
Ukrainian and Western leaders on Sunday welcomed a desperately needed aid package passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, as the Kremlin warned that passage of the bill would “further ruin” Ukraine and cause more deaths. Ukrainian commanders and analysts say the long-awaited $61 billion military aid package — including $13.8 billion for Ukraine to buy weapons — will help slow Russia’s incremental advances in the war's third year — but that more will likely be needed for Kyiv to regain the offensive. The House swiftly approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had warned that his country would lose the war without U.S. funding, said that he was grateful for U.S. lawmaker' decision.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Zelenskyy said that the aid package would “send the Kremlin a powerful signal that (Ukraine) will not be the second Afghanistan.”Zelenskyy said Ukraine would prioritize long-range weapons and air defenses to “break the plans of Russia” in an expected “full-scale offensive," for which Ukrainian forces are preparing. The aid package will go to the U.S. Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately. It still could take weeks for it to reach the front line, where it is desperately needed. "With this we can stop (Russian troops) and reduce our losses," said infantry soldier Oleksandr. He has been fighting around Avdiivka, the city in the Donetsk region that Ukraine lost to Russia in February after months of intense combat. Ammunition shortages linked to the aid holdup over the past six months have led Ukrainian military commanders to ration shells, a disadvantage that Russia seized on this year — taking the city of Avdiivka and currently inching towards the town of Chasiv Yar, also in Donetsk.“The Russians come at us in waves — we become exhausted, we have to leave our positions. This is repeated many times,” Oleksandr told The Associated Press. He didn't give his full name for security reasons. “Not having enough ammunition means we can’t cover the area that is our responsibility to hold when they are assaulting us.”In Kyiv, many welcomed the U.S. vote as a piece of good news after a tough period that has seen Russia grind out gains along the front line, and step up attacks on Ukraine's energy system and other infrastructure.
“I heard our president officially say that we can lose the war without this help. Thanks very much and yesterday was a great event," said Kateryna Ruda, 43. Tatyana Ryavchenuk, the wife of a Ukrainian soldier, noted the need for more weapons, lamenting that soldiers “have nothing to protect us." "They need weapons, they need gear, they need it. We always need help. Because without help, our enemy can advance further and can be in the center of our city,” the 26-year-old said. Other Western leaders, who have been scrambling to come up with ways to fill the gap left by stalled U.S. military aid, also lauded Congress' decision. “Ukraine is using the weapons provided by NATO Allies to destroy Russian combat capabilities. This makes us all safer, in Europe & North America,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg posted on X. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “Ukraine deserves all the support it can get against Russia,” and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the vote it “a strong signal in these times.”Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk thanked House Speaker Mike Johnson, while also noting the holdup in Congress. “Better late than too late. And I hope it is not too late for Ukraine,” he wrote on X. In Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday called the approval of aid to Ukraine “expected and predictable.”
The decision “will make the United States of America richer, further ruin Ukraine and result in the deaths of even more Ukrainians, the fault of the Kyiv regime,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian news agency Ria Novosti. “The new aid package will not save, but, on the contrary, will kill thousands and thousands more people, prolong the conflict, and bring even more grief and devastation,” Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, wrote on Telegram. Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said the logistics of getting U.S. assistance to the front line would mean that “Ukrainian forces may suffer additional setbacks" while waiting for it to arrive. “But they will likely be able to blunt the current Russian offensive assuming the resumed U.S. assistance arrives promptly," it said in its latest assessment of the conflict. Olexiy Haran, professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohlya Academy, said that Ukraine was grateful for aid from the U.S. and other Western countries, “but the problem is, frankly speaking, it’s too late and it’s not enough." “This is the third year of the war and we still don’t have aviation, new aviation. We don’t have enough missiles, so we cannot close the skies. Moreover, recently we didn’t have even artillery shells," he said. “That’s why the situation was very, very difficult and the Russians used it to start their offensive. So that’s why it is so important for us. And definitely if we’d received it half a year before, we would have saved the lives of many Ukrainians, civilians included.”
Matthew Savill, military sciences director at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said that the aid, while welcome, “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025.”“Predictability of funding through 2024 and into 2025 will help the Ukrainians plan the defense this year, especially if European supplies of ammunition also come through, but further planning and funds will be required for 2025, and we have a U.S. election between now and then,” he said. Responding to a question on NBC about how long Ukraine will still need aid packages, Zelenskyy said "it depends on when we actually get weapons on the ground.”“The decision to supply F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, we had it a year ago," he said. "We still don’t have the jets in Ukraine.”
In other developments:
— On the ground, Russia's Defense Ministry said Sunday that its troops had taken control of the village of Bohdanivka in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian officials haven't yet commented.
— One person was killed and four others were wounded in Russian shelling in Ukrainsk on Sunday, according to the prosecutor's office in Ukraine's partially occupied Donetsk region. In the Odesa region, four people were wounded in a missile attack, Gov. Oleh Kiper said.
— Two suspects were detained Sunday after two Ukrainian soldiers killed a police officer at a checkpoint in the Vinnytsia region. The soldiers opened fire on Maksym Zaretskyi, 20, early Saturday after he stopped their car for a routine inspection. Zaretskyi’s partner was wounded but survived. The head of Ukraine’s National Police, Ivan Vyhovsky, said the suspects, a father and son aged 52 and 26, were detained in Ukraine’s Odesa region.

China's scenarios for invading Taiwan could be altered following Iran's failed attack on Israel, report says
Cameron Manley/Business Insider/April 21, 2024
China shows how it would attack Taiwan as tensions riseScroll back up to restore default view. China is likely analyzing Iran's failed attack on Israel to prepare for a possible invasion of Taiwan. Experts believe China will focus on how Israel and its allies thwarted the attack, a report said. Tensions between China and Taiwan have heightened in recent years. China will analyze the failed Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel in order to better prepare for an invasion of Taiwan, experts believe. Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles in a direct attack on Israel last week, but Israel and its allies were able to shoot down most of the munitions. Rupert Hammond-Chambers, the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, told The Telegraph that China would likely look at the incident to work out how it could get past the technology and the alliance that foiled the attack. "They will be picking apart what transpired, not just in the way in which the Iranians attacked but also how we responded – the Israelis and the coalition that supported them," he said. "The kill rate for the drones and the missiles was extremely high, almost perfect. The walk-away for the PLA [People's Liberation Army] will be that the Americans and their allies have the technology to significantly blunt an attack," he added.
Much like Israel, Taipei expects to be able to rely on US support in the event of an attack from China, which considers Taiwan a part of its territory. A vote in the US House of Representatives on Saturday, which saw almost $61 billion in aid for Ukraine approved by the US House, also confirmed that around $8 billion would go toward security in the Indo-Pacific region, including to Taiwan. However, Hammond-Chambers did not believe the pro-Taiwan alliance was operating as smoothly as in the case of Israel. "The Jordanians, the Brits, the States and the Israelis all worked together to negate the Iranian attack. To what extent do we have that in place in North Asia?" Hammond-Chambers said, per The Telegraph. "It's coming but I've not seen that yet – that common operating platform that allows for seamless interoperability," he added. It follows a warning from former commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence Mike Studeman, in which he said Beijing appeared to be on the "march to war."In an article for War on the Rocks, Studeman wrote: "The war machine of the People's Liberation Army continues to modernize at a sprint in every area." "In 2020, Xi accelerated significant military milestones from 2035 to 2027 because he wanted China's military to modernize faster and give him Taiwan options earlier," he added. Tensions have risen between China and Taiwan since the island's Democratic Progressive Party, which favors independence from China, won a third consecutive term in Taiwan's 2024 presidential elections. In August 2022, following then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, tensions reached near-boiling point as China began military exercises over the island, including "live-fire drills."In April 2023, China again launched military drills around the island after then-president Tsai Ing-wen visited the US. At the time, China described the drills as a "stern warning against the collusion between separatist forces."

Türkiye Detains 36 People over Alleged ISIS Ties
Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
Turkish authorities have detained 36 people over suspected ties to ISIS, in operations carried out across four provinces, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on Sunday. In a post on social media platform X, Yerlikaya said police had seized suspects who were found to have been active within ISIS, and to have helped fund and provide supplies to the group. Police also seized several unlicensed shotguns and pistols as part of the operations, the minister said.

Iran Ramps up Crackdown as Regional Tensions Rage
Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
Executions of convicts, arrests of dissidents and a resurgence in patrols enforcing the obligatory wearing of hijabs: Iran is stepping up repression at home as tensions flare with its arch-foe Israel, activists say. Iranians have endured increased repression since nationwide protests were sparked from September 2022 by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly flouting the mandatory dress rules for women. But the crackdown has entered a new phase as fears of a regional conflict surge, with Israel launching an apparent strike on Iran on Friday, Agence France Presse reported. Activists have reported that the dreaded white vans of the "morality police" have returned to city squares across Iran, picking up women deemed to have violated the rule of obligatory hijab. Tehran police chief Abbas Ali Mohammadian openly announced the latest crackdown on April 13, with local media saying it was codenamed "Nour" ("light" in Persian). Multiple videos posted on social media -- under the hashtag "jang aliyeh zanan" ("war against women") -- have shown women being bundled into vans by male police in body armor accompanied by female police agents. Iran “has turned the streets into a battlefield against women and youth," 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and jailed rights activist Narges Mohammadi wrote in a message from Tehran's Evin prison and published by her supporters on social media. In one video filmed close to the Tajrish metro station in northern Tehran, a woman collapses on the ground after being apprehended by the police, telling bystanders who then seek to revive her that her phone was confiscated. Another includes what appears to be the sound of police using electric shock against women who had been rounded up and put into a van, AFP said.
"Amid increasing dissent at home and international attention focused on regional tensions, the Islamic republic is grabbing the opportunity to intensify its campaign of repression against dissent," said the director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, Hadi Ghaemi. "Without a firm international response, the Islamic Republic will be emboldened to intensify its violence against women and its egregious violations of human rights," said Ghaemi. Hundreds were killed, according to rights groups, and thousands arrested, according to the United Nations, in the crackdown on the 2022 protests that represented one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic republic. Among those arrested in recent days was Aida Shahkarami, the sister of Nika Shahkarami, 16, who died during the 2022 crackdown, her mother Nasrin wrote on social media. Aida was detained "for not wearing the mandatory hijab," Nasrin Shahkarami wrote on social media. Nika Shahkarami was found dead during the protests, with some family members accusing the security forces of killing her. Dina Ghalibaf, a journalist and student at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, was arrested after accusing security forces on social media of putting her in handcuffs and sexually assaulting her during a previous arrest at a metro station, according to the Norway-based Hengaw rights group. Executions, which activists say are used by Tehran as a means to instil fear into society, have also continued apace, with at least 110 people executed this year alone according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group. Among those executed in recent days were a married couple, Esmail Hassaniani, 29, and his wife Marjan Hajizadeh, 19, who were sentenced to death for drug-related charges in a joint case and hanged in Zanjan central prison on 11 April, according to IHR. "The regime will without any doubt use this opportunity to tighten the grip inside the country," said IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam. "They still haven't managed to take the control that they had before September 2022. They may have the opportunity to do so now, if all the international attention goes to the escalating tension with Israel."

