A new wave of repressions against anti-war activists in Baku European Interest
Day: October 10, 2023
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NPR News: 10-10-2023 10AM EDT
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Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev attends a meeting of the collegium of the Prosecutor General’s office in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via REUTERS Acquire Licensing Rights
MOSCOW, Sept 15 (Reuters) – A top Russian security official said in an article published on Friday that Moscow had “neutralised” hundreds of foreign spies in recent years.
Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, wrote in Russia’s foreign intelligence agency’s house magazine:
“In recent years, hundreds of employees of foreign intelligence services, as well as other persons involved in organising intelligence and subversive activities against our country and our strategic partners, have been identified and neutralised”.
Patrushev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a former director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and is seen as a key advocate of hardline, hawkish policies within the Kremlin.
Writing by Felix Light
Editing by Andrew Osborn/Guy Faulconbridge
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
You’ve been hearing this morning that Israeli surveillance of Gaza is extensive and intrusive, and yet Hamas fighters were able to invade Israeli territory, seize hostages, including children and entire families. And now more than 1,100 Israelis and Palestinians are dead. We’ve been hearing an array of perspectives this morning about this dangerous situation and possibly a way forward.
So now we’re going to turn to a former top adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Daniel Levy is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project. It’s a group of former top officials who have been working for two decades to, as their mission statement says, advance a dignified Israeli-Palestinian peace. And Mr. Levy is with us now from London. Good morning.
DANIEL LEVY: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So a lot has been said about this being an intelligence and military failure by Israel. But how much of this attack is a reflection of political failure, the failure to make a lasting peace?
LEVY: Well, thank you for asking that question because it’s a question too infrequently asked. Yes, people are going to be looking at how come, with all this high-tech prowess, Israel did not know what had gone on. And I think the reports of meetings in Beirut and Iranian involvement would only increase that question, which is why I think those are probably inaccurate. But the bigger failure, I think, and the fear that I have amongst many other fears today is that they will look for easy answers.
And I already hear folks in Israel saying, well, this is the Netanyahu government. They were focused on this judicial overhaul, and they were focused too much on West Bank settler protection. But the malaise goes much deeper. And the real failure and the need for a paradigm shift is for people to look around and say, Israel has managed to have a period of relative quiet, but what has it done politically to address the root causes? And until there’s a realization that Palestinians living in those circumstances are always going to ask themselves – how do we improve our lot? – and if all diplomatic, political, international legal paths are closed, then you have one route left open, which is armed resistance. And Israelis will not have normality and security until Palestinians do. That’s the sad, painful truth that cannot be ignored in these days.
MARTIN: I’m so sorry we don’t have more time. But I’d like to ask, how do you think the international community should be responding? What is the tone that they should be striking, and of course, because I’m in the United States, I’m going to ask you, particularly the U.S. administration, the Biden administration?
LEVY: I’m afraid that the Biden administration is continuing to encourage Israel to do its worst. American hubris, when you’re surrounded by Canada and Mexico and you go overseas if you need to test and find out the limits of that hubris, is one thing. But encouraging Israel down a hubristic path of military solutions and we stand with you and it’s going to be OK is the biggest disservice America can do.
MARTIN: And before we let you go, as we reported earlier, the defense ministry says it’s shutting down food, fuel and electricity to Gaza. You can understand that as an immediate response but does that advance the cause of bringing this situation to some sort of conclusion?
LEVY: Well, of course it doesn’t. It’s a war crime. One’s heart breaks for what one’s seen in Israel, but one’s hands tremble for what is going to happen to Gazans. And this will only make things worse. There is no military solution, and you need to bring in Hamas. We need to be talking. We should have been talking to them for decades. This is the outcome of failed politics. Don’t double down on that failed politics.
MARTIN: That’s Daniel Levy. He’s president of the U.S./Middle East Project. And as we mentioned, he’s a former adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Mr. Levy, I do hope we’ll talk again, and I do hope it’ll be a better day when we do. Thank you for speaking with us.
LEVY: I hope so, Michel. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAN AMERICAN’S “LIGHTS ON WATER”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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Israeli soldiers could hear but not see the threat humming above them.
Two enemy aircraft took off late on Nov. 25, 1987, near Lebanon’s southern border, intent on invading Israeli airspace. They were not jet fighters, helicopter gunships or even blimps. Palestinian guerrillas were trying to attack a country protected by one of the most powerful militaries in the world — with hang gliders that were scarcely more than kites retrofitted with propellers and engines the size of a lawn mower’s.
Within minutes, one of the two pilot-assassins had crossed into Israel, killed six soldiers and wounded at least seven others before being fatally shot.
The raid would live in infamy as the Night of the Gliders.
That attack more than 35 years ago took on new relevance Saturday morning as Palestinian fighters launched a multipronged attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, invading the country on motorcycles, pickup trucks, boats — and paragliders.
The scale of the attack dwarfed the Night of Gliders. Combined with rocket strikes, Palestinian militants had killed more than 700 people and wounded thousands of others as of early Monday. Israel formally declared war Sunday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to turn “all of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in … into rubble.” On Monday, it announced a full siege of Gaza, with the defense minister promising “no electricity, no food, no fuel” for the enclave.
Israel will investigate possible security lapses and figure out how the attackers had caught the country’s defense forces by surprise, Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“They prepared a surprise attack. They breached the border fence, they came with paragliders and through the sea,” Herzog said. “There will be sufficient time after the war to investigate what exactly happened.”
In 1987, the Israeli army was similarly caught off guard when two Palestinian guerrillas tried to fly giant red-and-white hang gliders some three miles across the country’s northern border with Lebanon, Time magazine reported. While soldiers heard the engines above them, the helicopter gunships they sent to investigate never found anything.
One of the guerrilla pilots failed to cross the Israeli border, instead landing in a buffer zone of Lebanese territory that Israel controlled as a “security zone.” Troops fatally shot him there, an army spokesman told the New York Times in 1987.
But his compatriot got across, landing in a field of thistles north of Kiryat Shemona in Israel, Time reported. The guerrilla pilot then ran some 500 feet to an army base, armed with a Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifle, a pistol equipped with a suppressor and hand grenades. Once the soldier acting as a lookout fled, the guerrilla entered the camp, threw grenades at and opened fire into the tents of unsuspecting Israeli soldiers.
One of the wounded soldiers, a 20-year-old, fatally shot the Palestinian, ending the attack — the most lethal Israel had seen in nearly a decade, Time reported.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a Syria-based terrorist group that carried out dozens of attacks in Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s, claimed responsibility.
Yasser Arafat, then the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, praised the Popular Front’s efforts, according to Reuters.
“The attack demonstrated that there could be no barriers or obstacles to prevent a guerrilla who has decided to become a martyr,” he said at the time.
Four months later, the 19-year-old who abandoned his lookout post was court-martialed and sentenced to three years in jail. At his sentencing, he was chastised for forsaking his duty to protect his fellow soldiers and denounced for “shameful behavior.”
In the aftermath of the attack, Israeli army leaders wondered how, given the country’s military prowess, they had been caught flat-footed by such a technologically unsophisticated strike.
“How did it happen that one terrorist killed six soldiers and wounded seven others?” Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, then the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, asked at the time. “We cannot live with an event like this.”
Nearly 36 years later, Israel finds itself asking similar questions about an attack — but this time, the casualties are far higher.