Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 18-19/2024
St. Joseph's Annual Holy Day/Elias Bejjani/March 19/2024
Denouncement of Arbitrary Summoning of Activist Dr. Makram Rabah by Lebanese Judiciary/Elias Bejjani/Date: March 17, 2024
Healing miracle of the blind beggar/Elias Bejjani/March 17/2024
MIND RENEWAL STRATEGY/استراتيجية "تجديد العقل"/Elie Aoun/March 18/2024
Al-Rahi's urgent plea: Addressing Lebanon's presidential vacuum and constitutional violations
Father Michel Abboud to LBCI: Caritas aids displaced amid south Lebanon's crisis
Quintet's ambassadors meeting: Breaking the presidential deadlock
Berri and Quintet Committee ambassadors seek common ground for presidential elections
Quintet ambassadors meet Berri, al-Rahi
Makram Rabah briefly detained over anti-Hezbollah interview
LF says no convergence with FPM unless it stops supporting Hezbollah
Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
Report: Qatari ambassador invited Jumblat, Bassil to Doha talks
Bassil asks Muslims for 'partnership', urges Christian unity
Israel-Hezbollah skirmishes: Latest developments
Joumblatt and Bassil invited to Doha for presidential talks

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 18-19/2024
White House reveals the death of Marwan Issa in Israeli operation
Biden considers that a large-scale Israeli attack on Rafah would be a mistake: White House
Israel spy chief to discuss Gaza truce with Qatar PM
Israel launches another raid on Gaza's Shifa Hospital
Indefinite detention and torture: The fate of suspects behind Oct. 7
Al Jazeera says Gaza journalist beaten, arrested by Israeli forces
Biden, Israel’s Netanyahu Discussed Rafah, Gaza Aid, Says White House
Israeli Forces Kill 20 Gunmen in Raid at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, Army Says
EU's Borrell: Israel is Provoking Famine in Gaza
Famine Imminent in Northern Gaza, Says UN-Backed Report
US Must Make Clear to Israel Consequences of Rafah Operation, Says Egypt FM
UNRWA Chief Says Israel Blocks Him from Gaza
Kremlin Says Only Way to Protect Russia Is to Create a Buffer Zone with Ukraine
Putin hails electoral victory as western leaders dismiss 'illegal' poll
EU announces an $8 bn aid package for Egypt as concerns mount over migration
US, Japan call on nations not to deploy nuclear weapons in orbit

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on March 18-19/2024
The Strategy of Atrocity in the Gaza War/Michael Hochberg and Leonard Hochberg/2024 Gatestone Institute/March 18, 2024
Pro-Gay Pope Creates New Christian Schism/Raymond Ibrahim /The Stream/March 18/2024
Biden continues Iran’s access to $10 billion just weeks after its proxy killed three American soldiers/Richard Goldberg/The New York Post/March 18/2024
Sinwar, Netanyahu and the Al-Aqsa Flood/Sam Menassa/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Putin Is Entrusted to Continue the Flood/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Extremists cannot hold the civilized world to ransom/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/March 18/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 18-19/2024
St. Joseph's Annual Holy Day
Elias Bejjani/March 19/2024
The feast day of St. Joseph, celebrated annually on March 19, holds a special significance for our Bejjani family, a name we have proudly carried for generations. As we commemorate this day, we seek the protection of God and His angels upon our beloved son Youssef and our grandson Joseph, both of whom bear this blessed name. St. Joseph's Day is a cherished occasion in the Maronite-Roman Catholic tradition, honoring the life of St. Joseph, the revered stepfather of Jesus and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Among devout believers, particularly the Lebanese Maronites, March 19 is not only a day of celebration but also believed to be St. Joseph's birthday. In Lebanon, St. Joseph is esteemed as the patron saint of families, revered for his exemplary role as a devoted husband and father figure. His life serves as a profound example of faith, humility, and hard work, attributes deeply cherished within our family and community. St. Joseph's divine assignment was no small feat; entrusted by God to care for Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, he embraced his responsibilities with unwavering love, dedication, and reverence. As the earthly guardian of the Holy Family, St. Joseph epitomized selflessness, providing a steadfast foundation of support and protection. As we honor St. Joseph, we also reflect on the virtues he embodied – his humility, strength, and unwavering devotion to God's will. May the legacy of St. Joseph continue to inspire us in our own roles within our families and communities, guiding us with his example of faith and love. On this special day, let us offer our prayers of gratitude and supplication, seeking the blessings of Almighty God upon all who bear the name of Joseph, as we strive to emulate the virtues of our beloved patron saint.

Denouncement of Arbitrary Summoning of Activist Dr. Makram Rabah by Lebanese Judiciary
Elias Bejjani/Date: March 17, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/127934/127934/
The arbitrary summoning of Dr. Makram Rabah by the Lebanese judiciary is not just an infringement on the rights of one individual, but a direct assault on the principles of freedom and justice that every Lebanese citizen holds dear. Dr. Rabah, a steadfast advocate for Lebanon’s sovereignty and independence, symbolizes the collective voice of those who reject Hezbollah’s occupation and stand for truth and justice.
The actions of the compromised, and hijacked Lebanese judiciary against Dr. Rabah are deplorable and illegal. It is evident that this summoning is a clear violation of his constitutional rights and an attempt to silence dissent against the oppressive practices of Hezbollah. Dr. Rabah fearlessly exposes Hezbollah’s involvement in Lebanon’s destabilization and condemns its exploitation of the Lebanese nation for Iran’s expansionist agenda.
The summoning of Dr. Rabah serves as a stark reminder of Lebanon’s status as an occupied nation, where institutions are manipulated to serve the interests of the occupier. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s control over Lebanese institutions undermines the sovereignty and independence of the country, jeopardizing the well-being of its people regardless of their religious or social affiliations.
It is imperative to condemn and reject the misuse of the judiciary for the benefit of Hezbollah and its Iranian masters. True justice can only prevail with the liberation of Lebanon from occupation and the full implementation of UN aimed at restoring sovereignty, independence, and the rule of law. The perpetrators of occupation and their collaborators must be held accountable for their crimes against the Lebanese people.
In conclusion, the summoning of Dr. Makram Rabah highlights the urgent need for Lebanon to reclaim its independence and uphold the principles of justice and freedom. The Lebanese people must unite in their demand to end Hezbollah’s occupation and for the restoration of Lebanon’s right as a sovereign nation.

Healing miracle of the blind beggar
Elias Bejjani/March 17/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/73575/elias-bejjani-faith-and-persistence-do-miracles/
John 09:39: “I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.”
On the sixth Lenten Sunday, our Maronite Catholic Church cites and recalls with great piety Jesus’ healing miracle of the blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus. This amazing miracle that took place in Jericho near the Pool of Siloam is documented in three gospels:Mark 10/46-52. John 9/1-41 Matthew 20/:29-34.
Maronites in Lebanon and all over the world strongly believe that Jesus is the holy and blessed light through which believers can see God’s paths of righteousness. There is no doubt that without Jesus’ light, evil darkness will prevail in peoples’ hearts, souls and minds. Without Jesus’ presence in our lives we definitely will become preys to all kinds of evil temptations.
John 09:5: “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world”.
In every community, there are individuals from all walks of life who are spiritually blind, lacking faith, have no hope, and live in dim darkness because they have distanced themselves from Almighty God and from His Gospel, although their eyes are physically perfectly functional and healthy. Meanwhile the actual blindness is not in the eyes that can not see because of physical ailments, but in the hearts that are hardened, in the consciences that are numbed and in the spirits that are defiled with sin.
John’s Gospel gives important details about what has happened with Bartimaeus after the healing miracle of his blindness. As we read in the below enclosed Biblical verses that after his healing Bartimaeus and his parents were exposed to intimidation, fear, threats, and terror. But he refused to succumb or to lie.
He held verbatim to all the course details of the miracle, bravely witnessed for the truth and loudly proclaimed his strong belief that Jesus who cured him was The Son Of God. His faith made him strong, fearless and courageous. The Holy Spirit came to his rescue and spoke through him.
Romans 8:26: “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”
Sadly our contemporary world hails atheism, brags about secularism and persecutes those who have faith in God and believe in Him. Where ever we live, there are opportunists and hypocrites like some of the conceited crowd members that initially rebuked Bartimaeus, and tried with humiliation to keep him away from Jesus, but the moment Jesus called on him they changed their attitude and let him go through.
Meanwhile, at the present time, Christian believers do suffer dire persecution in many countries on the hands of ruthless oppressors, Jihadists and rulers who refuse to witness for the truth. But despite of all the dim spiritual darkness, thanks God, there are still too many meek believers like Bartimaeus who hold to their faith no matters what the obstacles or hurdles are. Lord, enlighten our minds and hearts with your light and open our eyes to realize that You are a loving and merciful father. Lord Help us to take Bartimaeus as a faith role model in our life. Lord help us to defeat all kinds of sins that take us away from Your light, and deliver us all from evil temptations.
NB: The Above Piece was first published in 2014, republished with minor changes

MIND RENEWAL STRATEGY/استراتيجية "تجديد العقل"
Elie Aoun/March 18/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/127961/127961/
“Mind renewal” is a necessary step towards transforming Lebanese politics, correcting false dogmas, and guiding many followers of political parties to the right patriotic path.
One example relates to the situation in Gaza where one party leader declares “unity of fronts” (by instigating a war at the Lebanese border in support of Gaza), and another declaring that “we do not have a defense strategy with Gaza, and only the Arab League could take a united front decision.”
Both positions are wrong.
With regard to “unity”, if a Palestinian is suffering from a disease, we should not seek to prove our sympathy as Lebanese by infecting ourselves with the same disease. Similarly, if the Palestinian population is facing genocide in Gaza, we should not seek to prove our empathy by getting ourselves killed and getting our country destroyed along with the Palestinians. That would be a crime, and not an act of “duty” or “empathy” with the Palestinians. The only result of such a pursuit is more death and destruction. The truest sympathy is to resolve the conflict or to heal the suffering, and not to add to it.
Secondly, even if the Arab League makes a decision to go to war against Israel, Lebanon is not obligated by such a decision and should not join such a war. The conflict is between the radical Israeli right-wing and the radical Islamic left (Hamas and Hizballah). The rest of the populations, on all sides, want peace. Whatever the reasons for the conflict might be, war is not the solution.
Those who support Hezbollah because its fighters are Lebanese should instead call on those fighters to support Lebanon (and not outside agendas) since they are Lebanese.
Anyone has the right to protect one’s own country, but no one has a right to drag Lebanon into a war and then claim “defense.” Those who freely surrender vast maritime areas to Israel are not morally fit to “defend.” They have no credibility to claim themselves as “resistance.” Abandoning their false ideology and surrendering their weapons to the Lebanese Army is now the best defense.
Thirdly, when the people of Gaza are facing genocide, it is not appropriate for a former Lebanese president to say: “we do not have a defense strategy with Gaza.” A journalist or an ordinary citizen could probably make such a statement. But when the speaker is a former Lebanese president, it is disrespectful to tell any people facing mass deportation and annihilation: “we do not have a defense strategy with you in order to help you.”
The Palestinians are victims of (1) their leaders, (2) some Arab betrayal, (3) Israeli right-wing criminality, (4) false religious indoctrination, and (5) a global policy focused on militarization, and sale of weapons. The Lebanese are not the cause of, or a part to, any of these factors.
We have a moral obligation to assist the Palestinian people (not their militants) through humanitarian and diplomatic measures. However, Lebanon’s ability to pursue these options has been undermined by three main factors: (1) the quality of the Lebanese politicians who currently rule the country; (2) the PLO itself (when it waged wars against and undermined the Lebanese state) and (3) by those who proclaim to support the “Palestinian cause” (such as Syria, Iran, and their Lebanese allies) who have weakened the ability of the Lebanese state to take constructive measures on various fronts.
The Palestinian people are not responsible for what the PLO did in Lebanon, as many Lebanese are not responsible for the conduct of their militias. However, both the Lebanese and Palestinian people are suffering the consequences of misguided militancy.
Despite how difficult the situation may be, the political leadership on all sides lacks the seriousness to implement a viable solution. As individuals, we must assume responsibility, rely on ourselves, and focus on what we can change, regardless of how modest it may be – rather than waste our time on things beyond our control.