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 21-22/2024
Where Is Our Plan?
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/129071/129071/
The region has been living in chaos since October 7, 2023. Political irresponsibility has prevailed, as military escalation continues, undermining security and stability in the air, at sea, and even in the border areas of every Arab country. Everything has been used in our region: militias, drones, missiles, and propaganda. The only thing that is missing is a clear view of what is happening. The region’s current trajectory could easily ignite conflicts, but predicting their outcomes is difficult. Israel has no vision. It continues to kill and torment the people of Gaza without a clear objective or final plan, overlooking the fact that killing only generates more extremism and terrorism. War is not an alternative to resolving the conflict and eventually establishing a Palestinian state. Hamas remains stubborn and determined to stick to adventurism. It has no clear plan beyond keeping its leaders alive, which will not guarantee the survival of Gaza or its control over the Stip. Their survival will not lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state either, nor will it stop the Israeli killing machine. Indeed, Hamas is now weaker than it had been before.
Iran tries to use propaganda to impose its expansionist agenda, exploiting the Palestinian cause. However, it is in a quagmire with Israel, which continues to eliminate leaders of the IRGC and Hezbollah. Israel has managed to trap Iran internationally. The United States continues to take contradictory positions. Most recently, it vetoed the recognition of the Palestinian state at the United Nations Security Council, without laying a clear vision for how to resolve this conflict. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that his country has a vision, but we have not heard anything about it! The Arabs, like the Americans, have made a series of statements without laying out a clear vision of what they want and how to achieve it. It is said that the Committee of Six has presented an action plan to Washington, but it was not approved by the latter; we do not know what the plan is, nor have any leaks emerged! European countries’ statements seem similar to those of the United States in that they are also contradictory, but Europe has had no significant impact so far. And so, the formlessness we have seen since October 7 is dangerous, and it could lead to destructive conflicts that have no light at the end of the tunnel. This situation demands that an effective vision be put forward, or a document of several points laying out what can be achieved, both now and in the future. Currently, the warring parties are unable to see further than their noses. Therefore, moderate Arab states must work on a clear and workable plan for what can be done, now and in the future, about the peace process and the Iranian militias operating in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. This vision must be viable. It must present feasible provisions for the peace process, which is key, as well as Iran’s expansion and its nuclear program. The plan must sketch out a pathway and solutions with specific deadlines, and it should be publicly presented to the world, as had been the case for the Saudi initiative that turned into an Arab initiative.
It should be explicit in addressing difficult questions. For example, it must determine whether it would have been better for the Palestinian Authority to seek recognition of the Palestinian state through the United Nations or, in order to avoid the predictable US veto, through bilateral talks outside the framework of the UN. Accordingly, we must present our plan. Either it is implemented, or it leaves everyone embarrassed and exposes their impotence.

Access to Gaza vital if there is to be accountability
Chris Doyle/Arab News/April 21, 2024
The outside world is not meant to witness what Israel is doing in Gaza. Israel has done everything in its considerable power over the last six months to restrict and even deny access for any internationals to Gaza. This includes journalists, diplomats, humanitarian actors, doctors, lawyers and human rights groups. Israeli officials do not want the story of Gaza to get out. It raises the question as to what Israel wants to hide. International journalists cannot enter Gaza, except for a few who have gone in embedded with the Israeli army to be shown what Tel Aviv wanted to show. Many senior reporters have publicly demanded access. Western powers have done little or nothing to back their calls. Journalists did bear witness to earlier Israeli wars on Gaza, but the authorities have learned their lesson. Internationals with cameras are dangerous. Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, was clear: “Not being on the scene makes reporting much harder. In war reporting, nothing beats using your own eyes and ears.”For all its extraordinary efforts at war propaganda, the one thing that Israel has always found hard to brush off are the images of hellish destruction their armed forces leave in their wake. This has been an issue in all of Israel’s wars since the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. But never before has Israel put so much effort into controlling or denying the telling of the story. Journalists are storytellers. Whether one likes or not, international audiences tend to believe their own respected journalists, perhaps more than Palestinian ones who may be deemed biased, even though they are mostly highly professional and brave. Israel has stymied their access to the outside world, using everything from cutting off internet and telephone access to what has clearly become a targeted campaign to kill journalists. Of course, the record of Western journalists in telling the story fairly is often questionable, but it would be drastically improved if they could be on the spot.
In the first five months after Oct. 7, Israel killed at least 103 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Yes, reporters tend to head to dangerous areas to cover a story, but this is an extraordinarily high number. The international media should use and trust them more. This patronizing attitude was exemplified by CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour when she claimed there were no journalists on the ground in Gaza. Israel has targeted international media in the past. In 2021, it bombed the Al-Jalaa tower in Gaza City that hosted the offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.
International humanitarian actors can barely access Gaza. Visas are impossible to get, despite international pressure. UNRWA has been an explicit target of Israeli officials. A leaked Israeli Foreign Ministry plan in December described a three-point plan to get UNRWA out of Gaza, including a smear campaign designed to deprive it of funding. Inside Gaza, aid convoys to the north, where the worst levels of famine have kicked in, are barely allowed. Convoys bring back bodies for some form of burial in the south. Brave doctors have entered Gaza as part of emergency medical teams. One UN worker told me it is incredible how many British doctors are there.
Israel in January bombed a safe house for humanitarians. It was supposed to be deconflicted, meaning Israel had been formally informed that humanitarians were there. The killing of seven international aid workers on April 1 may have added greater international pressure on Israel, but it also forced World Central Kitchen to cease its operations in Gaza. Fewer internationals, less aid — job done. Israeli officials do not want the story of Gaza to get out. It raises the question as to what Israel wants to hide. Those doctors who do leave Gaza and tell the stories of what they witnessed are targeted for aggressive smears. Israel’s allies can be willing collaborators, most notoriously Germany. The German authorities have just forcibly closed a conference on Palestine in Berlin and deported a British-Palestinian doctor who was to give testimony of what he experienced inside the Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli hospitals. The official German suppression of a Palestinian narrative has been extraordinary and certainly adds validity to the case Nicaragua is bringing against Berlin at the International Court of Justice for complicity in what the court has determined may plausibly constitute genocide. In terms of human rights actors, Israel denied access to Gaza to Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. This court is a threat as it can issue arrest warrants for individuals for war crimes. It is astonishing the prosecutor has been so inactive, but political pressure and the denial of access has worked for Israel.
Israel has not been able to cut off the flow of evidence of its crimes to the outside world. Videos are plentiful in any conflict nowadays. To counter this, Israel has used a combination of distraction, disinformation and outright lies. At times, major outlets have been able to rebut Israeli claims about atrocities, as CNN has done regarding the so-called flour massacre in February. Its findings directly contradicted Israel’s account of how 118 Palestinians were killed when trying to access lifesaving aid from a convoy. Israel will not release the drone footage that might provide clearer evidence of what happened.
More effective investigations would have been possible with proper access. The UN says there have been two dozen attacks on Palestinians awaiting aid in the last three months. Access is needed for such investigations.
Israel does not want any investigation into its destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital. Remember the advanced graphics purporting to show that there was a Hamas command and control center under the hospital? This was the flimsy justification for bombing the hospital. No such command bunker was ever found. Nobody mentions that massive lie now. It has served its purposes, as Al-Shifa lies in ruins. Another massive Israeli lie was that it was not blocking aid into Gaza, despite officially declaring a total siege on Oct. 9. That dangerous myth was at least one that could be easily disproved without access into the Strip. It has even antagonized Israel’s closest allies, who do not like being lied to. Israel has promised US President Joe Biden that it will open up the border crossings and Ashdod port, but this still has not happened.If Israel has nothing to hide, greater access to Gaza for internationals, including journalists, aid workers and human rights groups, is essential. Diplomats should also be permitted to assess the situation first-hand. When will Israel grant access? If it does, will it be to all outlets or only those it believes will grant it favorable coverage?
Full and independent investigations must be facilitated. One of the orders of the International Court of Justice in January was that evidence of genocide must be preserved, not destroyed. Only independent parties can do that effectively and in a manner that might satisfy the court. Part of ensuring that this is the last war on Gaza is accountability. To bring that about, access is vital. The world must not shut its eyes to the horrors of Gaza. It must open them, inhale the full scale of the atrocities and hold those responsible accountable.
• Chris Doyle is director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London.
X: @Doylech

Good Friday Agreement in Peril
Ali A. Hamadé/This is Beirut/April 21/2024
On the 26th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement – a crucial historic milestone that sealed peace between Protestant loyalists and Catholic nationalists in Northern Ireland – the specter of uncertainty looms more than ever over the future of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. This agreement, once considered a cornerstone of regional stability, is now facing headwinds, exacerbated by the rise to power of nationalist First Minister Michelle O’Neill. This political ascension reflects a shift in public opinion, indicating a growing disenchantment with adherence to Great Britain.
This surprising evolution is all the more remarkable when considering Northern Ireland’s long history of attachment to the British Crown, with a majority of loyalist Protestants. What caused this sense of belonging to fracture? Brexit, undoubtedly, and the turmoil that accompanied negotiations around the Northern Ireland Protocol, led to prolonged paralysis of local political institutions. However, it is necessary to uncover the roots of the problem. Let’s go back to June 23, 2016: the British vote, through a referendum, in favor of Brexit. The gap in perceptions becomes apparent. Unlike the choices expressed in England and Wales, Northern Ireland – like Scotland – expresses its wish to remain within the European Union, with support exceeding 55%. Thus, a sense of injustice begins to develop.
In this regard, Professor Anand Menon, an eminent specialist in Northern Irish affairs at King’s College London and director of the “UK in a Changing Europe” Institute, emphasizes, “We must accept the fact that the Brexit process has led to significant reflection on the UK’s union.” He adds that “the majority in Westminster (the Conservatives, editor’s note) denies the persistent problems that were both predictable and anticipatable – notably in the official analysis accompanying the withdrawal agreement when submitted to parliament.” He continues, “The Northern Irish, like the Scots, feel excluded from the decision-making process in favor of the English, thus fueling growing support for independence to restore their sovereignty.” However, the real breaking point lies in the obstacles encountered during negotiations concerning the Northern Ireland Protocol. The Good Friday Agreement, concluded under the auspices of Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1998, provided for the abolition of borders and the free movement of goods between the two territories. However, Brexit posed a major challenge: Ireland, as a member of the European Union, cannot maintain a free trade regime with a non-member region, namely Northern Ireland, and by extension with the rest of the United Kingdom. Despite repeated assurances from former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his election campaign, promising the absence of customs checks on exchanges between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, he ultimately accepted a proposal from the EU that went in this direction. This U-turn sparked protests and manifestations of discontent among the population, who once again felt marginalized.