Al-Rahi's urgent plea: Addressing Lebanon's presidential vacuum and constitutional violations
LBCI/March 18/2024
Alongside the ongoing war on the southern front, political momentum is expected this week in the hope of ending the continuing presidential vacuum as the ambassadors of the Quintet Committee resume their efforts toward Lebanese officials and leaders.
This article was originally published in and translated from Lebanese newspaper Nidaa Al-Watan.  On the eve of this movement, the Lebanese Forces directed the compass of the committee's bet, emphasizing that their focus "must be on obstructionism to prevent a presidential breakthrough, as obstructionism is what intensifies the obstruction of presidential elections." Despite their differences, most Maronite leaders did not obstruct the election sessions and agreed to the concept of a third option, converging on a third candidate. However, those who obstructed all sessions are the obstructionists, those trying to impose their candidate are the obstructionists, those rejecting the third option are the obstructionists, those clinging to their candidate despite his inability to be elected are the obstructionists, and those refusing consecutive open sessions are the obstructionists. Those who bear the responsibility for the vacuum are the obstructionists. In a statement issued by its media department, the Lebanese Forces expressed astonishment at "the well-known news from sources claiming that the Quintet is betting on Maronite leaders to create a presidential breakthrough, while the bet should be on changing the obstructionist stance either by ceasing obstruction through participation in consecutive open sessions or by withdrawing their candidate and converging on the third option."Maronite Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Rahi emphasized that the political crisis in Lebanon "stems from the violation of the constitution, which is considered 'sacred' in the political sense in all countries worldwide, meaning it should not be tampered with." He questioned, "How can we accept the significant violation of the constitution by failing to elect a president for a year and a half, despite the relevant constitutional provisions being as clear as day?''
He continued, ''This obstruction results in the paralysis of the Parliament, which loses its legislative authority. The Council of Ministers loses its appointment authority and other powers vested in the president, among others."
He then expressed, "By electing a president, confidence in the country and its institutions is restored, first by the citizens and then by the cooperating countries. Indeed, countries have officially lost their trust in Lebanon, unlike the Lebanese people.'' Al-Rahi added, ''Do the obstructors, who has become known, not want to elect a president for their interests? Or are they prolonging the presidential vacuum for other purposes left to speculation? There is no justification for the failure to convene the Parliament and elect a president for the country."
During his Sunday sermon, Cardinal al-Rahi reiterated his call, alongside mothers of the victims of the Beirut port explosion, to continue the investigation, reminding them that "justice is above all." He considered that "obstructing the work of the judicial investigator by influential figures will not die out no matter how long it takes."In turn, Metropolitan Elias Audi, the head of the Orthodox Archdiocese of Beirut and its dependencies, wished that officials, leaders, and decision-makers "understood the importance of liberation from materialism and turned to purifying the soul and distancing themselves from everything ephemeral because it is transient, and only the face of God is eternal." He said, "If they behaved in this way, they would have spared themselves, Lebanon, and the Lebanese people the hardship of wars, economic, social, and moral collapses, and they would have spared Beirut and its people the suffering caused by the consequences of the port explosion, which left behind tragedies and pains that will not be erased from the memory of Beirut and its inhabitants. Not only because it touched the hearts of the capital and their hearts but also because it remained without accountability.'' Audi added, ''After more than three years since that fateful day, the mastermind and the perpetrator are still unknown, the investigation is still pending, and hearts are still bleeding."Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani affirmed that "Lebanon is a national partnership, and presidential settlement is a sovereign necessity.''He further expressed, ''Protecting the country's national creed is linked to the Parliament and its speaker. What Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri is doing may contradict the desires of some, but it is the most significant constitutional practice to protect the national creed.'' Qabbani emphasized, ''The victims of the port explosion are the victims of the most dangerous judicial game that has lived and continues to live on dirty American interests. It is required to remove the American nightmare from the minds of some." Finally, Deputy Director General of State Security, Brigadier General Hassan Shukair, appointed by the Lebanese government and under the directives of General Tony Saliba, met with the Prime Minister of Iraq, Mohammed al-Sudani, and presented "matters entrusted to him by the Lebanese government." There was "great responsiveness from Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani."

Father Michel Abboud to LBCI: Caritas aids displaced amid south Lebanon's crisis
LBCI/March 18/2024
The President of Caritas Lebanon, Father Michel Abboud, affirmed that the institution's work related to the situation in southern Lebanon amid the confrontations includes two parts. The first part involves the displaced from the southern areas, whose number exceeds this year's number of displaced persons in 2006, and the second involves the displaced within the south and the affected. On LBCI's "Nharkom Said" TV show, Father Abboud explained that in the first stage, Caritas continued to communicate with schools and centers in several areas to receive the displaced and then provided food rations and money to individuals who contacted the institution on the hotline. In this context, he pointed out that Caritas' work did not stop at this point; it also included individuals in the south suffering from educational and agricultural crises in coordination with several associations. Away from the crisis in the south, Father Abboud noted that Caritas Lebanon provides social and health services throughout the year, educational centers for people with learning difficulties, and medical services. The President of Caritas Lebanon clarified that the projects "we work on in collaboration with international donor agencies fall within the framework of agriculture, cooking, and printing, and they contribute to securing job opportunities," confirming that the proceeds return to the charitable association of Caritas. Father Abboud urged those in need to contact the Caritas hotline at 1633.He also asked individuals who wish to donate to contact the hotline, visit the website caritas.org.lb, or use one of the money transfer companies.

Quintet's ambassadors meeting: Breaking the presidential deadlock
LBCI/March 18/2024
Ambassadors of the Quintet have embarked on a new initiative, aiming to chart a presidential roadmap that would detach Lebanon's crisis from regional dynamics. Their efforts signify a breakthrough attempt in Lebanon's protracted presidential deadlock. They emphasize consultation before an open election session and explore what is known as the "third option."The expanded tour of the Quintet's ambassadors commenced with President Nabih Berri, who described the meeting as positive and indicated a mutual agreement on the necessity of reaching an understanding to fulfill the presidential process. From President Berri, who holds the key to the Parliament, the ambassadors proceeded to Bkerke, meeting with Patriarch Al-Rahi, a consistent advocate for prompt presidential elections. However, there was no indication of any response from those expected to call for a new election session. The ambassadors briefed the Patriarch on their discussions with President Berri and exchanged ideas on achieving the presidential elections. The Patriarch reiterated that the way forward is to summon the Parliament for consecutive sessions to elect a president while maintaining a quorum.

Berri and Quintet Committee ambassadors seek common ground for presidential elections
LBCI/March 18/2024
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri discussed the general situation and political developments, especially the upcoming presidential elections, with the ambassadors of the Quintet Committee. After the meeting, Berri said: "The meeting was good and will be repeated, and consensus is based on the necessity of achieving understanding to fulfill the upcoming presidential elections."On his part, the Egyptian ambassador said: "There will be a round of talks in the next two days, and another round to reach a convergent viewpoint among everyone and a common ground that greatly facilitates the conclusion of the presidential process." "The meeting was very good, and we listened to President Berri's commitment, which we will seek to emulate from all political blocs to embark on a path leading to the election of a president as soon as possible. You will notice in the coming period that there will be many meetings and movements," the ambassador said.Responding to a question about the nature of the new signals that prompted the Quintet Committee to resume its movement, the Egyptian ambassador replied: "The positive signals can be summarized under a main title, flexibility."
"As you all know, this presidential election's process has had somewhat rigid positions, so we seek to reduce this rigidity and search for common ground. What we have received in recent days of positive signals makes the matter more flexible. Thus, we can create this ground we spoke about and create an atmosphere that helps achieve a breakthrough in the presidential file." Responding to a question about the tangible breach achieved in the presidential file, he said: "The tangible breach is actually that the political blocs now have the conviction that consensus between them is critical.""And when we talk about consensus, it means that everyone is ready for dialogue, discussion, and consultation to reach something agreed upon by all, and this is what we are seeking," the ambassador added. He continued: "The 'National Moderation Bloc' and its movement do not differ much. There may be more details, but we say that the movement of 'Moderation' and others in parliament is necessary. "Furthermore, he said: "Once again, we emphasize that this process is exclusively owned by parliament and not by any other party, so the movement of 'Moderation' is important, as well as the movement of others. I will not talk about anything else but rather broad outlines, and in the coming days, we can discuss details, God willing."

Quintet ambassadors meet Berri, al-Rahi
Naharnet/March 18/2024 
The ambassadors of the member states of the five-nation group for Lebanon, which comprises the U.S., France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, met Monday with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi.
"The meeting was very good," Berri said, adding that there will be other meetings. "There is an agreement that an understanding must be reached and a president must be elected."Egyptian Ambassador Alaa Moussa said after the meeting that he is optimistic and that Berri was very responsive. "We presented ideas and we are always optimistic," Moussa said. Moussa later said from Bkerki that the ambassadors' meeting with al-Rahi was "very important" and that they have discussed with him the upcoming steps. "There are many steps, the first is to hold talks with all the blocs in order to elect a president according to a road map that we will present."Moussa said the ambassadors have lately seen flexibility that might pave the way for electing a president. In parallel with the five-nation group's efforts, the National Moderation parliamentary bloc had launched an initiative in February, calling for consultations in Parliament followed by open electoral sessions. Moussa said the quintet's efforts would benefit from National Moderation bloc's initiative that might facilitate finding some common ground. The quintet's ambassadors will also meet with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said Monday. Sources told the daily that the five-nation group has no candidates, while Change MP Waddah al-Sadeq said that the quintet is now discussing names. "We are not discussing names, but rather commitment," Moussa said. "Commitment would facilitate talks between the political forces about who they want to nominate." During the meeting, al-Rahi called on resorting to the constitution to elect a president because it is "the shortcut to the democratic process", Bkerki's sources said. Crisis-hit Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun's term ended in October 2022, with neither of the two main blocs -- Hezbollah and its opponents -- having the majority required to elect one.The international community and the five-nation group have long urged Lebanese leaders to end months of political wrangling and stem the financial meltdown.

Makram Rabah briefly detained over anti-Hezbollah interview
Naharnet/March 18/2024
Lebanon’s General Security directorate on Monday briefly detained outspoken political activist Makram Rabah following interrogation over an interview in which he attacked Hezbollah and talked about alleged Hezbollah arms storage and manufacturing sites. Media reports said Rabah was held after he refused to hand over his cellphone. Rabah’s friends and a number of activists had called for a solidarity sit-in outside the General Security HQ in Beirut. “Military Court investigative judge Fadi Akiki is the one who issued the order to detain me,” Rabah told Al-Arabiya’s Al-Hadath TV following his release.
“What happened today proves that the Military Court is a tool to pressure the activists who are opposed to Hezbollah,” he added. “If I were a captagon dealer like Hezbollah, investigative judge Fadi Akiki would not have dared to detain me,” Rabah charged, stressing that the Lebanese constitution preserves his right to express his opinion. “The collaborator is the one who leaves at large those who killed Lokman Slim in south Lebanon,” Rabah, who was one of Slim’s close friends, added. In a recent YouTube interview, Rabah alleged that Syria’s Qalamoun region near Lebanon’s border has become an area in which Hezbollah “manufactures” and “stores” its rockets. “There are factories that can be found through GPS … If you use Google you can find them,” he told his interviewer. In a post on his Instagram page, Rabah had announced that he had been summoned for interrogation by General Security's national security department. Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel had called for Rabah's "immediate release." "The same as we confronted and toppled the security-judicial apparatus in the near past, we will not allow a return to the fabrication of cases and the crackdown on freedom of expression under any excuse," Gemayel said in a post on the X platform. Change bloc MPs Paula Yacoubian, Najat Saliba, Firas Hamdan, Melhem Khalaf, Ibrahim Mneimneh and Yassine Yassine had also expressed solidarity with Rabah and published a unified message on their X platform accounts. "Freedom of opinion and expression is a right that is enshrined in the constitution and security summonings over a stance or an opinion are a return to obsolete practices. That's why we condemn the summoning of the academic Makram Rabah that is aimed at intimidation and the stifling of freedoms," the message said.

LF says no convergence with FPM unless it stops supporting Hezbollah
Naharnet/March 18/2024
The Lebanese Forces said Monday in a statement that it cannot converge with the Free Patriotic Movement, unless the latter stops supporting Hezbollah. "There is a communication with the FPM and this communication has resulted in an intersection presidential candidate," the statement said, adding that communication must be maintained but reaching convergence "requires national understandings starting from a sovereign vision, which is not currently available." FPM chief Jebran Bassil had called on Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi to bring the Christian leaders together, during an annual conference Sunday.
"Bassil reiterates in every occasion that he stands behind what he calls the resistance that protects Lebanon. This constitutes a fundamental point of disagreement," the statement said. "Unless Bassil announces that Hezbollah must lay down its weapons, we do not see any reason for convergence," the Lebanese Forces charged, adding that what the Lebanese people want is the rise of a "real state", which Hezbollah is preventing.

Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
Naharnet/March 18/2024 
Israeli warplanes struck Monday a house in the border town of Mays al-Jabal and a building in al-Odaisseh. Border tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have de-escalated in the past few days as Gaza truce talks gained steam.
On Sunday, Hezbollah carried out 8 attacks on northern Israel and the occupied Shebaa Farms. Since the war in Gaza erupted in October, there have been near-daily exchanges along the Lebanon-Israel border and international mediators have scrambled to prevent an all-out war in tiny Lebanon. At least 322 people have been killed in Lebanon, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 56 civilians, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border exchanges, the military says.

Report: Qatari ambassador invited Jumblat, Bassil to Doha talks
Naharnet/March 18/2024 
Qatari Ambassador to Lebanon Sheikh Saud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has invited former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil to visit Qatar to discuss the presidential file with top officials there, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper said.
The daily reported Monday that Al-Thani will visit other political leaders soon to invite them to talks in Doha. Amal MP and Berri's political aide Ali Hassan Khalil has already visited Qatar and reportedly discussed there the clashes on Lebanon's southern border and the presidential file. Crisis-hit Lebanon has been without a president since Michel Aoun's term ended in October 2022, with neither of the two main blocs -- Hezbollah and its opponents -- having the majority required to elect one. The international community and the five-nation group, which comprises the U.S., France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, have long urged Lebanese leaders to end months of political wrangling and stem the financial meltdown.

Bassil asks Muslims for 'partnership', urges Christian unity
Naharnet/March 18/2024 
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has pleaded to Lebanon’s political parties and religious leaders, mentioning them by name one by one. “I urge Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan and the leaders of the Sunni community, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah with his leadership, Speaker Nabih Berri with his wisdom, former Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat and his son Taymour with their understanding of Mt. Lebanon, and all Lebanese leaders not to let go of balanced and equal partnership,” Bassil said in a speech at the FPM’s annual convention.
Bassil also pleaded to Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi to “bring together the Christian political leaders,” stressing that “there is not any reason why we should not meet.”“I urge the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb Party, in the name of thousands of martyrs, topped by Bashir (Gemayel) of the 10,452 square kilometers, as well as the Marada Movement and the House of Franjieh and their heritage of sacrifices for Lebanon: let’s put a broad red line under existence, equal partnership and Greater Lebanon, and let’s start from here,” Bassil went on to say. He added: “This is the battle of the existence of the people whom we represent. I’m not calling for a sectarian alliance against anyone. I’m keen on the FPM’s diversity and proud of the presence of thousands of Muslims in it. I’m calling for partnership among everyone in order to protect everyone’s existence.”

Israel-Hezbollah skirmishes: Latest developments
Naharnet/March 18/2024 
Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling on Sunday targeted several southern Lebanese border areas, as Hezbollah announced a fresh attack on Israeli troops. As Israeli warplanes targeted the towns of Marwahin, Aita al-Shaab and Aitaroun, an Israeli drone fired a missile at Aita al-Shaab.
The strike on Aitaroun destroyed a house that had gone up in flames Saturday following a first strike, the National News Agency said. Israeli artillery shelling meanwhile targeted an area between Aitaroun and Maroun al-Ras, as Israel fired two shells on the Marjeyoun plain in a bid to terrorize farmers and shepherds. Hezbollah meanwhile announced that it overnight attacked a gathering of Israeli troops facing the Lebanese area of al-Wazzani and that it achieved "accurate" hits.

Joumblatt and Bassil invited to Doha for presidential talks
LBCI/March 18/2024
A source revealed to "Nidaa Al-Watan" that both the former president of the Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Joumblatt, and the president of the Free Patriotic Movement, MP Gebran Bassil, received an invitation to visit Doha and meet with senior officials to discuss the presidential file and ways to expedite its completion. A source also clarified to "Nidaa Al-Watan" that Qatari Ambassador Saud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani extended the invitations. After a meeting of the Quintet Committee ambassadors at his residence, he made two visits to Joumblatt and Bassil. In addition, the source said that the Qatari ambassador will visit political leaders similarly and extend invitations for them to visit Doha.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 18-19/2024
White House reveals the death of Marwan Issa in Israeli operation
AFP/March 18/2024
Israel killed the "second man" in the military wing of the Hamas movement during the past week, the White House announced Monday, after the Israeli state had spoken about targeting him in an airstrike in Gaza without confirming his death. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, "Hamas’s number three Marwan Issa was killed in an Israeli operation last week," during a briefing on the content of a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden considers that a large-scale Israeli attack on Rafah would be a mistake: White House
AFP/March 18/2024
President Joe Biden considered that a widespread aerial attack by the Israeli army in Rafah would constitute a "mistake," expressing "deep concern" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about this matter, the White House said. Netanyahu also agreed to Biden's request to send a delegation of senior Israeli officials to Washington to discuss this attack and a possible "alternative approach," as explained by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Sullivan indicated that these discussions are also supposed to focus on the possibility of pursuing "another approach" aimed at targeting Hamas in Rafah without launching a major ground attack. He added that a large-scale military operation in Rafah in the southern part of the Strip near the border with Egypt "would result in more innocent casualties, exacerbate the already dangerous humanitarian situation, and increase chaos in Gaza and Israel's isolation" on the international stage.

Israel spy chief to discuss Gaza truce with Qatar PM
Agence France Presse
Israel's intelligence chief, Qatar's prime minister and Egyptian officials are expected to hold talks in Doha Monday on a potential Gaza truce and hostage exchange deal, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP. The meeting between Mossad chief David Barnea, Qatar PM Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials "is expected to take place today", the source said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of talks.

Israel launches another raid on Gaza's Shifa Hospital
Associated Press/March 18/2024
Israeli forces launched another raid on the Gaza Strip's largest hospital early Monday, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there and had fired on them from inside the compound, where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people were sheltering. The army last raided Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command center within and beneath the facility. The military revealed a tunnel leading to a bunker, as well as weapons it said were found inside the hospital, but the evidence fell short of the earlier claims, and critics accused the army of recklessly endangering the lives of civilians. People sheltering in the hospital said Israeli forces backed by tanks and artillery had surrounded the medical complex early Monday and that snipers were shooting at people inside. They said the army raided a number of buildings and detained dozens of people. "We're trapped inside," said Abdel-Hady Sayed, who has been sheltering in the medical facility for over three months. "They fire at anything moving … doctors and ambulances can't move."Gaza's Health Ministry said the Israeli army was directing gun and missile fire at a building used for specialized surgeries. It said a fire broke out at the hospital's gate. The ministry said around 30,000 people are sheltering at the hospital, including patients, medical staff and people who have fled their homes seeking safety. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief Israeli military spokesperson, said the army launched a "high-precision operation" in parts of the medical complex. He said senior Hamas militants had regrouped there and were directing attacks from the compound. The army released a grainy aerial video of what it said were militants firing on its forces from inside the hospital, as well as video of a rocket-propelled grenade striking an armored vehicle. It said its forces had detained around 80 people in the raid. Hagari said the patients and medical staff could remain in the medical complex and that a safe passage was available for civilians who want to leave. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian facilities to shield its fighters, and the Israeli military has raided several hospitals since the start of the war, which was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. Most of Gaza's medical facilities have been forced to shut down for lack of fuel and medical supplies, even as scores of people are killed and wounded each day in Israeli strikes. Israel's offensive has driven most of Gaza's 2.3 million people from their homes and the U.N. says a quarter of the population is starving. The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 31,645 Palestinians have been killed in the war. The ministry doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people in the surprise attack out of Gaza that triggered the war and took another 250 people hostage. Hamas is still believed to be holding about 100 captives, as well as the remains of 30 others, after most of the rest were freed during a cease-fire last year in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent weeks trying to broker another cease-fire and hostage release, but the gulf between the two sides remains wide, with Hamas demanding guarantees for an end to the war and Israel vowing to continue the offensive until it dismantles the militant group.

Indefinite detention and torture: The fate of suspects behind Oct. 7
Associated Press/March 18/2024
Hamas' unprecedented raid on southern Israel has prompted a legal predicament: How does a country scarred by the deadliest attack in its history bring the perpetrators to justice? Israel is holding hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza accused of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked its war with Hamas. It is grappling with how to prosecute suspects and offer closure to Israelis, including victims' families. None of the available legal options seem to fit. Mass criminal trials could overwhelm Israel's already sluggish courts. An ad hoc war crimes tribunal established under Israel's far-right government could lack credibility. Freeing the suspects as part of a deal to release hostages held in Gaza would trouble many traumatized Israelis. Rights groups say the longer Israel takes to decide the right legal path, the longer suspected perpetrators languish in poor conditions and with no known contact with the outside world. At least 27 Palestinians from Gaza have died in Israeli custody since the war began, according to Israeli figures.
HOW DOES ISRAEL HANDLE PALESTINIAN SUSPECTS?
Israel has long contended with legal issues surrounding Palestinian suspects — and has long been criticized for its approach. It regularly uses a measure called administrative detention to hold Palestinians without charge or trial.
Palestinian suspects from the West Bank are tried in Israeli military courts that have been a longtime fixture of its open-ended occupation of the territory. Palestinians and human rights groups say the system almost always renders guilty verdicts. Israel says it provides due process and imprisons those who threaten its security. Shawan Jabarin, who heads the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said any trial held by Israel would not be credible. "This is the system that Israelis have: Inhuman. Unfair. No due process," he said. In the Oct. 7 attack, thousands of Palestinians crossed the border from Gaza into Israel, breaking down the country's defenses and rampaging through sleepy communities. They killed entire families, hunted down revelers at an outdoor music festival and committed sexual violence. Hamas took roughly 250 hostages, including women, children and older adults, and is believed to still be holding 100 of them. Israel's subsequent invasion has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and led to widespread hunger.
WHAT ABOUT THE CRIMINAL COURTS?
Israel's criminal courts are distinct from the military courts and are widely seen as independent of political influence. But Barak Medina, a law professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said trying the hundreds of suspects there would overwhelm the backlogged system and could take years. Israel's public defenders' office has said it will not provide a state-funded attorney for the suspects, seeing Israeli lawyers also scarred by Hamas' attack as unsuitable and unwilling to do so. According to Israel's public broadcaster Kan, the office has suggested foreign lawyers be enlisted, like in Israel's 1961 criminal trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of Nazi Germany's main organizers of the Holocaust. Some experts have pointed to that trial as a possible precedent because it was high profile, dealt with a traumatic event and challenged Israel's existing legal framework. In publicly airing the Nazis' heinous crimes, the trial offered some catharsis for Holocaust survivors. Eichmann, who was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina, was represented by a German lawyer and was found guilty of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and war crimes. He was executed in 1962, the only time Israel has carried out a death sentence. A similarly public trial for Hamas' crimes might offer Israelis some sense of justice. But Eichmann's trial focused on just one defendant. Kaplinsky, the former Justice Ministry official, said the narratives presented at criminal trials could also work against Israel by providing fodder for its opponents. For example, if prosecutors fail to include rape charges in any indictment because the evidence they have doesn't meet the legal threshold, that could fuel arguments about whether sexual violence occurred at all. Defense attorneys might use friendly fire shootings to whip up suspicions about the death toll from the attack.
WHAT ABOUT A TRIBUNAL?
Kaplinsky presented a plan to an Israeli parliamentary committee that suggests creating a tribunal that takes the events of Oct. 7 as established fact. The tribunal would not call witnesses but would be based on documents from Israel's security forces as well as the suspects' interrogations. Suspects would fund their own defense. It was not clear if his plan was being considered. Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst who wrote a book about Israel's democracy, said any tribunal created under Israel's current far-right government would be politically tainted. "It will look like the laws are tailored according to the political whim of the current government," she said. Medina, the law professor, said it appeared the state was holding off on making any decisions on how to try the suspects because it was expecting them to be released as part of a deal to free hostages. The Israeli Justice Ministry declined to comment.
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO SUSPECTS NOW?
For now, many of the suspects are said to be considered "unlawful combatants," meaning Israel can extend their detention indefinitely, delay their access to a lawyer and keep legal proceedings classified. Rights groups say that lack of transparency can enable abuse.
Israel's predicament is similar to the one the U.S. faced after the 9/11 attacks as it sought to capture al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. sent hundreds of suspects to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The detention center became the focus of international outrage because of the torture of prisoners and the U.S. insistence that it could hold men indefinitely without charge. Avi Kalo, who heads the international law program at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Israel's Reichman University and is a former legal advisor to the Israeli military's intelligence corps, said this situation is different because the Oct. 7 detainees are being held in Israeli territory and are subject to Israeli law. That includes judicial oversight on their cases, though rights groups say that oversight is flawed. Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said that accounts from freed prisoners indicate detainees are receiving little food and experiencing inhumane treatment that could amount to torture. The Israel Prison Service, which holds some of the suspects, said prisoners are granted their basic rights. Steiner said the committee hasn't taken a position on the best way to bring the attackers to justice. "It's a complicated legal question," she said. "But the alternative of holding them in lengthy detention, incommunicado, in such harsh conditions is also not a normal legal option."

Al Jazeera says Gaza journalist beaten, arrested by Israeli forces
Agence France Presse/March 18/2024
Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera said Israeli forces had beaten and arrested its correspondent Ismail Alghoul during a raid on Monday on Gaza's largest hospital, urging his release. The Israeli army said it was battling Hamas militants at the Al-Shifa hospital with witnesses reporting air strikes and tanks near the facility which was crowded with patients and displaced people. "Al Jazeera Media Network demands the immediate release of its correspondent and the other journalists who were detained alongside him, and holds the occupation forces fully responsible for their safety," the channel said in a statement to AFP. "Ismail Alghoul was arrested this morning inside Al-Shifa Hospital along with a number of journalists while covering the Israeli occupation forces' attack on the hospital. According to eyewitnesses, Ismail was severely beaten and taken to an unknown location," it added. The Doha-headquartered network said a broadcast vehicle with cameras and other equipment was destroyed following the arrests. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Al Jazeera source, who was not authorised to brief the press and spoke of condition of anonymity, told AFP that five other people were arrested including Alghoul's camera crew and engineers. Last month the network accused Israel of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees working in Gaza. As of Monday, at least 95 journalists and media workers had been confirmed dead in the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), citing "preliminary investigations". Of those 90 were Palestinians, CPJ said. Two Al Jazeera journalists have been killed during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, while bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh was wounded. "The network emphasises that this targeting serves as an intimidation tactic against journalists to deter them from reporting the horrific crimes committed by the occupation forces against innocent civilians in Gaza," the channel said. "The targeting of Ismail Alghoul is part of a series of systematic attacks on Al Jazeera by the occupation authorities," it added. The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas's unprecedented attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 31,726 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.

Biden, Israel’s Netanyahu Discussed Rafah, Gaza Aid, Says White House
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
US President Joe Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and discussed the situation in Rafah and efforts increase aid to Gaza, the White House said. The call was the first between the two leaders since Feb. 15 and comes amid sharp tensions between Israel and its most steadfast ally over Netanyahu's handling of the war in Gaza that followed Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack inside Israel. "President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the latest developments in Israel and Gaza, including the situation in Rafah and efforts to surge humanitarian assistance to Gaza," the White House said. Separately, Netanyahu said the two men had discussed Israel's commitment to achieve all the targets it had set out for the war: eliminating Hamas, releasing all the hostages and ensuring Gaza would no longer pose a threat to Israel. This would be done "while providing the necessary humanitarian aid that helps achieve those goals," he said in a statement. In a speech on Thursday, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, a longtime supporter of Israel and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, called for new elections in Israel and said Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace. Biden praised the speech the following day and said that Schumer had echoed the concerns of many Americans. Netanyahu responded harshly on Sunday, telling CNN in an interview that Schumer's speech was "totally inappropriate". Netanyahu reaffirmed to a cabinet meeting on Sunday that Israeli forces would thrust into Rafah, the last relatively safe place in the tiny, crowded Gaza enclave, despite international pressure for Israel to avoid further civilian casualties.