These tensions led to prolonged paralysis of Northern Irish institutions, with the loyalist government of the time categorically refusing any form of customs control between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country.
A high-ranking source at Downing Street affirmed in this regard, “Prime Minister Sunak has spared no effort to restore Northern Irish stability within the UK, as their membership in the British union is essential,” adding, “Countering any rise in nationalist sentiment, which has undeniably become more worrying, is also part of his priorities.” This same source thus concluded, “The mistakes of the past and the neglect of the problems for so long certainly have not contributed to improving the situation,” undoubtedly alluding to the mishandling of this issue by previous governments, without naming them.
Today, the question arises: Does the arrival of nationalist Michelle O’Neill in power in Northern Ireland herald the beginning of the process of leaving the United Kingdom? Constitutionally, this does not mean much. Indeed, since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, it has been established that power (and therefore the government of national unity) is evenly distributed between loyalists and nationalists. The position of chief executive does not therefore offer the necessary prerogatives to trigger the independence vote, which are held by Westminster in London. Nevertheless, it is a significant symbolic victory, proof of an increasingly notable shift in public opinion. The growing promises of nationalists to organize an independence referendum within a few years are thus untenable, unless approved by the House of Representatives and royal assent.
Will we ever witness the union of the two Irelands? One thing is certain: the process is likely to be very long and uncertain!

‘Absolute Security:’ Iran, Israel, and... the World
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/April 21, 2024
There is a myth called "absolute security;" it is a myth because it was not possible in the past and will not be possible in the future. However, we know that, despite this, many myths in history became ideas and intellectual systems that govern nations and peoples, or inspired the establishment of political parties and movements. "Absolute security" or "maximum security" entails "zero risk," although risk is inherent to every major, or even minor, step in the course of communities and to all individual endeavors.Moreover, "absolute security" is based on a philosophy that has a pessimistic view of humanity. It mistrusts people and sees them as wolves, or potential wolves, that could pounce at any moment. The otherness of the other is always an absolute- the other brings danger or certain death, even if this threat seems, at a particular moment, latent or pending. The theory of "absolute security" is accompanied by a conception of politics and our relationship with the world. The American political scientist John Mearsheimer, who many describe as a leading authority on the realist school of thought, could be seen as the world's most prominent living proponent of this view. The way he sees it, our world operates in this grim manner; it is governed by wolves and rapacious competition. Since there is no institution with effective authority over states that monitors and regulates their behavior, absolute power is inevitable, as is the subjugation of all values, no matter how noble and altruistic, to interests. The picture becomes even more bleak once we consider that no state can know the intentions of the others, or contain or find a way around the threats they pose them through friendships, treaties, or guarantees. Mearsheimer’s latest intellectual endeavor, which draws on this theory, is justifying the invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that if Ukraine were to join NATO, it would become a threat to Russia's security. "Absolute security," in the most hawkish reading, dictates the establishment of "living space" around the state of “absolute security.” Those who attack it would thus strike the belt of fat around it and not its flesh. In other words, they would wreak havoc on the "slaves" of the state without ever reaching its "masters" or "authentic’’ citizens.
Beyond any doubt, however, the notion of "absolute security" necessarily implies mobilization. This notion galvanizes the population and pushes it to seek and demand this security, because it exists to serve them. Indeed, the external threat does not only put their country in danger, but also their lives and the lives of their families, in their streets, homes, and children’s schools. Accordingly, anyone who takes this pursuit lightly recklessly endangers their own life and has no concern for the lives of others, as well as being an objective ally of the enemy, if not a subjective ally as well. This coupling of fear and fanaticism stands in the way of many prospects for life, adventure, and investment in the future and in universal values. Danger is everywhere and beneath every surface; it could be embodied in refugees, immigrants, Romanis, or those who behave differently. This mythical or conspiratorial propensity inherent to the theory of "absolute security" suggests that a strong sense of weakness and apprehensions about legitimacy hide behind the self-confidence projected by the advocates of this theory. That is why they act like they are freezing history into an image of "absolute security" that is contrasted with "total insecurity," which is all that is available to weaker others.
Looking at the current state of affairs in Iran and Israel, as well as the vast geographical area that separates them, we find that Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are countries of "total insecurity," while the prospective Palestinian state would be "demilitarized" if it emerges. All the security has settled in the center, leaving none left for the peripheries and subjugated regions. Structural differences can be seen here: the direct war between Iran and Israel is governed by logic, balances, and equations that the wars of those living in total insecurity (or their wars with the Jewish state) lack. In the former, the world and its influential actors intervene, because the belligerents are states, not militant groups, and because the costs incurred by wars between states could undermine the global order built around states. The Israeli-Iranian war is also brief and swift, and its ambiguous elements far outnumber those that are clear, which has allowed some to call it a "spectacle." On the other hand, the war between Israel and the militias is clear, as are its human and economic costs, in addition to being "long" as we are now hearing. It is not without indication that some have concluded that there is an inverse relationship between these two types of wars, whereby the softness of the war between the mighty could lay the groundwork for a new savage assault, with Rafah the theater this time.
Despite the gains attained by those living in "absolute security," the potency of the contagion or any uncalculated mistake could leave them facing negative repercussions in the long run. Today, the two imperial states are confronting the dilemma of how to address "declining deterrence" and the fact that parts of their territory or airspace have been breached. The "absolute security" of the Middle East's belligerent masters is no longer absolute- for a few years now in the case of Iran and for a few months in Israel. Naturally, the fact remains that two sides have divergent capability levels: Israel could destroy the Arab Levant to avoid defeat, while Iran continues to destroy the entire Levant before being defeated. In any case, it is no longer far-fetched to argue that the security of both countries, once called absolute, is turning into relative security at an accelerating pace, and for this shift to be explicitly recognized. As for the implications this will have for the region, its image, and its future, and for those within it living in total insecurity, they will probably become prominent themes in the coming days.

Earth Day a chance to unite for a sustainable future
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 21, 2024
Earth Day, which is being marked on Monday, is a global event that has been celebrated since 1970 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. What began as a grassroots movement in the US has evolved into a worldwide phenomenon, with more than 1 billion people in more than 193 countries participating in various events and initiatives. This year, the official theme is “Planet vs. Plastics,” shining a spotlight on one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. It is crucial to reflect on the significance of this occasion and renew our commitment to building a sustainable future for generations to come. Over the decades, Earth Day has evolved into a global platform for environmental advocacy, education and action. From tree plantings and beach cleanups to sustainability workshops and climate marches, communities around the world come together every April 22 to celebrate our planet and galvanize efforts to address environmental challenges. The diversity of events reflects the multifaceted nature of environmentalism, encompassing issues such as climate change, biodiversity conservation, sustainable agriculture and waste reduction. This year’s theme underscores the urgent need to tackle the pervasive problem of plastic pollution. Plastics have become an integral part of modern life, with their versatility and convenience driving their widespread use across industries. However, this convenience comes at a significant cost to the environment. Single-use plastics, in particular, pose a grave threat to ecosystems, marine life and human health. From plastic bags clogging waterways to microplastics contaminating the food chain, the consequences of plastic pollution are far-reaching and profound.
Addressing the plastics crisis requires a comprehensive and coordinated response at local, national and global levels. While individual actions such as reducing plastic consumption and recycling are important, systemic changes are needed to truly combat the problem. This includes implementing policies to ban or restrict single-use plastics, investing in alternative materials and technologies and promoting circular economy models that prioritize reuse and recycling over disposal. Businesses also have a crucial role to play in driving innovation and adopting sustainable practices throughout their supply chains.
Beyond addressing plastic pollution, Earth Day serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of environmental issues and the need for holistic solutions. Climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and pollution are all symptoms of a deeper crisis rooted in unsustainable patterns of production and consumption. Transitioning to a more sustainable and equitable society requires reimagining our relationship with the natural world and embracing the principles of conservation, stewardship and regeneration.
The window of opportunity to avert the worst effects of climate change is rapidly closing, necessitating bold and ambitious action from governments, businesses and individuals alike.
Fortunately, there is cause for hope. The growing momentum behind environmental movements, coupled with advances in technology and renewable energy, presents unprecedented opportunities for positive change. Grassroots activists, youth leaders, indigenous communities and environmental organizations are leading the charge for climate justice and sustainability, demanding accountability from those in power and advocating for solutions that prioritize people and planet over profit.  Earth Day serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of environmental issues and the need for holistic solutions. As we reflect on the significance of Earth Day 2024, it is essential to acknowledge the intersection of environmental issues and social justice. Climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately impact marginalized communities, exacerbating existing inequalities and injustices. Vulnerable populations, including Indigenous peoples, low-income communities and people of color, bear the brunt of environmental degradation, health risks, displacement and economic hardship. Addressing environmental challenges requires centering equity and justice in our approach, ensuring that all people have access to clean air, water and natural resources and are empowered to participate in the decision-making processes that affect their lives.
Environmental justice is not only about protecting human rights but also about recognizing the intrinsic value of nature and respecting the rights of other species. As Earth Day reminds us, we are part of a vast and interconnected web of life and our well-being is intricately linked to the health of the planet. By upholding the principles of environmental justice, we can build a more inclusive and sustainable future for all. Earth Day also provides an opportunity to celebrate the beauty and diversity of the natural world and to cultivate a deeper sense of connection and stewardship. Spending time outdoors, whether hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean or simply sitting in a local park, offers a chance to appreciate the wonders of nature and rekindle our sense of awe and wonder. As we immerse ourselves in the sights, sounds and smells of the natural world, we are reminded of our responsibility to protect and preserve these precious landscapes for future generations. Finally, education plays a crucial role in fostering environmental awareness and inspiring action. By empowering individuals with knowledge and skills, we can cultivate a new generation of environmental leaders and change-makers who are committed to creating a more sustainable and equitable world. In conclusion, Earth Day 2024 represents a momentous opportunity to come together as a global community and reaffirm our commitment to protecting the planet and promoting environmental justice. From addressing plastic pollution to advancing renewable energy and conservation efforts, there is much work to be done to build a more sustainable and resilient future. By harnessing the power of collective action and solidarity, we can create a world where people and their planet thrive in harmony. As we celebrate Earth Day this year and beyond, let us seize the opportunity to ignite positive change and leave a legacy of hope and healing for generations to come.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian American political scientist.