Israeli Forces Kill 20 Gunmen in Raid at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, Army Says
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Israeli troops raided the compound of Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday, saying they killed 20 gunmen, in an operation Palestinian health authorities said caused multiple casualties and set off a fierce fire in one of the buildings. The Israeli military said soldiers and special forces had conducted a "precise operation" based on intelligence that the hospital was being used by senior Hamas leaders, and were fired upon when they entered the compound. "Twenty terrorists have been eliminated at the Shifa hospital thus far in various engagements, and dozens of apprehended suspects are currently in questioning," it said in a statement. Al Shifa, the Gaza Strip's biggest hospital before the war, is now one of the only healthcare facilities that is even partially operational in the north of the territory, and is also housing hundreds of displaced civilians. "Suddenly, we started to hear sounds of explosions, several bombings, and soon tanks started to roll, they came from the western road and headed toward Al Shifa, then sounds of gunfire and explosions increased," Mohammad Ali, 32, a father of two, who lives around one kilometer from the hospital, told Reuters via a chat app. "We don't know what is happening, but it looked as if it was a re-invasion of the Gaza City," he added, saying that the military activities began at around 1:00 a.m. (2300 GMT Sunday). Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said a fire broke out at the entrance of the hospital complex, causing cases of suffocation among displaced women and children sheltering in the hospital. It said communication had been cut off, with people trapped inside the surgery and emergency units of one of the buildings. "There are casualties, including deaths and injuries, and it's impossible to rescue anyone due to the intensity of the fire and targeting of anyone approaching the windows," the ministry said. The Israeli army dropped new leaflets around the hospital in Gaza City. "To all those who exist or are displaced in Rimal and the displaced in Al Shifa and its vicinity: you are in a dangerous combat zone. The IDF is operating hard in its residential areas to destroy terror infrastructure," said the statement, which ordered the people to take the coastal road towards Al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip. The military issued footage of the overnight operation showing soldiers in the hospital compound engaged in gunfights. Reuters could not independently verify the video. Footage circulated on social media appeared to show an Israeli tank blocking the main gate of Al Shifa. The military said troops had been instructed on the importance of operating cautiously as well as on measures to be taken to avoid harm to patients, civilians, medical staff and medical equipment, and said patients were not required to evacuate. Not far from Al Shifa, Israeli army forces raided a school where displaced families were sheltering, and detained several men there, residents and Hamas media said. Residents reported tanks were also operating on the edge of the Beach refugee camp and said tanks fired shells at some buildings nearby.
Hamas said in a statement the Israeli military had committed a new crime by directly targeting the hospital buildings without caring about patients, medical staff or displaced people in it. Israel came under fierce criticism last year when troops first raided the hospital, where they uncovered tunnels they said were used as command and control centers by Hamas. Hamas and medical staff deny the hospital has been used for military purposes or to shelter fighters.

EU's Borrell: Israel is Provoking Famine in Gaza
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Israel is provoking famine in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war, the EU's foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell said on Monday. "In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people," Borrell said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels. "This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine."Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would keep on with the military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, where aid agencies say famine is looming, while ceasefire talks were set to resume. Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting that Israel would push into Rafah, the last relatively safe place in the tiny, crowded Gaza enclave after more than five months of war, despite international pressure for Israel to avoid civilian casualties. Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz in a response on Monday urged Borrell to "stop attacking Israel and recognize our right to self-defense against Hamas' crimes.”Katz in a post on X said Israel allowed "extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza by land, air, and sea for anyone willing to help,” but that help was "violently disturbed" by Hamas militants with "collaboration" by the UN's aid agency UNRWA.

Famine Imminent in Northern Gaza, Says UN-Backed Report
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July, a UN-backed report said on Monday, after more than five months of war which have shattered the Palestinian territory and cut off supplies. Malnutrition and food insecurity have probably exceeded famine levels in Gaza's north, and hunger-linked death rates were likely to do so soon, the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said.The assessment - a scale used by UN agencies, regional bodies and aid groups that sets the global standard on measuring food crises - comes amid global pressure on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave of 2.3 million people. Some 300,000 have been cut off by fighting in the north. The European Union accused Israel on Monday of provoking famine and using starvation as a weapon of war - claims that Israel rejects, saying it does not target civilians and is only interested in eliminating the Hamas movement. The IPC uses a complex set of technical criteria. Its most extreme warning is Phase 5, which has two levels, catastrophe and famine. Famine is assessed as at least 20% of the population suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease. In northern Gaza, "the upward trend in non-trauma mortality is also expected to accelerate, resulting in all famine thresholds likely to be passed imminently," the IPC said. "The window is shutting, and it is shutting very, very fast," Arif Husain, chief economist of the World Food Program, told Reuters. The study said the number of people projected to experience "catastrophic hunger" across the besieged enclave between now and mid-July had nearly doubled to more than 1.1 million, or about half the population, since the IPC last reported in December, when there was already record hunger. Under a worst case scenario, central and southern Gaza also face a risk of famine by July, the IPC said.
Skipping meals
Famine has been declared just twice in the past 13 years: in parts of Somalia in 2011 and in parts of South Sudan in 2017. Some humanitarians voice frustration with the criteria, since assessing famine thresholds can be particularly difficult in a war zone due to a lack of access and reliable data. Gaza health authorities have reported children dying of malnutrition or dehydration, but UN officials say the health system has basically collapsed and the situation is hard to monitor. "It's impossible to find the data to meet their criteria in northern Gaza as people aren't dying in hospital so it's unrecorded," said one aid worker who asked not to be named. The IPC said that because of a lack of aid, almost all households were skipping meals every day and adults were reducing their meals so children could eat. In northern Gaza, in nearly two thirds of households, people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days, it added. In southern areas, that applied to one third of the households. The IPC analysis said famine could still be avoided if Israel and Hamas stop fighting and aid organizations gain increased access. Israel has said it plans to assault Rafah, the southern Gaza city bordering Egypt, to root out Hamas fighters, but it is also involved in mediation talks about a possible truce. "We must act and we must act now," said Husain. "When famine happens, people have already starved, children are already wasted, and many, many, many lives are already lost."

US Must Make Clear to Israel Consequences of Rafah Operation, Says Egypt FM
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
The United States must make clear to Israel what the consequences of a military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip would be, as the US has voiced opposition to such a move, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said on Monday. "It is not enough for rhetoric, it is not enough to state opposition, it is also important to indicate what if that position is circumvented, what if that position is not respected," Shoukry said at a news briefing with United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) chief Philippe Lazzarini in Cairo. He also warned that the humanitarian consequences and the loss of lives that would result in the situation would be "catastrophic".

UNRWA Chief Says Israel Blocks Him from Gaza
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
Israel denied the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) entry to the Gaza Strip on Monday, UNRWA and Egypt said, calling it an unprecedented move at a time of massive need. Philippe Lazzarini, whose organization has been in crisis since Israel accused 12 of its staff of taking part in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, said he meant to go to the Gaza city of Rafah but was informed: "My entry into Rafah is declined". Speaking with him at a Cairo news conference, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said: "You were declined by the Israeli government, refused the entry which is an unprecedented move for (a) representative at this high position."
The Israeli prime minister's office and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. UNRWA is by far the largest relief body in Gaza, where the depth of the humanitarian crisis was underlined on Monday when a UN-backed report warned of imminent famine in the north.
"On the day new data is out on famine in #GAZA, the Israeli Authorities deny my entry to Gaza," Lazzarini wrote on X, adding that his visit was intended to improve humanitarian operations. "This man-made starvation under our watch is a stain on our collective humanity." Israel's ground and air offensive has laid waste to the Gaza Strip over the last five months, killing more than 31,000 people, according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza. The offensive was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel in an attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in another 253 being taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Funding crisis
Israel alleged in January that 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 staff in Gaza took part in the Oct. 7 attack. The Israeli accusations led 16 countries including the United States to pause $450 million in funding, throwing UNRWA operations into crisis.
UNRWA fired some staff members, saying it acted in order to protect the agency's ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, and an independent internal UN investigation was launched. Australia is one of several states which subsequently resumed funding. Its foreign minister said last week that Australia had consulted with UNRWA and other donors and was satisfied the agency was not a terrorist organization. UNRWA has condemned the Oct. 7 attacks, saying the Israeli allegations against the agency - if true - are a betrayal of UN values and of the people UNRWA serves. UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma told Reuters Lazzarini had visited the Gaza Strip four times during the war, and numerous occasions before that. "We were ready to leave this morning on an Egyptian plane from Cairo to El Arish," Touma said. Lazzarini has previously warned of a campaign to end UNRWA operations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said UNRWA must be shut down. In Cairo, the UNRWA head warned of a "race against the clock" to reverse the spread of hunger and avert famine. With political will, Gaza could be "flooded" with food via land crossings, he added. He also said that more than 150 of UNRWA's facilities in Gaza have been hit, damaged or completely destroyed. "We also know that a number of staff that have been arrested have gone through very tough investigation, ill-treatment and humiliation," Lazzarini said.

Kremlin Says Only Way to Protect Russia Is to Create a Buffer Zone with Ukraine
Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
The Kremlin said on Monday that the only way to protect Russian territory from Ukrainian attacks was to create a buffer zone that would put Russian regions beyond the range of Ukrainian fire. The Kremlin was commenting after President Vladimir Putin raised the possibility of setting up such a zone in a speech after winning re-election on Sunday. In a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Against the backdrop of (Ukrainian) drone attacks and the shelling of our territory: public facilities, residential buildings, measures must be taken to secure these territories. "They can only be secured by creating some kind of buffer zone so that any means that the enemy uses to strike us are out of range." After winning re-election, Putin said he did not rule out setting up such a buffer zone. "I do not exclude that, bearing in mind the tragic events taking place today, that we will be forced at some point, when we deem it appropriate, to create a certain 'sanitary zone' in the territories today under the Kyiv regime," Putin said. Putin declined to give any further details, but said such a zone might have to be big enough to stop foreign-made weapons striking Russian territory.
He made the remark after being asked whether he thought it necessary for Russia to take Ukraine's Kharkiv region, which borders Belgorod, a Russian province that has come under regular attack from Kyiv's forces since 2022.
Russian forces initially tried to seize Kharkiv region in February 2022, but were routed from most of the area in a Ukrainian counteroffensive in September that year. Russian in September 2022 said it had annexed the four Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, even though it did not fully control any of them. The Ukrainian leadership has said that Russia's annexation is illegal and that it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian soil.

Putin hails electoral victory as western leaders dismiss 'illegal' poll
Associated Press/March 18/2024
President Vladimir Putin basked in a victory early Monday that was never in doubt, as partial election results underlined the Russian leader's total control of the country's political system.
After facing only token challengers and harshly suppressing opposition voices, Putin was set to extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years. Even with little margin for protest, Russians crowded outside polling stations at noon on Sunday, the last day of the election, apparently heeding an opposition call to express their displeasure with the president. Putin hailed the overwhelming early results as an indication of "trust" and "hope" in him — while critics saw them as another reflection of the preordained nature of the election. "Of course, we have lots of tasks ahead. But I want to make it clear for everyone: When we were consolidated, no one has ever managed to frighten us, to suppress our will and our self-conscience. They failed in the past and they will fail in the future," Putin said at a meeting with volunteers after polls closed. Any public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine has been stifled. Independent media have been crippled. His fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters had virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited. According to Russia's Central Election Commission, Putin had some 87% of the vote with over 99% of precincts counted. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the presidents of Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela quickly congratulated Putin on his victory, as did the leaders of the ex-Soviet Central Asian nations of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, while the West dismissed the vote as a sham. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "This is not what free and fair elections look like."In the tightly controlled environment, Navalny's associates urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to go to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.
Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's widow, who spent more than five hours in the line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin. She told reporters that she wrote her late husband's name on her ballot. Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: "Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr. Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr. Putin, because he's a killer, he's a gangster." But Putin brushed off the effectiveness of the apparent protest. "There were calls to come vote at noon. And this was supposed to be a manifestation of opposition. Well, if there were calls to come vote, then ... I praise this," he said at a news conference after polls closed. Unusually, Putin referenced Navalny by name for the first time ever at the news conference. Some Russians waiting to vote in Moscow and St. Petersburg told The Associated Press that they were taking part in the protest, but it wasn't possible to confirm whether all of those in line were doing so. A voter in Moscow, who identified himself only as Vadim, said he hoped for change, but added that "unfortunately, it's unlikely." Like others, he didn't give his full name because of security concerns. Meanwhile, supporters of Navalny streamed to his grave in Moscow, some bringing ballots with his name written on them. Meduza, Russia's biggest independent news outlet, published photos of ballots it received from their readers, with "killer" inscribed on one and "The Hague awaits you" on another. The latter refers to an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes charges from the International Criminal Court. Some people told the AP that they were happy to vote for Putin — unsurprising in a country where state TV airs a drumbeat of praise for the Russian leader and voicing any other opinion is risky.
Dmitry Sergienko, who cast his ballot in Moscow, said, "I am happy with everything and want everything to continue as it is now." Voting took place over three days at polling stations across the vast country, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. Several people were arrested, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after they tried to start fires or set off explosives at polling stations while others were detained for throwing green antiseptic or ink into ballot boxes. Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of the Golos independent election watchdog, said Russians were searched when entering polling stations, there were attempts to check filled-out ballots before they were cast, and one report said police demanded a ballot box be opened to remove a ballot. That left little room for people to express themselves. Still, huge lines formed around noon outside diplomatic missions in London, Berlin, Paris and other cities with large Russian communities, many of whom left home after Putin's invasion of Ukraine. "If we have some option to protest I think it's important to utilize any opportunity," said 23-year-old Tatiana, who was voting in the Estonian capital of Tallinn and said she came to take part in the protest.

EU announces an $8 bn aid package for Egypt as concerns mount over migration
Associated Press/March 18/2024
The European Union has announced a 7.4 billion-euro ($8 billion) aid package for cash-strapped Egypt as concerns mount that economic pressure and conflicts in neighboring countries could drive more migrants to European shores.
The deal, which drew criticism from rights groups over Egypt's human rights record, was signed Sunday afternoon in Cairo by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The ceremony was attended by leaders of Belgium, Italy, Austria, Cyprus and Greece. "Your visit today represented a very important milestone in the relations between Egypt and the European Union," el-Sissi told visiting European leaders. He said the deal has achieved a "paradigm shift in our partnership."
The aid package includes both grants and loans over the next three years for the Arab world's most populous country, according to the EU's mission in Cairo. Most of the funds — 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion)— are macro-financial assistance, according to a document from the EU mission in Egypt. The mission said the two sides have promoted their cooperation to the level of a "strategic and comprehensive partnership," paving the way for expanding Egypt-EU cooperation in various economic and noneconomic areas. "The European Union recognizes Egypt as a reliable partner and its unique and vital geostrategic role as a pillar of security, moderation and peace in the Mediterranean, Near East and African region," a joint statement said after the summit. Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose country played a major role in achieving the deal, lauded it as "historic.""This initiative shows our willingness to strengthen and encourage a new structural method of cooperation between the two sides of the Mediterranean," she told the Egyptian-EU summit in Cairo. The deal, known as the Joint Declaration, aims among other things to promote "democracy, fundamental freedoms, human rights, and gender equality," according to the European Commission. Both sides will also deepen their cooperation to address challenges related to migration and terrorism. The EU will provide assistance to Egypt's government to fortify its borders, especially with Libya, a major transit point for migrants fleeing poverty and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. The 27-nation bloc will also support the government in hosting Sudanese who have fled nearly a year of fighting between rival generals in their country. Egypt received more than 460,000 Sudanese since April last year.
The deal comes amid growing concerns that Israel's looming ground offensive on Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah could force hundreds of thousands of people to break into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Israel-Hamas war, now in its sixth month, has pushed more than 1 million people to Rafah. Egypt says there are 9 million migrants in the country, including about 480,000 who are registered refugees and asylum-seekers with the U.N. refugee agency. Many of those migrants have established their own businesses, while others work in the huge informal economy as street vendors and house cleaners. For decades, Egypt has been a refuge for migrants from sub-Saharan Africa trying to escape war or poverty. Egypt is a destination and a haven for some, because it's the closest and easiest country for them to reach. For others, it's a point of transit before attempting the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Europe. While the Egyptian coast has not been a major launching pad for human traffickers sending overcrowded boats across the Mediterranean to Europe, Egypt faces migratory pressures from the region, with the added looming threat that the Israel-Hamas war could spill across its borders. The deal would inject much-needed funds into the Egyptian economy, which has been hit hard by years of government austerity, the coronavirus pandemic, the fallout from Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and most recently, the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Egypt reached a deal with the International Monetary Fund earlier this month to increase a bailout loan to $8 billion, up from $3 billion, after marathon negotiations. The deal with the IMF was combined with economic reforms that included the flotation of the Egyptian pound and a sharp raising of the main interest rate. The EU deal follows the template of those recently signed with Tunisia and Mauritania that pledged funds in return for fortifying their borders. Both Tunisia and Mauritania are key points of departure for migrants crossing the Mediterranean and a stretch of the Atlantic to Italy and Spain, respectively, and they too were criticized for alleged abuses against migrants. The package drew criticism from international rights groups over Egypt's human rights record. Amnesty International urged European leaders not to be complicit with human rights violations taking place in Egypt.
"EU leaders must ensure that the Egyptian authorities adopt clear benchmarks for human rights," said Eve Geddie, Amnesty International's head of the European institutions office. Geddie pointed to Egypt's restrictions on media and freedom of expression and a crackdown on civil society.
Questioned about the morality of such deals earlier this week in Brussels, European Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer acknowledged there were issues in all these countries, but defended the partnerships nonetheless.
"Yes, we know the criticism related to human rights in those countries and it is obvious that this is an issue," he told reporters. "Does that mean we should break off all relations? Would that lead to an improvement in the situation? Or should we try to find a way to work with those countries to improve the situation on the ground both for local populations and for migrants coming to those countries?" he said.