X: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Tensions in the Middle East may continue for some time
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/April 21, 2024
A mini-crisis or a pseudo-crisis took place on Friday morning in the city of Isfahan in central Iran. Further details will tell us what exactly happened. The first indications are that some small homemade drones caused a crisis in the city. It looks more like an enigma how such an attack could be organized in a place like Isfahan, where there are several nuclear-related facilities. It is likely that Israel, probably in cooperation with the US, wanted to send a mild message in response to the massive attack carried out by Iran against Israel the previous week. We will know better when we learn about the exact nature of the incident. It may be a step to close the matter or an advance notice of a stronger strike. Israel has long had the practice of saying little about what it is planning to do in the field of defense. Iran’s massive attack on April 13, using innumerable drones, was a test for each side. Both Israel and Iran may have sent a message to each other so that they could bring an end to their conflict. There are no limits to Israel’s greed, but it has to be recognized that it is surrounded by hostile countries. The massive Iranian attack on Israel was the first serious test of its much-publicized Iron Dome air defense system. Tel Aviv trivialized the importance of the damage caused by the Iranian attack. The Israeli military authorities said that more than 300 missiles and drones were fired from Iran and that most of them were intercepted, with little damage caused. However, Foreign Policy magazine reported last week that at least nine Iranian missiles hit their targets. The Israeli authorities must have drawn lessons from this experience.
Israel is very good at calculating the financial loss that it suffers. The Washington Post estimated that the war on Gaza cost Israel $18 billion between Oct. 7 and Dec. 31 last year. If a solution could be found for the Palestinian conflict, this amount would be transferred to civilians and tens of thousands of human lives would be spared. A new stage was reached with Friday’s semblance of an attack on the critical city of Isfahan. It would be a good sign if this “snap” attack was a step toward defusing the tension. The ultimate aim of the attack looks like Israel does not want to escalate the matter any further and to bring an end to this mutually destructive process. Whatever happened in Isfahan was handled without unnecessary exaggeration. It is likely that the drones that caused alarm in this city were locally manufactured and they did not cause any material damage. All three drones were reportedly destroyed by the Iranian security forces. It looks as if Israel — with US assistance — wanted to give a warning to Iran that it has the means to disturb Tehran.
The US is the key country to encourage Israel and Iran to find an accommodation to end their conflict.
The Iranian authorities confirmed that the drones were not imported from abroad. However, it remains to be explained how these three drones, no matter how small, were able to carry out Friday’s attack. How were they manufactured in a country like Iran, where the state’s control of security matters is notorious? A drone cannot be manufactured in a makeshift workshop. Furthermore, you need a runway to allow the drone to become airborne. The Iranian intelligence services will have to dig deep to find out the truth.
The New York Times also reported incidents in another Iranian city, Tabriz. And similar incidents took place in neighboring Iraq and Syria: in Suwayda governorate in southern Syria and the Baghdad area and the Babylon governorate in Iraq. Both Iran and Israel trivialized these incidents. In the days following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a crucial decision to form an emergency wartime Cabinet, which includes Benny Gantz, a senior opposition figure and former defense minister. This practice is used in extreme circumstances. Netanyahu is squeezed and needs the support of opposition figures. This emergency Cabinet is expected to adopt critical decisions, such as the establishment of corridors to allow aid and medicines into Gaza. The corridors will also probably be used for the evacuation of civilians. Hopefully, Netanyahu will not use this mechanism to make life more difficult for them. Following Friday’s attack, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that nuclear installations in Iran were neither targeted nor hit. The Iranian authorities had an opportunity to shout their anger, as it is a tradition to organize big meetings after Friday prayers. The US media claimed that the crowds that gathered on Friday were originally organized to belatedly celebrate the April 13 Iranian attack on Israel. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented, in his customary exchange of views with selected members of the media as he was leaving the mosque after Friday prayers, that neither Israel nor Iran had made substantive comments on the small incident. Both had almost disowned the subject, as if this question was not a subject of interest for them. Erdogan said that he cannot claim that Iran is telling the truth. So, the drones that troubled the skies over Isfahan subsided as if nothing of that sort had happened on Friday morning. The present trend of events suggests that the Israeli war on Gaza is likely to continue and perhaps even worsen. The US is the key country to encourage Israel and Iran to find an accommodation to end their conflict.
• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party.

'The Most Secure Election in American History'
John Eastman/Gatestone Institute/April 21, 2024
What did the founders do? They committed an act of treason by signing the Declaration of Independence. They recognized at some point you have to take on the established regime when it is not only unjust, but when there is no lawful way to get it back on track. These matters frame our own nation.
Texas had just filed its original action in the Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan -- four swing states whose election officers had clearly violated election law in those states and with an impact that put Biden over the top in all four.
In Georgia, the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, signed a settlement agreement in March of 2020 in a suit that was filed by the Democratic Committee that essentially obliterated the signature verification process in Georgia. It made it virtually impossible to disqualify any ballots no matter how unlike the signature on the ballot was to the signature in the registration file. The most troubling aspect of it, to me, was that the law required that the signature match the registration signature. When Brad Raffensperger, who is not part of the legislature, unilaterally changed the rule from what the legislature had adopted by statute, that change was unconstitutional, not just illegal.
Unilaterally, [the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Kathy Boockvar] got rid of a statute that election officials in Pennsylvania had been applying for 100 years to require signature verification. She then asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to approve what she had done....In other words, all of the statutory provisions that were designed to protect against fraud were obliterated in Pennsylvania. We ought not to be surprised if fraud walked through the door left open by the unconstitutional elimination of these statutes.
To this day, there are 120,000 more votes that were cast in Pennsylvania than their records show voters who have cast votes. Think about that: 120,000 more votes than voters who cast votes. The margin in Pennsylvania was 80,000.
Election officials in heavily Democrat counties [in Wisconsin] also set up drop boxes. They even set up what they called "human drop boxes" in Madison, which is the home of the University of Wisconsin. For two or three consecutive Saturdays before the election, they basically ran a ballot harvesting scheme at taxpayer expense with volunteers – whom I suspect were actually supporters of the Biden campaign -- working as "deputized" county clerks to go collect all these ballots, in violation of state law. A lot of these came in with the witness signatures, but the address not filled in. The county clerks were directed by the Secretary of State to fill the information in on their own. In other words, they were doctoring the evidence.
They were doing Google searches to get the name, to fill in an address to validate ballots that were clearly illegal under Wisconsin law. All told, those couple of things combined, more than 200,000 ballots were affected in a state where the margin victory was just over 20,000.
Then in Michigan, we had similar things going on. We probably all saw the video of election officials boarding up the canvassing center at TCF Center in Detroit so that people could not observe what was going on. There were hundreds of sworn affidavits about illegality in the conduct of that process in Detroit.
The judge, without holding a hearing on a motion to dismiss, at which the allegations of the complaint are supposed to be taken as true, rejected all the sworn affidavits from all the witnesses who actually observed the illegality, and instead credited the government affidavit – without the government witness evening being subject to questioning on cross-examination.
In those four states, and in Arizona and Nevada as well, there is no question that the illegality that occurred affected way more ballots than the certified margin of Joe Biden's victory in all of those states. It only took three of those six states -- any combination of three -- for Trump to have won the election.
Well, first of all, that mantra....: "All the cases, all the courts ruled against Trump." First of all, that is not true. Most of the cases were rejected on very technical jurisdictional grounds, like a case brought by a voter, rather than the candidate himself.
Individual voters do not have standing because they lack a particularized injury. Those were dismissed. There is no basis for claiming that there was anything wrong with the claims on the merits. It is just that the cases were not brought by the right people.
There was one case where one of these illegal guidances from the Secretary of State was challenged before the election. The judge ruled that it was just a guidance, and that until we get to election day to find out if the law was actually violated, the case was not ripe -- and it got dismissed. Then the day after the election, when election officials actually violated the law, the case gets filed again, and the court says, "You can't wait until your guy loses and then bring the election challenge. It's barred by a doctrine called laches. This is the kind of stuff that the Trump legal team was dealing with in those 65 cases.
Of the cases that actually reached the merits --there were fewer than a dozen of them, if I recall correctly -- Trump won three-fourths of them. You have never heard that in the "New York Times."
The 65 Project was formed -- I think I've seen reported that they received a grant from a couple of George Soros-related organizations of $100 million -- to bring disbarment actions against all of the lawyers who were involved in any of those cases.
The head of the organization gave an interview to Axios... and he said in his interview to Axios that the group's goal with respect to the Trump election lawyers is to "not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms" "in order to deter right-wing legal talent from signing on to any future GOP efforts" to challenge elections.
Our system works, in part, because we have an adversarial system of justice that supports it. If groups like the 65 Project succeed in scaring off one side of these intense policy disputes or legal disputes, then we will not have an adversarial system of justice. We will not have elections that we can have any faith in, because if you do not have that kind of judicial check on illegality in the election, then bad actors will just do the illegality whenever they want, and we won't be able to do anything about
Ultimately, we are the sovereign authority that tells the government which direction we want it to go, not the other way around.
The issue of whether non-legislative actors in the state can alter election law consistent with the Constitution remains an open issue. It should not be an open issue. The Constitution is quite clear, but there was a news account at one point reporting that John Roberts had yelled at Alito and Thomas, who had insisted they needed to take these cases. They were just like Bush versus Gore. Roberts was reported to have said, "They're not like Bush versus Gore. If we do anything, they will burn down our cities." Which means the impact of what had gone on in the summer of 2020 in Portland and Kenosha and all these other places, had an impact on the Supreme Court declining to take these cases.
What I have seen, and it pains me to say this, is that the level of corruption in our institutions, including our judicial institutions, is so pervasive now that it is troubling. Because many of these cases end up in the DC courts, I cannot imagine a stronger case for change of venue than those January 6th criminal defendants. It will cost a million, a million and a half to defend against those charges. The poor guy who entered a plea agreement and pleaded guilty..., one of the 19 defendants in Georgia, he is a bail bondsman for a living. If he gets a felony, he is not only in jail for a while, but he cannot do his trade, so they offer him a misdemeanor conviction and no jail time. He took it in a heartbeat. Otherwise, he is looking at a million to two million dollars in legal fees tied up in this internationally televised drama for nothing, and he was not in the position to undertake that.
About electronic voting machines? There have been three audits. Antrim County, Michigan, and one of the leading critics of voting machines and their software is a guy named J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. He testified as the expert in litigation down in Georgia in 2018 saying these machines are not secure. They sealed his testimony and it was only released in June. It just says, "These things are susceptible to fraud by all sorts of bad actors."One of the things we discover in that Antrim audits is that in fact, the vote logs that are supposed to be there had been deleted for 2020, not 2016, not 2012, they are still there, but 2020 had been deleted.