US, Japan call on nations not to deploy nuclear weapons in orbit
Reuters/March 18/2024
The United States and Japan on Monday proposed a UN Security Council resolution stressing that nations should comply with a treaty that bars putting nuclear weapons in space, a message that appeared aimed at Russia. Washington believes Moscow is developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon whose detonation could cause havoc by disrupting everything from military communications to phone-based ride services, a source familiar with the matter has said. Russia, a party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that bars putting "in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction," has previously said it opposes deploying nuclear weapons ins space. Russia's defense minister has also denied it is developing such a weapon. Deploying a nuclear weapon in orbit is barred by the treaty; developing one, however, is not prohibited. In their resolution seen by Reuters, the United States, the only nation to use a nuclear weapon in war, and Japan, the only nation attacked with one, urged countries bound by the treaty not to place such weapons in space and also not to develop them. Reports about possible Russian development emerged after a Republican lawmaker on Feb. 14 issued a cryptic statement warning of a "serious national security threat."The clearest public sign Washington thinks Moscow is working on such a weapon was a White House spokesman's Feb. 15 comment that the lawmaker's letter was related to a space-based anti-satellite weapon that Russia was developing but had not deployed, and that would violate the Outer Space Treaty.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 18-19/2024
The Strategy of Atrocity in the Gaza War
Michael Hochberg and Leonard Hochberg/2024 Gatestone Institute/March 18, 2024
Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among their own population.
Failing to swiftly destroy Hamas and directly punish Hamas's backers in Iran and Qatar will teach sympathizers in other parts of the Muslim world that strategies of atrocity should be added to the playbook of regimes challenging U.S. allies around the world. Even worse would be for Hamas to actually achieve a strategic victory and gain a Palestinian statehood; such an outcome would ensure that atrocity becomes a standard and widely used strategy for at least a generation to come.
The laws of war -- primarily a Western innovation -- are being weaponized by the enemies of the West, who do not subscribe to Western culture..... Today, the United States and our allies find ourselves at war with states and non-state entities who do not subscribe to the laws of war.
"[T]he Hamas terrorists killed by Israel in the ensuing war, and civilian non-combatants killed in the Gaza Strip while being used as human shields by Hamas. They are all considered "Martyrs" whose families are eligible to receive stipends of 1,400-12,000 shekels [$375-$3200] per month for life." — Itamar Marcus; Founder, Palestinian Media Watch, palwatch.org, January 10, 2024.
The popular accusation of disproportionality is, in point of fact, aimed to prevent Western-aligned nations from achieving decisive victories. Even when the allies of the United States have the military capacity to break the will of the enemy, thereby imposing peace on the defeated, they will be forced to resort to fighting forever wars.
Why should the Israelis be compelled to allow aid into Gaza, when Hamas continues to hold hostage not just Israelis but also Americans? Under the guise of benevolence and generosity, international organizations promote forever wars.
If the type of warfare that we have seen from Hamas is allowed to succeed, and is not met with overwhelming violence and utter defeat, it will become the standard approach for those challenging Western dominance. If, however, we want to live in a world where the laws of war mean something, then the penalties for deliberately flouting them need to be terrible. Otherwise more regimes will be tempted to gain advantage through strategies of atrocity.
The US should stop imposing on our allies a doctrine of defeat.
Finally, the day after hostilities end, the Israelis must protect the new Gazan government from being undermined by renewed efforts to support terrorism and remilitarization.
The only path to peace, other than the destruction of Israel, is through a comprehensive Israeli victory and an unconditional surrender by Hamas in Gaza, and a post-war arrangement ensuring that the Gazans will not be able to commit such atrocities in Israel again.
Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among their own population. Pictured: Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen shows a photo of an Israeli soldier posing next to a Hamas weapons cache that was found at Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, at a press conference at the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva, on November 14, 2023. (Photo by Pierre Albouy/AFP via Getty Images)
"People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance." — Niccolo Machiavelli.
Imagine for a moment the following story in the New York Times:
October 12, 2023, Gaza City. In an outpouring of rage, the population of Gaza has taken to the streets to protest the attacks of October 7, causing the collapse of the Hamas government. Local reports are confused, but it appears that several hundred Hamas officials have been killed by angry mobs of Palestinian citizens. Surviving Hamas leaders are reported to be fleeing Gaza. Unverified videos of what appear to be the gruesome deaths of several senior Hamas officials have been posted on social media.
But that is not the world we live in.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM OCTOBER 7
Short of the destruction of Israel, there will not be any sovereign Palestinian state in Gaza for the foreseeable future. This is not because of what Hamas did on October 7. This is because those actions occurred with the support and collaboration of the people of Gaza, thousands of whom streamed across the border to loot, rape and take hostages in the wake of the terrorists.
Unfortunately, talking about Hamas as an entity separate from the Gazan population is disingenuous and misleading. Every indication, ranging from opinion polls to the tangible actions of much of the Gazan population, indicates that Hamas' actions are viewed in a positive light by many of the Gazan people. For the United States to reward these actions with statehood, autonomy, or funds for rebuilding would be stark madness.
There are only two paths to a durable peace between the Palestinian people and Israel:
The first is for the Palestinians to achieve a comprehensive military victory, which would result in the immediate rape, torture and murder of any Israelis who do not manage to flee.
The second is for Israel to achieve a decisive victory and the unconditional surrender of Hamas, at which point the long process of remaking Gazan society can begin.
The third alternative, and the default option -- probably backed by Qatar, the lead negotiator for the release of the hostages but also the main patron of Hamas and other terrorist groups (here and here) -- is a forever war in which neither side can achieve victory. Hamas will continue to deploy asymmetric military means, such as terror attacks and the launching missiles at civilian targets, to secure several goals:
First, to remind all Palestinians that Hamas is taking the lead in destroying Israel; second, to survive as a military force; third, to reignite the conflict with Israel when, in the future, a strategic opening presents itself; and, fourth to generate ongoing strife and thus suffering for the Gazans, responsibility for which can be shifted onto Israel in the international media and through international bodies including the United Nations.
A WAR OF ATROCITY
In Gaza we are seeing a new and innovative type of war being fought: Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among their own population. Hamas created a circumstance, through the strategic deployment of atrocity, in which Israel was faced with the choice of either not responding or responding with overwhelming force. The former would result in the collapse of the Israeli government, and in Israel's adversaries perceiving them (correctly) as devastatingly weak, due to either an unwillingness or an inability to defend themselves. The latter would inevitably result in international condemnation for the effect on Gazan non-combatants, with false accusations of "disproportionality" and alleged violations of the laws of war. Hamas's strategy of atrocity is both brilliant and evil.
Initially, commentators and Israeli politicians noted a similarity to the performative tactics of atrocity deployed by ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria). However, the connection between ISIS and Hamas goes much deeper than most realize. According to Ofira Seliktar, a scholar of intelligence failures, ISIS and Hamas learned strategy from the same playbooks. Seliktar argued that Hamas
"... develop[ed] a jihadist strategy based on two popular jihadists books: One, Issues in the Jurisprudence of Jihad ... also known as Jurisprudence of Blood, or the 'jihadist bible,' provided theological justification for inflicting extreme violence on enemies, as well as a list of tactics such as beheading, torturing, or burning prisoners alive. The second book, Management of Savagery, urged [jihadists] to commit 'attention-grabbing' atrocities to attract recruits and sow fear in the enemy's hearts."
Furthermore, Hamas's "embedding" its fighters among civilians residing in Gaza, effectively using Palestinians as human shields – another atrocity – is justified by the principles of asymmetric warfare. According to Seliktar, the media's description of the relationship between Hamas and the residents is
"... confined mostly to the description of the[ir] suffering.... The IRGC-QF [Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force] doctrine of using human shields was based on Brigadier General S. K. Malik's The Koranic Principle of War. Adapted to asymmetrical conflicts, it stipulated that embedding among non-combatants could level the playing field when engaging Western armies obligated to follow the humanitarian laws of war."
Westerners clearly misperceive Hamas when they imagine that their actions on October 7 were spontaneous and opportunistic; rather, it appears that the strategy of atrocity was theoretically informed, well designed, and then executed to elicit an overwhelming Israeli response and to put the Gazans at peril.
Why is a strategy of atrocity even more dangerous that might appear? Because it is an attack on the central ideas underlying the laws of war and the Westphalian order.
If Hamas is allowed to achieve any kind of victory from the deployment of this strategy, we can expect to see others re-use the same playbook. This is a likely and tragic outcome that Western powers should make considerable sacrifices to avoid. A lesson needs to be taught: Atrocity as strategy results in the swift and utter destruction of the regime deploying it.
This is not a time for Western leaders to insist on restraint by our allies.
Failing to swiftly destroy Hamas and directly punish Hamas's backers in Iran and Qatar will teach sympathizers in other parts of the Muslim world that strategies of atrocity should be added to the playbook of regimes challenging U.S. allies around the world. Even worse would be for Hamas to actually achieve a strategic victory and gain a Palestinian statehood; such an outcome would ensure that atrocity becomes a standard and widely used strategy for at least a generation to come.
ASYMMETRIC WARFARE AND THE LAWS OF WAR
The laws of war -- primarily a Western innovation -- are being weaponized by the enemies of the West, who do not subscribe to Western culture. Laws of war make a certain amount of sense when there is a cultural consensus among potential combatants that there is a minimum set of standards for the conduct of war. But with no independent third-party sovereign who can enforce rules on combatant powers, any such laws of war will hold only to the extent that the leaders elect to obey them and ensure that their own soldiers comply with them. When one state that subscribes to the concept of human rights and military restraint is at war with an organization that recognizes no such restraint, the balance of advantage flows to the party who recognizes no limits, unless there is some exogenous benefit associated with adhering to the laws of war and accepted standards of human rights.
Today, the United States and our allies find ourselves at war with states and non-state entities who do not subscribe to the laws of war. Even if some have signed the relevant treaties, their leadership has demonstrated a profound lack of interest in enforcing the relevant laws regarding their own soldiers. For instance, Russia, in their invasion of Ukraine, has committed a never-ending series of atrocities and war crimes, and has deliberately targeted civilians. Russian aims seem to include terrorizing the civilian population into submission and erasing Ukrainian identity in the areas they occupy.
What is even worse is that, in some cases, the core legitimacy of adversary regimes is predicated on an agenda that is in contravention of the assumptions that undergird the laws of war. Hamas's explicit, avowed goal is the destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews, worldwide (here, here and here).
Hamas, ISIS and even the Palestinian Authority (PA) recognize no meaningful distinction between civilians and combatants – either among their enemies, or within their own populations. As Itamar Marcus, founder of Palestinian Media Watch, points out:
"What is clear from both the new PA announcements and past policy is that the PA does not differentiate between Hamas terrorists who committed atrocities after invading Israel on Oct. 7, the Hamas terrorists killed by Israel in the ensuing war, and civilian non-combatants killed in the Gaza Strip while being used as human shields by Hamas. They are all considered 'Martyrs' whose families are eligible to receive stipends of 1,400-12,000 shekels [$375 - $3,215] per month for life."
This distinction between combatants and civilians is a key concept in the modern understanding of what constitutes a nation-state. What restraint is warranted in a war, provoked by a terrorist attack on a liberal-democratic, pluralistic society, toward a regime that celebrates murder, mass rape, kidnapping, and every imaginable flavor of savagery and terror? The answer is tragically simple: The laws of war were designed to deal with conflicts between states that recognize a clear distinction between combatants and civilians.
If organizations like Hamas are permitted to hide "amongst the people"' and to achieve victory by flouting the accepted rules of civilized warfare, then the rules of civilized warfare will become nothing more than an intellectual weapon deployed against the West, restraining the West from defending its institutions and culture, and ultimately leading to its defeat.
THE DOCTRINE OF PROPORTIONALITY
Proportionality – one of the key principles of the laws of war – is a widely misunderstood term. There is a popular understanding and a technical, legal one. According to a posting available on a West Point website:
"Proportionality plays a key role in international humanitarian law (IHL). It is essential to regulating the conduct of hostilities, requiring that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage...."
Lord Guglielmo Verdirame, in the UK House of Lords, articulated the legal doctrine of proportionality clearly and succinctly:
"Proportionality does not mean that the defensive force has to be equal to the attack. It means you can use force proportionate to the defensive objective – to stop, repel and prevent further attacks. Israel's war aims are consistent with proportionality in the law of self-defense."
Verdirame suggests that the legitimacy of the military advantage a state seeks to secure depends on its war aims while engaging in self-defense. What are Israel's official war aims?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, in a recent interview, that Israel's war aims are: "One, destroy Hamas. Two, free the hostages.... Three, ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel." Given that Hamas's leadership is already threatening a series of further attacks (here and here), it is clear that the force that Israel has deployed to date has not yet enabled them to achieve their war aims.
However, in the popular imagination, the doctrine of proportionality is intended to restrain states from using overwhelming force and doing excessive harm to noncombatants. The mainstream media has stoked the notion that Israel has committed war crimes by allegedly killing 30,000 Gazans, when only 1,300 people - Israeli, French, American and other countries' citizens - were killed on October 7. Never mind that the total number of Gazans killed is supplied by a Hamas-run agency of the Gazan government; and the number does not differentiate between Hamas terrorists and noncombatants. The allegation made in the popular press is that the "disproportionate" number of deaths means war crimes must have been committed by Israel.
Consider Japan and Germany at the end of World War II: Approximately 6 and 12 percent of their total populations had been killed, and many more wounded, before unconditional surrender was achieved. By contrast, only 0.32% of the U.S. population was killed. A similar campaign today would result in more than ten times the reported casualties in Gaza–perhaps 300,000 or more.
These comparisons raise the problem of proportionality of outcome, but there is another problem: proportionality given disparate military capabilities. Some argue that Israel, because of their comparative strength, has a responsibility to attack only Hamas, and avoid harm to the civilian population that Hamas uses as human shields. Such popular statements amount to a doctrine that an aggrieved party to a conflict, having been blinded in one eye by an enemy, may seek only an equal harm, "an eye for an eye." Such logic has no basis in international law or in the laws of war and would produce absurd outcomes: A killing for a killing, a mutilation for a mutilation, a beheading for a beheading, a rape for rape.
The immediate effect of this hazily defined colloquial doctrine of "proportionality" is to delegitimize Israel's war on Hamas. But the long-term effect is something quite different: The popular accusation of disproportionality is, in point of fact, aimed to prevent Western-aligned nations from achieving decisive victories. Even when the allies of the United States have the military capacity to break the will of the enemy, thereby imposing peace on the defeated, they will be forced to resort to fighting forever wars.
The claim of disproportionality is but one charge of war crimes leveled against Israel and the Israel Defense Force. The International Court of Justice at the Hague, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and even Israel's ally, the United States government, are investigating allegations of Israeli war crimes, when Israel has reportedly done more than any other military to minimize harm to civilians. These accusations nevertheless include, among others: genocide against the Palestinians, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, denial of humanitarian relief, the indiscriminate killing of civilians, and failure to provide adequate warning of an impending attack. Israel will undoubtedly respond to both formal charges and media accusations.
The scale of the undisputed destruction and human tragedy in Gaza has triggered dramatic and relentless media attention, which has significant and immediate strategic consequences for both Israel and Hamas. The widespread use of social media results in the rapid and far-reaching broadcast of both news and propaganda, with text, images and videos, designed and optimized to promote outrage and polarization, being pushed to billions of people around the world. Likewise, Israel's choice to limit media coverage and publication of the images and videos of the October 7 Hamas atrocities and their aftermath has had significant effects on the perception of Israel and of the attacks themselves (here, here, and here).
The first incident to garner wide media attention was when a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) reporter indicated that an explosion outside a hospital in northern Gaza on October 18, 2023 was the result of an Israeli attack:
"The Israeli military ... have said they are investigating, but it is hard to see what else this could be, really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli air strike, or several airstrikes."
Within one hour of the attack, the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas, placed the death toll at 500; the BBC echoed this claim by indicating that the number of dead was in the hundreds. On October 19, 2023, the BBC walked back its accusation. In commenting on these events, Lord Guglielmo Verdirami stated:
"When a serious allegation is made, particularly one that could constitute a war crime, the immediate response of the law-abiding belligerent will be to say, 'We are investigating.'"
The non-law-abiding belligerent, by contrast, will forthwith blame the other side and even provide surprisingly precise casualty figures. The duty to investigate is one of the most important ones in armed conflict. What happened in the way in which the strike on the hospital was reported is that the side that professes no interest whatever in complying with the laws of armed conflict was rewarded with the headlines that it was seeking.
The irresponsible reporting by the BBC, accompanied by pictures of a blast site, was investigated, disproven and repudiated by Israel and Western governments. They determined that the blast was caused by a rocket launched from within Gaza by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Amnesty International insisted on October 20, 2023 that its research revealed that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) failed to notify civilians of its intent to attack housing in the densely populated Gaza, leading to the deaths of Palestinian families. The headline of its posting captured the organization's intent: "Damning Evidence of War Crimes as Israeli Attacks Wipe Out Entire Families in Gaza." Furthermore, Amnesty International claimed that Israel had not allowed them to enter Gaza on fact-finding missions, thereby implying that Israel was hiding something rather than that Amnesty might not be acting in good faith.
Before uncritically accepting such accusations, what we should appreciate is the comparative data placing Israel's destruction of Gaza in pursuit of its war aims in historical context. According to John Spencer, who holds the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute of the United States Military Academy (West Point), the war in Gaza is not comparable to any other conflict in modern history, most notably in the systemic embedding of Hamas's warriors and war materiel in and below private homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, and UNWRA facilities. Such embedding is, in itself, a war crime.
"The truth," Spencer argues, "is that Israel has painstakingly followed the laws of armed conflict and implemented many steps to prevent civilian casualties....." He compares the number of casualties in Gaza with the devastating and overwhelming number of lives lost in other modern urban battles – in Mariupol, Chechnya, Syria, Dresden, Tokyo, Manila, and Mosul.
One unmistakable implication of Spencer's analysis is that Israel is being held to a different, more demanding standard of behavior than Great Britain, Russia, and the United States – three powers that had decided in 1945 to avoid forever wars by seeking victory, even at devastating cost to their adversaries.
HAMAS AND THE ENDING OF FOREVER WARS
Hamas provides an excellent example of a forever war: They have functioned for almost 20 years as a government in Gaza, exercising a local monopoly on violence in a specific territory. Since 2006, each period of relative peace in Gaza has been used by Hamas as an opportunity to re-arm and prepare for the next series of attacks. In the months leading up to October 7, Hamas remained relatively quiet, to lull the Israelis into a sense of security, while they prepared to launch a devastating attack. Many of the political elite and military leadership in Israel believed in what turned out to be an unjustified hope: That through economic engagement (here, here, and here), Gaza would become more prosperous, the Gazans would abandon their bellicosity in favor of upward mobility, and that Hamas was becoming fully occupied with governing. Others might have hoped that Hamas's genocidal rhetoric was a form of political posturing. Sadly, they could not have been more wrong.
Hamas's leadership clearly understands that they do not have the force of arms or the external support required to defeat Israel in any conflict waged within the ambit of the laws of war. Instead, Hamas engages in terrorist attacks that appear intended to demand responses that will provoke chagrin and division among Israel's Western backers. This enhances Hamas's standing within the Muslim world, while subjecting ordinary Gazans to the terrible consequences of a war that Hamas cannot win, but which it sometimes seems the West does not want Hamas to lose.
The Palestinian population has been supported by a UN agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The Palestinians, unlike other nations, peoples or ethnic groups, have an exclusive UN agency dedicated to their well-being, but accompanying that privilege are restrictions: Palestinians are not permitted to resettle as citizens into the populations of host countries. Palestinians who have been in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria for three generations are treated as stateless non-citizens and barred by law from working or integrating into their new home countries. Even today, Egypt keeps its doors closed (absent massive bribery or political influence) to Palestinians seeking to flee the war zone.
Providing welfare to these refugees keeps a despondent, hate-filled, and expanding population mobilized for the purpose of terror against Israel. Given that the leadership of the refugee camps, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and even Fatah (here, here, and here) have all been committed to the destruction of Israel, the deep question is this: Why should the populations that have supported such organizations, and which refuse to abide by the laws of war, receive benefits from the United Nations and Western institutions? Why should the Israelis be compelled to allow aid into Gaza, when Hamas continues to hold hostage not just Israelis but also Americans? Under the guise of benevolence and generosity, these international organizations promote forever wars.
By way of contrast, after World War II, the Allies were feared in large part because they demonstrated a willingness to use overwhelming force to achieve victory. While they did not deliberately target civilians, they did not hesitate to take actions that would unquestionably result in large numbers of civilian casualties in order to destroy legitimate military targets and to undermine the will of their adversaries to continue fighting. Such actions have been a necessary part of achieving victory in most wars throughout human history.
The liberal-democratic regimes of the world cannot accept being hamstrung by the popular concept of proportionality, applied asymmetrically to adversaries who recognize no such restraint. The use of overwhelming force to achieve victory results in wars that actually end, rather than dragging on indefinitely. Regimes that support terrorism, that have explicitly genocidal agendas, and that fail to recognize the distinction between civilians and combatants, need to be attacked and destroyed with the full force of Western arms. Any appeal by them for restraint or to the laws of war should be predicated on their explicitly disavowing and enforcing both genocidal aims and terrorist means to achieve these ends.
DECISIVE VICTORY AND UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
Distinctions between civilians and combatants are explicitly an artifact of Western strategic culture. The adversaries of the West today do not partake of this strategic culture, and have their own, utterly distinct, ways of war. To the extent that they comply with Western ideas about limited warfare, human rights, or civilian-military distinctions, it is because they fear the consequences of prompting a response from the United States. Even American hegemony proved insufficient to stop Srebrenica, Xinjiang, Darfur, Grozny, or other massacres too numerous to mention.
What is the take-away from these instances of government-initiated atrocity? When a regime that does not recognize a distinction between civilians and combatants engages in terrorism, that government will, in all likelihood, use their own people as human shields, hostages or human sacrifices in service of generating sympathy among the populace of their enemies. The noncombatants that have selected and supported such a government have created a circumstance in which, for the rules-based international order to survive, the government must be destroyed.
If the type of warfare that we have seen from Hamas is allowed to succeed, and is not met with overwhelming violence and utter defeat, it will become the standard approach for those challenging Western dominance. If, however, we want to live in a world where the laws of war mean something, then the penalties for deliberately flouting them need to be terrible. Otherwise more regimes will be tempted to gain advantage through strategies of atrocity.
The US should stop imposing on our allies a doctrine of defeat. While civilians should not be deliberately targeted, our allies should be encouraged to use overwhelming force to achieve swift and decisive victories over regimes that promote atrocity. Civilian casualties, in such a circumstance, are both regrettable and inevitable.
The United States should back Israel to achieve a decisive victory in Gaza. What does a decisive victory mean? Hamas's unconditional surrender.
Anyone who participated in the events of October 7, anyone who passed on orders, and anyone who provided material support, needs to be either killed, or captured and put on trial. The same goes for anyone involved in the capture, detention or abuse of the hostages. Anyone who was committed to the Hamas regime as an administrator, politician or tax collector needs to be detained, debriefed, and held to account for any actions that supported the invasion of Oct. 7. At the end of this war, the military and political leaders responsible for those attacks should have either been killed in battle, tried for their complicity in war crimes, or should be fleeing for their lives, like the leadership of the Nazi party after World War II. Furthermore, all of the international organizations complicit with Hamas should no longer have any role in the governance or support of Gaza, especially UNRWA.
In particular, the Qatari government, which "supports all Islamist terrorist organizations (ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah)" (here and here), and provides safe haven for the Hamas leadership, should also be held to account. Iran, which funds and directs terrorist proxies across the Middle East and beyond, needs to be sanctioned, contained, and threatened with the credible use of devastating force for its role. Finally, the day after hostilities end, the Israelis must protect the new Gazan government from being undermined by renewed efforts to support terrorism and remilitarization.
THE DAY AFTER UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER: WINNING THE PEACE
The Israelis will need to make a significant effort to de-radicalize the population of Gaza over the next generation or two. They will need to set up a regime to govern on their behalf, though the Gazans will no doubt regard such politicians as Quislings. By imposing a government that at least attempts to enforce basic civil rights – access to birth control, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, security for private property, equal justice under the law – and an educational program that is intended to de-radicalize the population, perhaps over 50 years or more – some sort of durable accommodation can be achieved. In the meantime, the best that can be hoped for is security and stability. No outside actor can make this happen. The alternative is a forever war. The only path to peace, other than the destruction of Israel, is through a comprehensive Israeli victory and an unconditional surrender by Hamas in Gaza, and a post-war arrangement ensuring that the Gazans will not be able to commit such atrocities in Israel again.
**Michael Hochberg earned his PhD in Applied Physics from Caltech and is currently a visiting scholar at the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge University. He is the President of Periplous LLC, which provides advisory services on strategy, technology, and organization design. He co-founded four companies, representing an exit value over a billion dollars in aggregate, spent some time as a tenured professor, and started the world's first silicon photonics foundry service. He co-authored a widely used textbook on silicon photonics and has published work in Science, Nature, National Review, The Hill, American Spectator, RealClearDefense, Fast Company, and Naval War College Review. Michael's writing can be found at longwalls.substack.com, and his Twitter is @TheHochberg.
Leonard Hochberg taught at Stanford University (among other institutions), was appointed a Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and co-founded Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (i.e., STRATFOR). He has published work in Social Science History, Historical Methods, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Orbis, National Review, The Hill, American Spectator, RealClearDefense, Cartographica, and Naval War College Review. He is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and serves as the Coordinator of the Mackinder Forum-U.S. (www.mackinderforum.org). Len earned his PhD in political theory and European history from the Department of Government, Cornell University.
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Pro-Gay Pope Creates New Christian Schism
Raymond Ibrahim /The Stream/March 18/2024
The theological schisms that had a dramatic impact on church history are, unfortunately, not a thing of the past. At a time when various Christian bodies have been trying to reconcile and heal centuries-old rifts and misunderstandings, a new break is currently taking place — this time concerning “a landmark ruling approved last December by Pope Francis that Roman Catholic priests can administer blessings to same-sex couples.”
Unsurprisingly, many Christians have expressed shock and disappointment over this declaration. According to a March 9 report:
The document has encountered an unprecedented level of opposition within the Catholic Church, with bishops’ conferences in Africa, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and individual dioceses, including nine in France and many more across the United States and the rest of the world, saying they would refuse anything that appears to be a blessing of a homosexual couple. The Russian Orthodox Church said this innovation reflects “a sharp departure from Christian moral teaching.” Hilarion Alfeyev, the current metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary, who closely examined the Vatican’s declaration, described it as “a kind of shock,” adding: We always cite the Catholic Church as a beacon of traditional Christianity … the Church which always supports the traditional Christian values and moral teaching in spite of the fact that from many different angles it is attacked for this traditionalism and stubbornness … . Everyone now will believe that the Church blesses homosexual couples … [The declaration] deceives those who receive such a blessing and those who witness it.
Quite so.
Now the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt is the latest to object — to the point of suspending the amicable dialogue it began with the Catholic Church in 1973 (after a hiatus of some fifteen centuries). On March 7, 2024, Coptic Pope Tawadros II led a synod in which the following decree was pronounced:
After consulting with the sister churches of the Eastern Orthodox family, it was decided to suspend the theological dialogue with the Catholic Church, reevaluate the results achieved by the dialogue from its beginning twenty years ago, and establish new standards and mechanisms for the dialogue to proceed in the future … .The Coptic Orthodox Church affirms its firm position of rejecting all forms of homosexual relationships, because they violate the Holy Bible and the law by which God created man as male and female, and the Church considers any blessing of such relations, whatever its type, to be a blessing for sin, and this is unacceptable. The same synod document contains a lengthy section titled “The Belief of the Coptic Orthodox Church on the Issue of Homosexuality,” which explains through numerous biblical verses why homosexuality and other forms of “perversion” must never be normalized, and offers counseling to those who suffer from this malady, before reaffirming:
[T]he Coptic Orthodox Church rejects what is called sexual perversion in its general and comprehensive understanding, and all types of sexual practices outside the sacred framework of marriage. It categorically rejects invoking the idea of different cultures to justify same-sex relations within what is called “absolute human freedom,” which causes the destruction of humanity. The Church, while affirming its complete belief in [personal] human rights and freedom, also affirms that the freedom of the created is not absolute to the point of transgressing and breaking the laws of the Creator.
The Church also affirms its adherence to its pastoral role in helping its children who suffer from homosexual tendencies, as well as not rejecting them, but to provide support and assistance to them in order to reach psychological and spiritual healing, placing its trust in its Christ, the Holy One, who is able to heal, change, and develop in ways more than what we ask or envision.
To unity-minded Christians around the world, surely this is a great shame: a schism between the Coptic and Catholic churches occurred in 451, and it took more than 15 centuries before the two reopened communications in the late twentieth century on the understanding that the original schism — how best to articulate the nature of Christ — was more of a semantic than substantive nature. As Agence I.Media reports,
This announcement comes shortly after the 20th anniversary of the founding of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches … .
Just on February 15, the Vatican had sponsored
an ecumenical prayer in St. Peter’s Basilica for the first commemoration of the 21 [Coptic] Christian martyrs from Libya recognized by the Catholic Church on May 11 following a visit by Tawadros II to the Vatican. These were the first saints recognized by the two Churches since their break-up in the 5th century.
But now all progress made toward rapprochement has been sacrificed on Francis’s altar to homosexuality. For all his ecumenical talk, it seems that he is more interested in giving a nod to sexual deviancy rather than uniting around Christ.
As to why the Coptic Church has so unabashedly halted dialogue with the Catholic Church, it should be remembered that the Egyptian church is the quintessential Church of Martyrs, meaning it is not one to compromise. Past and present, the Christians of Egypt have borne the brunt of persecution. Most Christians killed during the worst bout of Roman persecution—the “Great Persecution” (303-313)—were, according to Eusebius’s history, Egyptians (he mentions “dozens” and even “hundreds” slaughtered on any given day during this decade).
Then came Islam in 640. Centuries of persecution, violence, slaughter, enslavement of women and children, and extortion of jizya caused Egypt to go from one of the largest and most important Christian nations to one of the largest and most important Muslim nations, where its most indigenous inhabitants — the Copts — continue to be persecuted in atrocious ways.
The Muslim historian al-Maqrizi indicates how and why Egypt became Islamic. He notes that during one particularly savage bout of persecution in the eleventh century, some 30,000 churches in Egypt and Greater Syria were destroyed or turned into mosques. Thousands of Christians were slaughtered or enslaved. He concludes: “Under these circumstances a great many Christians became Muslims.” (One can almost hear a triumphant “Allahu Akbar!” For more on the systemic persecution of Copts throughout history, see Adel Guindy’s A Sword Over the Nile: A Brief History of Copts Under Islamic Rule.)
Egypt’s Christians continue to be martyred in the modern era, including but not limited to the aforementioned twenty-one who were ritually decapitated on the shores of Sirte, Libya, in 2015, for refusing to recant Christ for Muhammad. (True to their nature, U.S. media covered the killing of a gorilla six times more than the beheading of these Christians.)
In short, the Church of Martyrs is not about to water down its principles to accommodate postmodern tendencies and homosexual sensibilities.
A final observation: Is it because they refuse to embrace worldly teachings that various ancient Christian communities — along with the Copts, the Armenians and Assyrians, who have both experienced genocides, past and present — continue to be persecuted? After all, the New Testament is clear that persecution is in store for Christians, who oppose the lures and demands of the world. On the other hand, those who — knowingly or unknowingly — embrace the world are more than safe from persecution. As Christ succinctly put it,
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also (John 15:19-20).
As for Pope Francis’s normalization of unnatural relations in keeping with the world’s — not God’s — standards, perhaps Saint Paul says it best:
Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy 3:12-13).