They had a convention in Las Vegas, hired a bunch of geeks, computer geeks from around the country, to come to this convention and see who could hack into the machines and alter the vote codes quickest. It took people about 15 minutes. The notion that these things cannot be hacked is laughable. They have to be able to be opened if they need to be repaired. [I heard that from an MIT graduate at the time.] The question is, how to prove that they were hacked in this particular instance when they are destroying the evidence, and that is where we are.
[W]e subsequently learned that despite [Former Attorney General William] Barr's public statement that US attorneys could investigate election illegality, anytime somebody did, he called him on the phone and order them not to.
One of the FBI investigators who was actually getting to the bottom of this got a call that said, "Stand down."You have people out there saying, "Oh, we're investigating. Everything's fine," while behind the scenes ordering people not to do the investigation that would actually get to the bottom of it.
I call it the uniparty. You can call it the deep state. You can call it the administrative state. You can call it the corrupt state, but it sees the MAGA movement as the biggest threat to its syndicators. It is going to do everything it can to destroy the people who are going to try and publicize what is going on.
That is what we are dealing with, and we are $2 million in. One of the lawsuits that was filed against me by this guy down in North Carolina, I don't know why he picked me as the lead defendant, but other defendants are all billionaire oligarchs who are using their own wealth. That is the kind of nonsense I'm dealing with.
To this day, there are 120,000 more votes that were cast in Pennsylvania [in the 2020 election] than their records show voters who have cast votes. Think about that: 120,000 more votes than voters who cast votes. The margin in Pennsylvania was 80,000. I would like to discuss some of the illegalities that occurred in the 2020 election and the proposed constitutional remedies that we thought we could advance.
I would also like to discuss the lawfare that is sweeping across the country and destroying not just the people that were involved in those efforts, but the very notion of our adversarial system of justice.
This fight and the dangers from it are much bigger than what I am dealing with personally, or what the hundred or so Trump lawyers who have been targeted in this new lawfare effort are dealing with. It seems that there is something similar going on here, albeit to a much less lethal degree, than what we are seeing with the October 7th attack on Israel, as that, too, was an attack on the rule of law.
The international community that will condemn Israel's just response to these unjust attacks demonstrates a bias in the application of the rule of law that is very similar to what we are dealing with here. These are not isolated instances. They go to the root of the rejection of the rule of law. One of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, gave a speech, the Lyceum Address, in 1838 talking about the importance of the rule of law. When there are unjust laws, you have to be careful about refusing to comply with them because what you may lose in the process – the rule of law itself -- is of greater consequence. He was not categorical about that, however, because the example he gave was of our nation's founders and their commitment to the rule of law.
But think about that for a minute. What did our founders do? They committed an act of treason by signing the Declaration of Independence. They recognized at some point you have to take on the established regime when it is not only unjust, but when there is no lawful way to get it back on track. These matters frame our own nation in our own time. Let us start with the 2020 election. What do we see and how did I get involved in this? When President Trump, then candidate Trump, walked down that famous escalator at Trump Tower, one of the planks in his campaign platform was that we need to fix this problem of birthright citizenship. People who are just visiting here or are here illegally ought not to be able to provide automatic citizenship to their children. People laughed at him for not understanding the Constitution.
In his next press conference, he waved a law review article, and said there is a very serious argument that our Constitution does not mandate birthright citizenship for people who are only here temporarily or who are here illegally. That happened to be my law review article on birthright citizenship.
Then, during the Mueller investigation, I appeared for an hour on Mark Levin's television show and said the whole Russia collusion story (which Trump rightly called the Russia "hoax") was illegitimate – completely made up. President Trump thought that my analysis was pretty good, and invited me to the White House for a visit.
When the major law firms were backing out of taking on any of the election challenges, President Trump called me and asked if I would be interested. Texas had just filed its original action in the Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan -- four swing states whose election officers had clearly violated election law in those states and with an impact that put Biden over the top in all four. Two days later, I filed the motion to intervene in the Supreme Court in that action. The Supreme Court rules require the lawyer on the brief to have their name, address, email address and phone number.
Nobody in the country at that point really knew who Trump's legal team was, but all of a sudden people had a lawyer and an email address. I became the recipient of every claim, every allegation, crazy or not, that existed anywhere in the world about what had happened in the election. It was like drinking from a fire hose.
I received communications from some of the best statisticians in the world who were working with election data and who told me there was something very wrong with the reported election results, according to multiple statistical analyses.
One group decided to do a counter-statistical analysis. They said the statisticians had misapplied Stan Young's path-breaking work. Unbeknownst to them, one of the statisticians I was relying on was Stan Young himself.
Did you ever see the movie Rodney Dangerfield's "Back to School"? He has to write an essay for English class, the essay has to be on Kurt Vonnegut's thinking, so he hires Kurt Vonnegut to write the essay for him. The professor fails him. Not because it was not his own work – the professor hadn't figured that out -- but because, in the professor's view, the work that Dangerfield turned in was not what Kurt Vonnegut would ever say. That is what I felt like with this supposed critique of the statistical work my experts were conducting.
Those were the kinds of things we were dealing with. I became something of a focal point for all this information. The allegations of illegality were particularly significant. I'll just go through a couple of states and a couple of examples:
In Georgia, the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, signed a settlement agreement in March of 2020 in a suit that was filed by the Democratic Committee that essentially obliterated the signature verification process in Georgia. It made it virtually impossible to disqualify any ballots no matter how unlike the signature on the ballot was to the signature in the registration file.
The most troubling aspect of it, to me, was that the law required that the signature match the registration signature. Secretary Raffensperger's settlement agreement required three people to unanimously agree that the signature did not match, and it had to be a Democrat, a Republican and somebody else, so you were never going to get the unanimous agreement. That means no signature was ever going to get disqualified – and in Fulton County, election officials did not even bother conducting signature verification. Even more important than the difficulty of disqualifying obviously falsified signatures was that, under the settlement agreement, the signature would be deemed valid if it matched either the registration signature or the signature on the ballot application itself. That means that if someone fraudulently signed and submitted an application for an absentee ballot and then voted that ballot after fraudulently directing it to a different address than the real voter's address, the signature on the ballot would match the signature on the absentee ballot application and, voila, the fraudulent ballot would be deemed legal..
How do we know that went on? Well, we had anecdotal stories. A co-ed at Georgia Tech University, if I recall correctly, testified before Senator Ligon's Committee in the Georgia Senate. She said she went to vote in person with her 18-year-old sister. They were going to make a big deal about going to vote in person because the 18-year-old sister was voting for the first time. They did not want to vote by mail. They wanted to make an event out of it, get a sticker, "I voted," and all that stuff. They get down to the precinct and the 22-year-old is told that she has already voted. They said she had applied for an absentee ballot.
"No, I didn't," she said. "Oh, Deary," they said, "you must have forgotten." Very patronizing. "No, I didn't forget.," she said. "We have been looking forward to this for months. I know I did not apply for an absentee ballot."
They subsequently found out that somebody had applied for an absentee ballot in her name, had it mailed to a third-party address, not an address she knew. She never recognized it, didn't understand it, and then she testified that she later learned that the fraudulent ballot was voted.
We had that kind of anecdotal evidence to prove that this change in the signature rules that Secretary Brad Raffensperger signed on to had actually resulted in fraud. The disqualification rates statewide, because of this change in the law, went down by about 46%. Why is the change in the rules through a settlement agreement a problem? Article II of our Constitution, the Federal Constitution, quite clearly gives the sole power to direct the manner for choosing presidential electors to the legislature of the State. When Brad Raffensperger, who is not part of the legislature, unilaterally changed the rule from what the legislature had adopted by statute, that change was unconstitutional, not just illegal. Another alteration of the rules set out by the legislature occurred in Fulton County. Election officials there ran portable voting machines in heavily Democrat areas of Atlanta, which was contrary to state law.
Pennsylvania. One of my favorite cases comes out of Pennsylvania. The League of Women Voters, which claims to be non-partisan but is clearly anything but, filed what I believe was a collusive lawsuit against the Democrat Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Kathy Boockvar, in August of 2020.
The premise of the suit was that the signature verification requirement that election officials had been applying in Pennsylvania for a century violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment because voters whose ballots were disqualified were not given notice of the disqualification and an opportunity to cure the problem.
The premise of the lawsuit was that there was a signature verification process but that it violated federal Due Process rights. The remedy the League of Women Voters sought was to have the court mandate a notice and opportunity to cure requirement.
The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided to resolve the lawsuit by providing something the League had not even requested. She decided, on her own, that Pennsylvania did not really have a signature verification requirement at all, so the request relief – notice and opportunity to cure – would not be necessary.
Unilaterally, she got rid of a statute that election officials in Pennsylvania had been applying for 100 years to require signature verification. She then asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to approve what she had done.
She filed what was called a Petition for a King's Bench Warrant to ratify what she had done. If I ever bump into her, I'm going to say, "You know, you have not had a king in Pennsylvania since 1776, maybe you ought to change the name of that."
The partisan elected Pennsylvania Supreme Court obliged. Not only is there no signature verification requirement in Pennsylvania, the Court held, but all those statutes that describe how election officials are supposed to do signature verification are just relics; they really do not have any meaning. So the Democrat majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, at the urging of the Democrat Secretary of the Commonwealth, just got rid of the whole signature verification process.
Then the court went on to say: And since there is no signature verification requirement, there is no basis on which anybody would be able to challenge ballots, so we are going to get rid of the challenge parts of the election statutes as well, and since there is no basis to challenge, the statute that requires people to be in the room while things are being counted, that really does not matter. It does not have to be meaningful observation. Being at the front door of the football field-sized Philadelphia Convention Center was sufficient even though it was impossible to actually observe the counting of ballots. The statute actually requires that observers be "in the room," but it was written at a time when canvassing of ballots would occur in small settings, like the common room of the local library, where being "in the room" meant meaningful observation of the ballot counting process. Obliterating the very purpose of the statute, the court held that being "in the room" at the entrance of the Philadelphia Convention Center was sufficient. In other words, all of the statutory provisions that were designed to protect against fraud were obliterated in Pennsylvania. We ought not to be surprised if fraud walked through the door left open by the unconstitutional elimination of these statutes.
To this day, there are 120,000 more votes that were cast in Pennsylvania than their records show voters who have cast votes. Think about that: 120,000 more votes than voters who cast votes. The margin in Pennsylvania was 80,000.
Wisconsin. One of the people who has testified for me in my California bar proceedings was Justice Mike Gableman, former Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He was hired by the Wisconsin legislature to conduct an investigation.
His investigation efforts were thwarted at every turn, with the Secretary of State and others refusing to comply with subpoenas, etc. Nevertheless, he uncovered an amazing amount of illegality and fraud in the election. For example, the county clerks in Milwaukee and Madison had directed people that they could claim "indefinitely confined" status if they were merely afraid of COVID.
That is clearly not permitted under the statute, but voters who followed the county clerks' directive and falsely claimed they were "indefinitely confined" did not have to submit an ID with their absentee ballot as the law required -- again, opening the door for fraud. Although the Wisconsin courts held that the advice was illegal and ordered it to be withdrawn, the number of people claiming they were indefinitely confined went from about 50,000 in 2016 to more than a quarter of million in 2020. The illegal advice provided by those two county clerks in heavily Democrat counties clearly had impact. Election officials in heavily Democrat counties also set up drop boxes. They even set up what they called "human drop boxes" in Madison, which is the home of the University of Wisconsin. For two or three consecutive Saturdays before the election, they basically ran a ballot harvesting scheme at taxpayer expense with volunteers – whom I suspect were actually supporters of the Biden campaign -- working as "deputized" county clerks to go collect all these ballots, in violation of state law. How do I know it is a violation of the state law? The Wisconsin Supreme Court after the fact agreed with us that it was a violation of state law.
One last piece. Wisconsin law is very clear. If you're going to vote absentee, you have to have a witness sign a separate under-oath certification that the person who is voting that ballot is who they say they are.
The witness has to fill out their name and address and sign it, under penalty of perjury. A lot of these came in with the witness signatures, but the address not filled in. The county clerks were directed by the Secretary of State to fill the information in on their own. In other words, they were doctoring the evidence.
They were doing Google searches to get the name, to fill in an address to validate ballots that were clearly illegal under Wisconsin law. All told, those couple of things combined, more than 200,000 ballots were affected in a state where the margin victory was just over 20,000.
Then in Michigan, we had similar things going on. We probably all saw the video of election officials boarding up the canvassing center at TCF Center in Detroit so that people could not observe what was going on. There were hundreds of sworn affidavits about illegality in the conduct of that process in Detroit.
Then there was one affidavit on the other side submitted by an election official who was responsible for legally managing the election. He said, basically, that everything was fine, it was all perfect. The judge, without holding a hearing on a motion to dismiss, at which the allegations of the complaint are supposed to be taken as true, rejected all the sworn affidavits from all the witnesses who actually observed the illegality, and instead credited the government affidavit – without the government witness evening being subject to questioning on cross-examination.
This is a manifestation of what I have described as the increasingly Orwellian tendency of our government. "We're the government and when we've spoken, you're just supposed to bend the knee and listen."
That was just some of the evidence we had. In those four states, and in Arizona and Nevada as well, there is no question that the illegality that occurred affected way more ballots than the certified margin of Joe Biden's victory in all of those states.
It only took three of those six states -- any combination of three -- for Trump to have won the election. When I was coming out of the Georgia jailhouse after surrendering myself for the indictment down in Georgia, one of the reporters threw a question at me. He said, "Do you still believe the election was stolen?"
I said, "Absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind," because of things like this and because of the Gableman report, because of Dinesh D'Souza's book on 2000 Mules -- that stuff is true. People say, "Well, it's not true. It's been debunked." No, it has not been debunked. In fact, there have been criminal convictions down in Pima County, Arizona, from the 2018 election, where people finally got caught doing the same thing that Dinesh D'Souza said they were doing.
Dinesh's documentary was based on the investigative work conducted by Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote. Her team obtained, at great expense, commercially-available cell phone location data and identified hundreds of people who visited multiple ballot drop boxes, oftentimes in the wee hours of the morning, 10 or more different drop boxes. Then they got the video surveillance from those drop boxes (those that were actually working, that is), confirming that the people were dropping in 8, 10, 12 ballots at a time.
In Georgia, you are allowed to drop off ballots for immediate family members, but I think it is fairly clear that these folks – "mules" is what the documentary called them – were not family members. They were taking selfies of themselves in front of the ballot boxes because, as the whistleblower noted to Engelbrecht, they were getting paid for each ballot they delivered. In other words, this certainly looks like an illegal ballot harvesting scheme.
What has happened since then? Well, there is a group in DC, largely hard-liner partisan Democrats, Hillary and Bill Clinton crowd, but joined by a couple of hard-line never-Trump Republicans, or one, so they can claim they are bipartisan. The group is called The 65 Project, and it is named after the 65 cases brought by Trump's team that supposedly all ruled against Trump.
Well, first of all, that mantra, how many have heard it?: "All the cases, all the courts ruled against Trump." First of all, that is not true. Most of the cases were rejected on very technical jurisdictional grounds, like a case brought by a voter, rather than the candidate himself. Individual voters do not have standing because they lack a particularized injury. Those were dismissed. There is no basis for claiming that there was anything wrong with the claims on the merits. It is just that the cases were not brought by the right people.
There was one case where one of these illegal guidances from the Secretary of State was challenged before the election. The judge ruled that it was just a guidance, and that until we get to election day to find out if the law was actually violated, the case was not ripe -- and it got dismissed.
Then the day after the election, when election officials actually violated the law, the case gets filed again, and the court says, "You can't wait until your guy loses and then bring the election challenge. It's barred by a doctrine called laches. This is the kind of stuff that the Trump legal team was dealing with in those 65 cases.
Of the cases that actually reached the merits --there were fewer than a dozen of them, if I recall correctly -- Trump won three-fourths of them. You have never heard that in the "New York Times." And the Courts simply refused to hear some clearly meritorious cases, such as one filed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The majority in that case simply noted that it did not see any need to hear the case, over a vigorous dissent that basically said, "Are you nuts? This was illegal, and we have a duty to hear the challenge."Two years later, that same Court took up the issues that had been presented to it in December 2020, and it held that what happened was illegal. But by then it was too late to do anything about it.
The 65 Project was formed -- I think I've seen reported that they received a grant from a couple of George Soros-related organizations of $100 million -- to bring disbarment actions against all of the lawyers who were involved in any of those cases.
The head of the organization gave an interview to Axios, kind of a left-leaning Internet news outlet, and he said in his interview to Axios that the group's goal with respect to the Trump election lawyers is to "not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms" "in order to deter right-wing legal talent from signing on to any future GOP efforts" to challenge elections.
Think about that. Our system works, in part, because we have an adversarial system of justice that supports it. If groups like the 65 Project succeed in scaring off one side of these intense policy disputes or legal disputes, then we will not have an adversarial system of justice.
We will not have elections that we can have any faith in, because if you do not have that kind of judicial check on illegality in the election, then bad actors will just do the illegality whenever they want, and we won't be able to do anything about it.
They are not the group that brought the bar charges against me in California, but they did file a complaint against me in the Supreme Court of the United States. A parallel group called the States United Democracy Center is the one that filed the bar complaint against me in California. Nearly every single paragraph of the complaint had false statements in it.
The bar lawyers publicly announced back in March of 2022 that they were taking on the investigation. Under California law, investigations before charges are filed publicly are supposed to be confidential. But there is an exception if the bar deems that the lawyer being investigated is a threat to the public.
So the head of the California Bar had a press conference announcing that I was a threat to the public, and therefore they could disclose that they were conducting an investigation. Now, what is the threat to the public that I pose? What is the old line? Telling truth in an era of universal deceit is a revolutionary act? I guess that is the threat to the public they're asserting.
That is the threat to the public. Telling the truth about what went on in the 2020 election. They gave me the most extraordinary demand. They basically said we want to know every bit of information you had at your disposal for every statement you made on the radio, for every article you published, for every line in every brief you filed. It took us four months.
I said, "We're going to respond to this very comprehensively." They say I have no evidence of election illegality and fraud. We gave them roughly 100,000 pages of evidence. 100,000 pages we disclosed to them. They went ahead and filed the bar charges anyway against us in January of 2023.
My wife and I, since 2021, have been on quite a roller coaster.
We came to the realization that my whole career, my education in Claremont, my PhD, my teaching constitutional law for 20 years, my being a dean, my being a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, probably equipped me better than almost anybody else in the country to be able to confront, stand up against this lawfare that we're dealing with. This is our mission now. This is what we do. This is what I do around the clock, is deal with this.
I was teaching our summer seminar at the Claremont Institute. We do a series of summer seminars, one for recent college grads called the Publius Fellowship Program.
You may recognize some of the names of people that have gone through Publius. I was a Publius Fellow in 1984. Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Tom Cotton, Kate Mizelle (the judge who blocked the vaccine mandates down in Florida). We've had some pretty good folks.
We also conduct a program for recent law school grads called the John Marshall Fellowship. We were conducting a seminar on the Constitution's religion clauses when the news of the Georgia indictment naming me as an indicted co-conspirator came down. We kept going on with the seminar. At the end of the program, the fellows always roast each other and make fun of each other, missteps they'd made during the week and things like that. Well, this year, they roasted me a bit. One of the students noted that as FBI agents were rappelling down from the rooftop, Eastman kept talking about the Constitution's religion clauses.
He recounted that, prior to the program, the students didn't know what to expect when they accepted the fellowship offer to study with me (among others), given all that was going on. Then he said that what they witnessed on that night, when the indictment came down, was a demonstration of courage they had not seen before, and that it was contagious. He then recited a line from our national anthem – the one asking whether the flag was still flying. And he noted, with great insight, that if you listen carefully to the words, the question is not so much whether the flag still flies, but what kind of land it flies over? Is it still the land of the free and the home of the brave, or the land of the coward and the home of the slave?
I find more and more, as more Americans are waking up to what is going on, that courage is indeed contagious. People are looking for ways to help fight back. When they see somebody standing up with that kind of courage, it gives them courage to join. There are people in every county in the country, with eyes on the local clerk's office and verifying that, "When it says 28 people are living and voting in an efficiency apartment, we know that is not true and we're going to get that cleaned up."
I remain optimistic as people are awakening to the threat to our way of life. This is one of the cornerstones of our Declaration of Independence. We are all created equal. There are certain corollaries that flow from that.
This means that nobody has the right to govern others without their consent. The consent of the governed is one of the cornerstones of our system of government. Our forefathers exercised it in 1776 by choosing to declare independence, and 10 years later by choosing to ratify a constitution, and we exercise that consent of the governed principle in an ongoing way by how we conduct our elections.
Ultimately, we are the sovereign authority that tells the government which direction we want it to go, not the other way around.
Regularly, we are instead being given the following message: "We're the government. We have spoken. How dare you stand up and offer a different view." That has turned us from being sovereign citizens in charge of the government to subjects being owned by or run by the government.
That is not the kind of country I intend to live in. It is not the kind of country I want my kids and now my grandchildren to grow up in. This is a fight worth everything you've got. That's why we're going to do as much as we can to win this fight. Thank you for your support and prayers.