Biden continues Iran’s access to $10 billion just weeks after its proxy killed three American soldiers
Richard Goldberg/The New York Post/March 18/2024
Just six weeks after an Iran-backed drone strike killed three American soldiers in Jordan, President Biden has approved a sanctions waiver giving Tehran continued access to more than $10 billion — money it can use to import goods and repay debts, freeing up $10 billion elsewhere to spend on terrorism, missiles, nuclear weapons and the repression of Iranian women.
The Senate is sitting on a bill that would lock down the money, and Republicans should do whatever it takes to force an up-or-down vote.
Thursday isn’t the first time Biden has granted Iran massive sanctions relief.
The White House first opened spigots of money last summer after it struck a secret accord with Iran — brokered by Oman, reported by every major newspaper in the country and to this day never acknowledged by the administration.
The United States freed up cash for Iran’s use from previously inaccessible bank accounts and gave China a green light to import as much Iranian oil as Beijing desired.
In exchange, Iran simply agreed not to enrich uranium above the 90% weapons-grade threshold.
The deal is atrocious, of course.
Iran gets paid to expand its nuclear threat — producing more high-enriched uranium just below weapons-grade, installing more advanced centrifuges, building a new underground nuclear facility and limiting access to inspectors — while using the much-needed financial bailout to secure its hold on power and subsidize its malign activities.
The mullahs give up nothing but get a windfall nonetheless.
Under the arrangement, one major pot opened for Iran’s use was an escrow account in Baghdad where Iraq had been putting away money it owed Iran for imports of electricity — a requirement Washington imposed in exchange for allowing Baghdad to buy Iranian electricity at all.
Iranian officials estimated the account’s value at more than $10 billion.
The Biden administration issued a four-month sanctions waiver in July, for the first time authorizing Baghdad to convert the $10 billion from dinar to euros and send it on to Iranian accounts in Oman.
From there, Iran could tap the money for import and debt payments.
The State Department misleads the public by noting the money is not allowed to enter Iran, and Iran can only use it for non-illicit purposes.
But it doesn’t matter where the money sits in the world if Tehran is allowed to use it — and if the money is subsidizing non-illicit payments in one place, it frees up $10 billion elsewhere for illicit transactions.
The Oct. 7 massacre was shockingly not enough to convince the president that showering Tehran with cash is a dangerous policy.
In November, Biden extended the $10 billion waiver for another four months.
Predictably, Iran’s threats to America grew exponentially.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria escalated attacks on US forces, culminating in the January deaths of those three American soldiers in Jordan.
The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen escalated missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea.
According to the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium grew ever-more threatening.
Rather than cut his losses, Biden is doubling down on a bad deal.
The Financial Times this week reported the White House returned to the scene of its last crime — Oman — to trade messages with the ayatollah about his nuclear program and continued Houthi attacks from Yemen.
Biden may very well be negotiating an even larger and worse deal.
Against that backdrop, Biden extended the $10 billion waiver Thursday for another four months.
The moniker “$10 billion waiver” stems from the estimated sum of cash transferred to Iranian accounts last summer.
Iraq has continued to make electricity payments since then, while Iran has tapped the account an unknown number of times, for unknown purposes and for unknown sums.
The Biden administration is keeping secret how much money is now available and how much money Iran already spent.
Rightly outraged by this dangerous policy and its shroud of secrecy, the House passed the No Funds for Iranian Terrorism Act in November by a vote of 307–119.
The legislation is simple: It locks down the $10 billion and any other pot of money Biden tries to free up for Iran.
But the bill languishes in the Senate.
Just hours after news broke that Biden extended the $10 billion waiver, instead of allowing an up-or-down vote on the bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor to call for the collapse of the democratically elected government of Israel.
For Schumer, apparently, regime change in Israel is the national-security priority — not stopping billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
But as the House demonstrated, if Republicans can force a vote, the legislation could fracture the Democratic caucus and force a showdown with the White House.
Every day that bill sits is a day Iran’s threat to US national security grows.
Senate Republicans should do whatever they can to force Schumer’s hand.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior US Senate aide.