Question: What happened after the 2020 election with Justices Thomas and Alito. They wanted the Supreme Court at least to hear the evidence, but were turned down. Why?
Dr. Eastman: One of the cases that was up there was one of the other illegalities that occurred in Pennsylvania. The Secretary of State unilaterally altered the statutory deadline for the return of ballots.
Pennsylvania, like most states, says, "If you're going to mail in your ballot, it's got to be received by the close of the poll so we're not having this gamesmanship of being able to get ballots in after the fact." She said, "Oh, we're going to give an extra week." The court said, "No, we'll give an extra four days."
That case was brought to the Supreme Court to block that clearly illegal action by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, agreed to by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. They asked for an emergency stay of that decision so the rule that had been in place would still be followed.
Ruth Ginsburg had died, there were eight people, and the court split four to four, which means the stay was denied. You had to have a majority. It was Thomas, it was Alito, it was Gorsuch, and it was Kavanaugh. John Roberts voted with the three liberals. Then when Amy Coney Barrett joined the court, I thought, "OK, we'll get to five."
When a motion to expedite in my case was filed in mid-December, we filed a cert petition from three of the erroneous Pennsylvania Supreme Court cases, we filed a motion to expedite, and that was denied. They didn't even act on it.
Then February 12th of 2021, they denied the cert petition and the motion to expedite. The vote there was six to three on the ground that it had become moot. That meant Barrett and Roberts and Kavanaugh all voted to deny the cert petition. But it had not become moot.
The issue of whether non-legislative actors in the state can alter election law consistent with the Constitution remains an open issue. It should not be an open issue. The Constitution is quite clear, but there was a news account at one point reporting that John Roberts had yelled at Alito and Thomas, who had insisted they needed to take these cases. They were just like Bush versus Gore.
Roberts was reported to have said, "They're not like Bush versus Gore. If we do anything, they will burn down our cities." Which means the impact of what had gone on in the summer of 2020 in Portland and Kenosha and all these other places, had an impact on the Supreme Court declining to take these cases.
By the way, a little aside on that story to show you how distorted the January 6th committee, and particularly Liz Cheney was on the evidence.
At some point during the course of all this, the legislator in Pennsylvania who was conducting hearings on the election illegality in Pennsylvania wanted my advice on what the legislative authority was if they found that there was outcome determinative illegality or fraud in the election.
He sent an email to me at my email address at the University of Colorado, where my wife and I were teaching at the time.
I responded, "If there is clear evidence of illegality, that's unconstitutional, and so you have the legal right, the legal constitutional authority to do something about it. If you think it altered the effect of the election, you should name your own electors."
University of Colorado, contrary to their policy, disclosed that email publicly. Liz Cheney announced the email, said Eastman was pressuring the Pennsylvanian legislature to overturn the election, even though it was quite clear that my statement about legislative authority was specifically conditioned on a finding of illegality and fraud sufficient to have affected the outcome of the election.
The other gross distortion that came out of the J6 Committee involved an email exchange I had about whether to appeal the Wisconsin case to the Supreme Court. The campaign staff, money guys in the campaign said, "We're trying to be good stewards of the funds we have. What are the chances that they're going to take these cases? Is it worth filing these cert petitions?"
I wrote in the email, "The legal issues are rock solid. It therefore doesn't turn on the merits of the case. It turns on whether the justices have the spine to take this on. Then I said, "And I understand that there is a heated fight underway and whether they should take these cases. We ought to give the good guys the ammunition they need to wage that fight."
Liz Cheney or someone on the J6 Committee puts out a portion of this email. They ignore that I say the legal issues are rock solid. They say instead that Eastman, knowing his case had no merit, was pressuring the Supreme Court to take the case and obviously had inside information from Ginni Thomas, because three weeks earlier, Ginni had sent me a note saying, "I heard you on Larry O'Connor's show giving an update on the election litigation. Can you give that same update to my Zoom call group? By the way, what's your home address? I need it for the Christmas card."
That was the email. All of a sudden, Liz Cheney and the J6 Committee puts those two things together as if there was something nefarious about it.
My understanding that there is an intense fight underway at the Court was based exclusively on the news accounts in The New York Times about Roberts yelling at Alito for insisting that the Court needed to take these cases. The dishonesty, the combination of the dishonesty, the whole thing, this narrative is out there and it is the government narrative.
No matter how false the narrative is, we are supposed to just accept it or bend the knees. "It's like, the government says, 'We've increased your funds this year from four to three,'" and we're just all supposed to accept it. This is lawfare, but it is support of totalitarianism, of authoritarianism.
The government has spoken, and we are all supposed to accept it as true, no matter how obviously false it is. I'm sorry, free people should not and never have and never will if they continue to be a free people tolerate that kind of thing.
Q: I have two questions. One, when Raffensperger did that in Georgia, was it expressly to defeat Donald Trump? Do you think he knew what the ramification of that ruling was going to be? The second thing is, in this upcoming trial, is there an opportunity to lay out publicly for a jury?
Is this a jury situation, the talk you just gave us? Because there has to be a moment where people pay attention to this, and so far it has not happened.
Dr. Eastman: So far it has not come, I agree. I mean, it has come, but in ways that are immediately shut down. We are laying out the case now in my California bar trial, which next week enters its eighth week. My defense of my California bar license will have cost us a half million dollars before all is said and done.
Being a full trial team for eight weeks, it's gone on. It is insane, but we are laying out the case to the extent the judge permits. She has already blocked about a dozen of my witnesses, but I'll tell you some of the stories. We have a guy named Joseph Freed, retired CPA, professional auditor, auditing Fortune 500 companies his whole career.
He said something doesn't smell right here, and so he applied his tools of the trade to look at the elections and wrote a book called "Debunked." It's a brilliant book. I told my wife, "This is the book I would have written if I hadn't been on my heels playing defense the last year."
The book was written and published in January of 2023, so the judge ruled it was not relevant because even though it discusses all the evidence I had before me, the analysis he did was after the fact and I could not have relied on it, therefore it was not relevant.
Two days later, the government offers a witness to introduce into evidence government reports that were done in September 2022. My lawyer objected, "It's not relevant on your prior ruling." The lawyer for the bar actually said, "Well, these are government reports. They are different." So the judge let them in.
Part of the problem is, trying to prevent the story from getting out, even in a trial where the rules of evidence are supposed to come to play. I don't think they'll be able to get away with that in the Georgia criminal litigation.
This full story probably will come out more clearly there and it will have a bigger viewership there than my California bar trial has had because Trump is one of the defendants. The California bar trial is exposing a lot of this.
A reporter for the "Arizona Sun," Rachel Alexander, is doing a terrific job covering the case in daily articles in Arizona Sun, but she also she has a Twitter account.
What I've seen this far from the state trial judge down in Georgia is that he is going to hold the line on what the law is and what the law requires. That is a very good thing and we'll be able to see it. Fingers crossed.
About Raffensperger, look, I don't know what his motives are, all I can see is the consequences of them. There are the consequences of that, which should have been obvious on its face. More importantly, there is the continued falsity claims in his public statements, and I'll give you one example.
One of the expert reports on the election challenge that was filed -- which never got a judge appointed, by the way, for nearly a month, and by then it was too late.
One of the allegations based on an expert analysis was that 66,247 people had voted who were underage when they registered to vote.
Now, he goes out and does a press conference and says, "We checked, nobody voted when they were underage," but that was not the allegation made by the expert. The allegation was that they registered to vote when they were 16. You have to be 17 and a half before you can register.
If they had not re-registered, that meant they were not legally registered and not legally allowed to vote. He routinely mischaracterizes the actual allegation in the case, deliberately lying. Whatever his motives were with whether he's anti-Trump or not, he is clearly lying, and we ought not to give him any credence whatsoever.
Q: You had said before that President Trump had won three quarters of the real cases. I'm wondering what that means to win, what are the implications of that and what is correct, if anything. What, then, then is the way forward?
Dr. Eastman: The way forward is a legal system. Now, the Trump cases that were won only involved small components like the statutory right in Pennsylvania to be there to observe the counting. They were blocking even minimum observation. The court ordered, "Yeah, you've got to let them into the room and observe."
That was not one that was the grand enchilada on the outcome determinative issues, but he won the case. We won ultimately on the indefinitely confined ruling up in Wisconsin. They said that, "Just being fearful of COVID does not mean you're indefinitely confined under the statute."
It's not as if the Wisconsin legislature didn't have an opportunity to alter that. If they wanted, they determined, they considered alterations in the law as a result of COVID, made some, but this was not one of them.
What I have seen, and it pains me to say this, is that the level of corruption in our institutions, including our judicial institutions, is so pervasive now that it is troubling. Because many of these cases end up in the DC courts, I cannot imagine a stronger case for change of venue than those January 6th criminal defendants.
Yet their motions for change of venue were uniformly denied because they wanted this in the DC jury pool, which is like 95% hostile to Trump. This is not a jury of peers. This is not a jury that is likely to lead to a just and true result. This is a partisan political act, a loaded dice system in DC.
The same thing I think they were gambling on being true in Georgia, in Fulton County. But I don't think the dice is as loaded there as it is in DC.
It will cost a million, a million and a half to defend against those charges. The poor guy who entered a plea agreement and pleaded guilty last week, one of the 19 defendants in Georgia, he is a bail bondsman for a living.
If he gets a felony, he is not only in jail for a while, but he cannot do his trade, so they offer him a misdemeanor conviction and no jail time. He took it in a heartbeat. Otherwise, he is looking at a million to two million dollars in legal fees tied up in this internationally televised drama for nothing, and he was not in the position to undertake that.
We have raised over a half million on my legal defense fund site. It's probably going to end up being three million total that we need, but he did not have the ability to do a hundredth of that.
In international news: "Oh, one of Trump's co-defendants is turning the tables on Trump. This is bad news for Trump." No, it's not. The guy made the most sensible decision he could.
My lawyer got a call from ABC, they said, "Have they reached out to you to offer a plea agreement?" I told him to say "No, I suspect they're not going to, but I'll tell you what. I'll make a suggestion to them. I will agree to a plea agreement that says they drop all the charges, and I will agree to testify truthfully on their behalf. In exchange, I agree not to file a lawsuit for malicious prosecution against them."
I thought that was a pretty good offer.
Q: You're paying with your money. They're paying with the...
Dr. Eastman: Yeah, they're paying with my money too, taxpayer money.
Q: What about the ability to manipulate electronic voting machines? It was on every single broadcast for weeks.
Dr. Eastman: I quickly became a triage nurse. Once I filed that brief on behalf of Trump and everything started coming in. I had to try and make the best judgment I could about what kind of allegations were credible and what allegations were not credible. What things that would appear credible that we could prove versus the one that seem credible, but we cannot prove them. I'll give you one example.