Sinwar, Netanyahu and the Al-Aqsa Flood
Sam Menassa/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
The Ramadan truce between Hamas and Israel that we had been promised does not seem forthcoming. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yahya al-Sinwar could be dragging the region in general, and their countries in particular, to a dangerous place, as they are accounting only for their own personal fates.
Netanyahu is complicit, with his fanatical racist right-wing coalition allies, in the push to annex Palestinian territory, expel Palestinians from Gaza, and install Jewish settlers there. To that end, he has rejected every proposal, whatever the terms, that gives rise to a Palestinian state, and he has insisted that Israel will make an incursion into Rafah and liquidate what remains of Hamas and its leadership.
For his part, Sinwar has met this approach by doubling down and pledging to keep resisting, even if that means the destruction of what remains of Gaza.
Recent national polls show that about 4 out of every 5 Israelis hold Netanyahu primarily responsible for the lapses that led to the October 7 attack and 3 out of every 4 Israelis want him to resign. He also has to contend with political opposition within and without the war cabinet, as many officials and politicians also hold him personally responsible for the government's astonishing incompetence, its slow decision-making, its poor coordination in the management of this war, and its blunders in managing relations with Israel's most important ally, the United States, which it has blatantly defied.
Netanyahu's approach to managing the conflict reflects his narcissistic, manipulative and shortsighted character, as well as his indifference to the fate of his country, its interests, and its future. This is evident in the many risky gambles he has taken over the years. Indeed, he has allegedly refused to approve operations to eliminate the Hamas leadership proposed by the Shin Bet (Shabak) six times over the past 12 years. No one summed up Netanyahu's approach better than President Joe Biden, who said the former "does more harm to Israel than good."
In the opposite corner, Sinwar knows he has lost the leadership, the future of the movement as it currently exists, and his control over the people of Gaza. He has also probably lost public support because of the repercussions of his misadventures. Sinwar has one final task: to finish what he had started with Al-Aqsa Flood, which was partly an effort to sabotage the peace process in the region, and to deny the attack's destructive ramifications.
Continuing the resistance into Ramadan and even beyond, as Sinwar might be planning to do, could leave Israel at odds with the entire world, especially its American allies, as well as potentially inflaming the West Bank, including Jerusalem, and it could even precipitate a third intifada that includes Arab Israelis. Moreover, Egyptian and Jordanian relations with Israel could deteriorate, threatening the peace agreements Israel had concluded with them and Israeli-Arab relations more broadly, especially with the countries that have normalized relations with Israel.
It's a grim scenario. If it were to materialize, it would bring about only more death and destruction, destabilize the region's stability and security, inflame religious conflict, and hinder development and modernization. The primary and ultimate beneficiary would be Iran and its regional policies. These policies undermine everything the Biden administration has offered to Netanyahu to bring about a new regional order.
This new order would paralyze Hamas and leave it unable to threaten Israel or rule Gaza after the war, as well as place the territories in the hands of a reformed Palestinian Authority supported by Arab countries within the framework of a process that ultimately allows Israel to live in security alongside a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The problem, for both Sinwar and Netanyahu, is that they are at an impasse from which they cannot retreat. Palestinian, Arab, and international actors have created a wall blocking Sinwar’s path.
As for Netanyahu, if he yields to Washington, he risks losing the support of the hard right, which would bring down his government and be the end of his political life. It would even mean heading straight to jail. If he continues to reject Biden's approach, he risks sinking Israel deeper into the quicksand of Gaza, igniting a third intifada in the West Bank, and another war with Hezbollah.
Moreover, taking this route could severely damage relations with the United States, which Israel depends on for ammunition, financial support, and crucial diplomatic backing. It could also jeopardize all of Israel’s Arab relations, old and new. Any one of these outcomes would be terrible for Israel, and together, they would constitute an existential disaster for Israel.
If Netanyahu proceeds to storm Rafah (or even if he continues at the same pace of killing that he has maintained over the past months, or broadens the war with Hezbollah), and Sinwar insists on futile and shortsighted resistance, they would be breathing new life into the October 7 operation together, in what could be called "Al-Aqsa Flood 2," and this time, it would be signed by both Sinwar and Netanyahu.

Putin Is Entrusted to Continue the Flood
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 18/2024
It was the year 1952. Ian Fleming sat down and pondered his concerns and skills as a journalist and intelligence officer. So came to life his novel “Casino Royale” that would introduce the world to brilliant Secret Agent 007, James Bond.
Bond is a clever, witty and athletic spy. He relishes impossible missions and living in danger. He has an uncanny skill in breaking locks and unraveling secrets. His skills of deception are unparalleled. He drives cars that are made for him. He chooses his suits carefully, gambles and attracts the ladies. We mustn’t forget his skill with the gun, which never misses its target, and his ruthlessness that would go so far as to kill gang leaders and lovers. A decade later, Fleming’s hero would captivate viewers on the silver screen. The ordinary citizen is looking for a hero. He sometimes banks on a politician and sometimes on a screen hero, who would defeat his enemies and return home after an adventure that the viewer had wished they could experience themselves. The James Bond movies have raked in massive revenues and his popularity is unrivaled.
On October 7, 1952, a Soviet woman in Leningrad gave birth to a child she named Vladimir. It never occurred to her that she had given birth to a story more riveting than Fleming’s and a hero more dangerous than Agent 007.
The student Vladimir Putin admired James Bond’s skill, courage, masculinity and ability to swim among the sharks. His excitement drove him to the Lubyanka Building in Moscow that housed the notorious KGB. An employee there advised him to go to university and return after he graduated and so he did.
He paces his office. Nothing equals the joy of victory. I am not Joe Biden, whom the media enjoys poking fun at his missteps and gaffes. I am not Donald Trump, who is being pursued by investigators. I am the truth and only investigator. I am not Sunak or Macron or Scholtz to fear the grumbling of the opposition, media headline, and social media clowns.
No, Russia is not like their countries, and I am not like them. Moreover, to rule means to hold the secret, and the thread that leads to the spirit of the nation. It is from there that trust is derived, not from ballot boxes.
He experiences a sentimental moment. I wish my mother were here so that she could overcome her fatigue. I wish my father were alive today to witness the words he uttered from his sickbed come to life. In the late 1990s, his parents were bedridden at a hospital in St. Petersburg. Putin would hop on a plane every week and fly out from Moscow to visit them. Two months before he became prime in summer 1999, he visited his father, who told his nurses: “Look, my president has arrived.” It was as if he was reading the book of the future that he would be denied seeing.
He will not celebrate the victory. The peak enjoyment lies in relishing the victory alone. He doesn’t need to invite Medvedev and Shoigu. He doesn’t need flattery. He thought about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner leader. Poor man, he didn’t realize that there could be no room for a tzar under the wings of the tzars. Sorrowfully, he said: “I thought he was smarter than Navalny.”
He grew a little angry. I gave Prigozhin everything Fleming didn’t give Bond: money, weapons, data hackers and a misinformation kitchen. I gave him my trust and the right to recruit prisoners and access mines and precious minerals. I gave him a James Bondian empire, but he was lured by suicide.
Assuming I were to throw a small party, then surely invitations would be limited. I could invite Catherine II because she recaptured Crimea and Peter the Great because he didn’t believe in Russia being confined in borders. Alright, I could invite Jospeh Stalin so he can make sure that Russia has not been made a feast for nations, like orphans offered to the wolves.
I won’t invite anyone. It is enough that history would be present at my office and sit in front of me. He smiles. History will note down his every move and spy on him. History resembles Prigozhin – you give him everything, but he will turn on you. History was an obedient waiter at Stalin’s office, but he later allowed Khrushchev to turn on him. I will advise him not to do the same to me, and he knows I don’t joke around.
The West is naive. Merkel was deluded in believing that gas revenues would domesticate Russia and eliminate its danger. She did not sense the looming major confrontation. Russia doesn’t resemble anything but Russia. It is vast, but it only wakes up when it grows paranoid or feels stifled. It needs a big enemy and imminent danger. Europe sent its invasions and strongmen. The first one was Napoleon, the second was Hitler. This time, the army headed out to discipline the deceitful old continent. On February 24, 2022, the “Ukrainian flood” was launched.
Poor West. This is not a war on Zelenskyy, no matter how holy Ukrainian soil is for Russia. It is a major war against the model that assassinated the Soviet Union and stole its assets. It is a model of decline, the breakup of countries, societies and the family and the promotion of homosexuality. The destruction of this model is essential for Russia’s national security. The battle deserves threats about the constant readiness to resort to nuclear weapons to spread fear in regimes that grew addicted to luxury and stability and gave themselves the right to impose their dying model.
It is fun to run in elections against candidates who support your policies and who compete with the prior knowledge that they will lose. It is fun to learn the results of the elections even before they are held and for you to claim a crushing victory that openly entrusts you to continue the major war against the West.
Two different worlds. Western leaders drop like autumn leaves and Russia grows more attached to its savior and leader. It can only be assured by the strongman, even if he were oppressive. History is not a profession for historians. They are just voice and video recorders. History is written by the victorious.
His imagination is greater than Ian Fleming’s. His blows are better than James Bond’s. In Russia, there is only one chef, called the tzar.

Extremists cannot hold the civilized world to ransom
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/March 18/2024
The Gaza conflict is fueling tension around the world in a multitude of ways, with huge pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Western capitals often triggering political backlashes. Increasing violence and hate speech against Muslim and Jewish communities threaten to take us back to the divisions and polarization of the post-9/11 years.
With some British ministers denouncing pro-Palestine protests as antisemitic hate marches, it is no coincidence that Muslim groups singled out by the government in its new definition of what constitutes extremism are outspoken critics of the UK’s official position on Gaza.
The new measure, announced last week, defines extremism as “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; to undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally creating a permissive environment for others to achieve those results.”
It is important because British government ministers and civil servants will be banned from talking to or funding any group defined as extremist.
The minister behind the new definition, Michael Gove, exploited parliamentary privilege to disclose the names of some of the organizations likely to be covered by the new definition, several of which have threatened legal action. While extreme-right organizations will also be covered, the targeting of Muslim organizations appears designed solely to throw red meat to deeply Islamophobic grassroots supporters of the Conservative Party. No less than the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warned that the new definition risked “disproportionately targeting Muslim communities.”
As with much of Europe, the size of Britain’s demographic minorities is growing rapidly, with nonwhite communities constituting about 20 percent of the population and Islam the second-largest religion. In Wales last week, Vaughan Gething became the first Black leader of a national government anywhere in Europe. It is the backlash against this inexorably growing diversity that reactionaries have sought to exploit.
Tory MPs in danger of losing their seats have little to brag about other than the implementation of Brexit
Across Europe, extreme-right parties have experienced both victories and setbacks. In last week’s Portuguese elections, the far-right Chega (Enough) party became the third-largest political force, while the Netherlands’ far-right leader Geert Wilders was compelled to accept that he could not be the next prime minister because other parties refuse to work with him. There was widespread concern about the arrival in 2022 of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni as Italian prime minister, although on the international stage she has proved to be a relatively collegiate figure in addressing issues such as Ukraine. Meanwhile, polls continue to indicate that French far-right leader Marine Le Pen could win the 2027 presidential election.
Britain’s Conservative Party manifestly has an Islamophobia problem (the party refuses to even acknowledge the term), despite many around the world marking March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia. In a deranged media article last month, former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote: “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now.” She warned that Britain was “sleepwalking into a ghettoized society.” The party’s former deputy chairman Lee Anderson babbled that London and its Mayor Sadiq Khan were controlled by Islamists. He was duly suspended and defected to the even more right-wing Reform party.
This Conservative government’s revised definition of extremism perfectly encapsulates the intolerant, divisive entity the party is mutating into. A poll found that 58 percent of party members believe Islam poses a threat to the British way of life, while a majority also voiced agreement with the right-wing conspiracy theory that substantial districts of European cities have become no-go areas governed by Shariah.
The party’s concurrent racism problem has been highlighted in recent days, as it was revealed that its biggest individual donor said the UK’s first Black female MP, Diane Abbott, “makes you want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot.” This whipping-up of anti-immigrant sentiment includes an unworkable, expensive and potentially illegal initiative to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Amid soaring living costs, a stagnant economy and disintegrating public services, the Conservatives face electoral wipeout, with some predictions showing them plunging from 348 seats to below 100 in this year’s general election. Tory MPs in danger of losing their seats have little to brag about other than the implementation of Brexit — one of the most gratuitous examples of self-harm ever inflicted by a sitting government, hamstringing the British economy’s access to European markets and curtailing the country’s role on the global stage. In the past, Britain habitually played a central role in corralling European foreign policy to address core challenges. Nowadays, as international policy figures such as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, UN chief Antonio Guterres and EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell circle the globe in pursuit of solutions to various crises, London is notably absent from their list of priority destinations.
That former British Prime Minister Liz Truss could share a platform with toxic fascist-fringe figures such as Steve Bannon indicates how the once-centrist Conservative Party increasingly resembles other European extreme-right factions that exploit rabble-rousing racist rhetoric in pursuit of power. Braverman’s hate-mongering language about “hurricanes” of migrants and the “misguided dogma of multiculturalism” is cynically calculated as a bid for a leadership role in a party that has consigned itself to the extremist fringes.
Arab foreign ministers have been relatively muted in their responses to Gaza: what a contrast with Borrell rebuking US President Joe Biden that “maybe you should provide less arms in order to prevent so many people being killed,” or US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer bluntly calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be ousted. This illustrates how the Gaza crisis is not an “Arab” or a “Muslim” issue, but rather a humanitarian catastrophe of pressing concern to the entire civilized world.
Although terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh have sought to capitalize on the Gaza carnage, the extremists who have labored hardest to exploit this crisis are right-wingers, cynically exacerbating tensions and fueling social divisions in pursuit of power. Extremism, wherever it emanates, must not be allowed to hold the world to ransom.
Over the past decade, the increasingly visible phenomenon of extreme-right political parties has had a toxic and divisive impact on Western societies, inflicting difficult-to-repair social fractures likely to haunt us for some time to come. Our troubled and traumatized planet has little need of the culture wars and civil conflicts these power-hungry extremists have to offer.
*Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.