Early in January, Mike Lindell from MyPillow said he had a list of the Chinese intrusions. He has got 50 pages of spreadsheets purporting to show IP addresses in Beijing connecting with IP addresses in county election offices all over the country, and then altering Trump down 45 votes in this precinct or altering the totals as they are getting transmitted to the secretaries of state that then become part of the reported vote totals.
I had the first 10 lines of that spreadsheet on January 2nd, and I had some of the best security experts in the world that I was working with, and I said, "Can we verify this?" -- because they commonly describe how many Trump votes were lost, but obviously just typed in. I said, "I need to see the data, I need to see the packet that you say is sending instructions to make these alterations."
They wanted me to go to the president with this stuff and I said, "If in fact this is true this is an act of war by the number one other superpower in the world against the United States." Taking that information into the president without confirming it would be an imprudent thing to do.
I wanted to confirm it and my experts, who had access to IP address registries, said none of the IP addresses were valid. This is made-up stuff. So, I was not able to confirm it. Now, maybe this occurred, but the data I was looking at was not the silver bullet of evidence that we needed to be able to take it.
Other stuff, do you know...how many saw the vote spike charts? Some entrepreneur started making T-shirts out of them. Those big vote spikes, you saw that chart over the Internet.
Well, think about that for a moment. Atlanta, which is about 90% Democrat, if they are not reporting partial returns all night long the way the rest of the state is, and then they report all of their returns all at once, you are going to see a vote spike for the Democrat.
If they are reporting partial returns all night long, the way the rest of the state is, and then you see that kind of vote spike, that is pretty good evidence of fraud. I asked, "The data we are looking at that gives us that vote spike chart, that famous Internet graph that everybody saw is based on state-wide aggregate time-series data. I need to know whether Atlanta is reporting what we would expect or whether it's fraud." How do I get that information? I need the county level time series. Let's see what was going on in Fulton County alone."
I'm told that Georgia officials locked access to the county level time-series data that would have helped me determine whether it was evidence of fraud or evidence of something that we should have expected. To this day, I do not know, but those are the things I was trying to do to get to the bottom of this information.
About electronic voting machines? There have been three audits. Antrim County, Michigan, and one of the leading critics of voting machines and their software is a guy named J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan.
He testified as the expert in litigation down in Georgia in 2018 saying these machines are not secure. They sealed his testimony and it was only released in June. It just says, "These things are susceptible to fraud by all sorts of bad actors."
He was the government witness in Antrim County, and he demonstrated that, in his opinion, what really happened in Antrim County was that some of the local clerks had done an update. One of the cities in the county had omitted one of the school board races, and so they had to redo the ballot.
Unbeknownst to the county clerks, every line in the machine code was consecutively ordered throughout the whole county. If you add one line in Bailey Township, it doesn't affect the cities in the county that began with A, but it affected everything else.
All the votes for Jorgensen were cast for Trump, all the votes for Trump were cast for Biden. All the votes for Biden were cast for the line marked "President" and didn't count. When they unraveled that error and counted the actual ballots, it looked like this was an update in the software error and it was explainable.
Halderman goes out of his way, however, not to distance himself from his prior concerns about the vulnerability of election.
One of the things we discover in that Antrim audits is that in fact, the vote logs that are supposed to be there had been deleted for 2020, not 2016, not 2012, they're still there, but 2020 had been deleted.
We also found that the password for access to the machine, that give you, the administrator, rights that would allow you to delete logs, was the same password that everybody had access to anywhere -- from county clerk to anybody -- they had the same password. 123456 or something simple like that was the password. It had been that way since 2008.
The audit uncovered huge vulnerabilities, but because the logs had been deleted, no proof. A second audit was done in Mesa County, Colorado. A woman by the name of Tina Peters was the county clerk in Mesa County, Colorado.
The Secretary of State in Colorado, a radical advocate named Jena Griswold, had ordered an update to all the machines in the county shortly after the election. The update destroys all the election evidence, and that is a violation of federal law.
All election information is supposed to be kept for 22 months, and the people that are on the hook for the violation of that federal law --and it is a felony -- are the county clerks. Tina Peters said, "I'm not going to allow them to put me in way of a felony indictment of letting this information be destroyed."
She made a mirror-image copy of all the data so that when they did the upgrade, she could say, "I haven't violated federal law. I've got it." She had the mirror image, and she hired forensic analysts to look at.
They are now charging her with nine felonies for illegally accessing the information, but what they discovered in that audit, they actually identified computer code that was changing votes. Now, Jeff O'Donnell was the guy that did it. He published three reports, the three Mesa County reports. I called Jeff O'Donnell as one of the witnesses of my California bar trial. The judge has barred him from testimony. We had not identified him up-front because this was going to be rebuttal to their claims that everything was fine. The third audit has occurred down in Georgia. There's one case still pending from all of these things from three years ago. The case is called Favorito vs. Raffensperger.
Garland Favorito runs an organization called Voter GA, which has been doing election integrity oversight stuff in Georgia for 20 years. He is neither Democrat nor Republican. He is a Constitution Party guy, sorry.
There was a judge down there. Apparently this judge did not get the memo that we are not supposed to look at any of this stuff, and he authorized Garland and his team of forensic experts to access one of the machines in Fulton County, and he gave them forensic audit access.
They had it for about a week before somebody came down on the judge and said, "Oh, we're not supposed to do that," and the judge revoked the order. In that week, they discovered something very stunning. Think about how this works:
At first in our history, it used to be that you would go to both of your local precincts, and maybe the local library, and absentee ballots would get mailed in and delivered to that precinct, so that the absentee people who had voted from the same neighborhood were counted with the in-person votes.
This year in all the big cities, they had big central balloting and counting facilities: State Farm Arena in Atlanta, the Philadelphia Convention Center, or the TCS Center in Detroit.
This meant that absentee ballots are in from all 490 precincts in Atlanta, in Fulton County. They are randomly put through, they do not come all "in batches," such as, these are all the ballots from precinct number one, or whatever. They are random.
They get put in, they get opened, and they get stacked into piles of a hundred, and then they get scanned. Now think about that. That means you have 490 different ballots being scanned. Every ballot, every precinct, has different races on it, different school board races, different things.
The ballot has a code to tell the machine which key to look to in order to know how to count those dots on the ballot box. Every 100 with that randomized listing of precincts creates a unique digital signature for that hundred. For mathematicians, that is 100 to the 490th power, because there are 490 precincts.
The odds that you have a duplicate batch of a hundred are zero. 0.0000001. Infinitely small chance that they would have anything. In their one week on one machine, they discovered 5,000 ballots with identical digital signatures in batches of a hundred.
The margin in Georgia was 11,779. They did this on just one machine, looking at it only a partial bit of time for one week. These are the three audits we had. We know the machines either have been hacked or are open to bad actors with access to the machines, either put in a thumb chip. Halderman's the guy.
They had a convention in Las Vegas, hired a bunch of geeks, computer geeks from around the country, to come to this convention and see who could hack into the machines and alter the vote codes quickest. It took people about 15 minutes.
Halderman is also the guy. What is one of the big rivalries in the country, Michigan versus Ohio State? He had his Michigan students vote on who had the better football program, Michigan or Ohio State.
Now, anybody that knows anything about football knows there's no way anybody in Michigan is ever going to vote for Ohio State, but he programmed it so that Ohio State won by 80 percent. It took him five minutes.
Michigan students voting on one of his Dominion machines, when this was the issue, the ballot initiative, voted for Ohio State. The notion that these things cannot be hacked is laughable. They have to be able to be opened if they need to be repaired. [I heard that from an MIT graduate at the time.]
The question is, how to prove that they were hacked in this particular instance when they are destroying the evidence, and that is where we are.
Q: Do the Republicans do this too?
Dr. Eastman: I don't know. There was a story that was floated that the former Secretary of State in Arizona and former governor, who was running a distant fifth in the primary election for governor before he signed the $100 million contract with an electronic voting machine company, and all of a sudden he won the election, or the same thing that happened with Kemp in Georgia.
Those speculations have been floating out there that their bribery was not cash into their bank account but votes in their upcoming primary elections. I do not know whether that is true or not. Those allegations have been floated. It would not surprise me .
Stacey Abrams certainly thought Kemp stole the election. There was a whole litigation on it. That is why Halderman was doing his expert reports in that case.
More troubling, though, are the people that knew that there was something amiss and refused to do anything about it because they did not like Trump, or they do not like the Trump populist uprising movement that Trump is leading.
Remember, Trump did not create this movement. We need to date it back to the Tea Party movement in 2010 after Obamacare comes down. The Republicans in charge in Congress thought that was a bigger threat to them than the Democrats were.
They wanted to do everything they could to shut down that movement. The movement just took on a new guise when a new leader stepped up to get ahead of it, and it is the MAGA movement now.
Either they do not like those people in flyover country -- that may be part of it from our release in DC -- or they do not like anybody questioning the utter corruption that is making them all multimillionaires with having government jobs or some combination of both.
What was most discouraging was finding people saying, "Oh, I wish we could do something about this election illegality," and then, on the back side, doing everything they could to stop it.
Former Attorney General William Barr is the primary example of this. Barr goes out on December 1st, and said, "We've been investigating, and we found no evidence of significant enough fraud to affect the outcome of the election."
One of the charges against me in California is, "You continue to insist there was illegality even after Bill Barr made that statement. Why didn't you bow to him?" Well, we subsequently learned that despite Barr's public statement that US attorneys could investigate election illegality, anytime somebody did, he called him on the phone and order them not to.
In Pennsylvania, the US attorney in Pennsylvania, McSwain, was looking at the truck driver incident. Barr told him, "You hand all that over to the attorney general of the state" -- a Democrat who was part of the problem.
One of the FBI investigators who was actually getting to the bottom of this got a call that said, "Stand down."
The investigation of the ballots coming out from under the table and being counted after everybody was sent home down in Atlanta, the FBI did investigate that. Guess what the purpose of their investigation was. To determine that the statement that there were suitcases of ballots rather than bins of ballots was false. They did not do any other investigation about whether in fact people had been sent home.
You have people out there saying, "Oh, we're investigating. Everything's fine," while behind the scenes ordering people not to do the investigation that would actually get to the bottom of it.
I call it the uniparty. You can call it the deep state. You can call it the administrative state. You can call it the corrupt state, but it sees the MAGA movement as the biggest threat to its syndicators. It is going to do everything it can to destroy the people who are going to try and publicize what is going on.
That is what we are dealing with, and we are $2 million in. One of the lawsuits that was filed against me by this guy down in North Carolina, I don't know why he picked me as the lead defendant, but other defendants are all billionaire oligarchs who are using their own wealth. That is the kind of nonsense I'm dealing with.
*This article is based on a briefing from John Eastman to Gatestone Institute.
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