Day: October 19, 2023

Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas’s political wing, is seen leaving the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Moscow on March 2, 2020. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA-EFA/Shutterstock)

An Israeli Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) is obscured as it whips up dust near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel October 15, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun Acquire Licensing Rights

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Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an interview with China Media Group anchor Wang Guan at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, in this image released October 16, 2023. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylev/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an interview with China Media Group anchor Wang Guan at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, in this image released October 16, 2023. Sputnik/Sergei Bobylev/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

, Israeli Prime Minister, managed to maintain “warm communication” with Russian dictator , but now this has ended, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Source: WSJ

Details: Journalists remind that Netanyahu stood with Putin even when the latter was increasingly isolated. Even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the warming of its relations with Israel’s sworn rival, Iran, have failed to undermine this cooperation.

It is noted that the leaders kept in touch by phone, and Netanyahu announced a non-aligned approach to the war in Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with lethal assistance or air defence systems despite Western pressure.

Quote: “Now, after the deadly attack by Iranian-backed Hamas militants on Israel, these conversations seem to have stopped.

Putin is one of the few world leaders who did not call Netanyahu to express his condolences over the deaths of more than 1,300 Israelis killed by Hamas in this attack.”

More details: The publication notes that the termination of the agreement between Russia and Israel highlights the broader tectonic shifts in Russia’s role in the Middle East since Putin started the war in Ukraine.

In exchange for the Shahed drones, Russia provided Iran with Yak-130 training aircraft and is considering selling Su-35 fighter jets to Iran, which could change the balance of air forces in the Middle East.

The journalists also explain that the Kremlin has its own reasons to welcome the war as far away from the Russian borders as possible.

Ahead of Russia’s presidential election scheduled for March, Putin is looking for a way to distract himself from the war in Ukraine, reads the article.

Note: On 14 October, Hamas stated that it welcomes “Russia’s tireless efforts aimed at ending Israel’s aggression” against militants.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely speak during a phone call Monday evening, a senior official tells Fox News. 

The call will represent the first time the two leaders will speak since Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli civilians prompted Israel to declare war against the Gaza-based terror group.

Netanyahu and Putin will speak before the Russian president is expected to meet this week with Chinese leaders in Beijing on a visit that underscores China’s support for Moscow during its war in Ukraine. Russia and China have forged an informal alliance against the United States and other democratic nations that is now complicated by the Israel-Hamas war. 

China has sought to balance its ties with Israel with its economic relations with Iran and Syria, which are strongly backed by Russia. Putin’s visit is also a show of support for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to build infrastructure and expand China’s overseas influence.

RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN BLAMES US FOR CREATING CONDITIONS LEADING TO ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR

The Biden administration deployed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Middle East to meet with Arab leaders in hopes of deterring a wider-ranging conflict amid the war in Israel, as Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israelis along the country’s northern border with Lebanon, raising concerns of the opening of a second front. 

Meanwhile, Netanyahu, whose forces have been pummeling the Gaza Strip with retaliatory air strikes, is readying a planned ground operation against Hamas this week. 

Blinken, while traveling in the Mideast over the weekend, called Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to ask Beijing to use whatever influence it has in the region to keep other countries and groups from entering the conflict and broadening it, according to the State Department, which declined to characterize Wang’s response. China is known to have close trade and political ties with Iran, which in turn supports Hamas and Hezbollah.

During a call with an adviser to the Brazilian president, Wang had come out more strongly for the Palestinians compared to his Chinese counterparts, saying that “the crux of the matter is that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people.”

“This conflict once again proved in an extremely tragic manner that the way to solve the Palestinian issue lies in resuming genuine peace talks as soon as possible and realizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian nation,” Wang said, according to The Associated Press. 

China’s Middle East envoy, Zhai Jun, talked to Palestinian and Egyptian officials by phone this past week, calling for an immediate cease-fire and humanitarian support for the Palestinian people. Zhai also called Israeli officials to say China “has no selfish interests on the Palestinian issue but has always stood on the side of peace, on the side of fairness and justice.” He said that “China is willing to work with the international community to promote peace and encourage talks.”

NETANYAHU TELLS BIDEN ‘WE HAVE TO GO IN’ TO GAZA FOLLOWING HAMAS ATTACKS: REPORT

Putin will be among the highest profile guests at a gathering marking the 10th anniversary of Xi’s announcement of the BRI policy, which has laden countries such as Zambia and Sri Lanka with heavy debt after they signed contracts with Chinese companies to build roads, airports and other public works they could not otherwise afford.

Putin’s visit has not been officially confirmed, according to the AP, but Chinese officials have suggested he will arrive late Monday.

In June, Xi hosted the Palestinian president in Beijing and invited the Israeli prime minister for an official state visit. 

Netanyahu accepted, and China was on track for a bigger role in the region, but Hamas attacks against Israel have made Netanyahu’s planned late October trip uncertain. China’s stated neutrality on the war has upset Israel, but Beijing may gain in the long run by forging closer ties with Arab countries, experts told the AP. 

Netanyahu has invited President Biden to visit Israel amid the war against Hamas. 

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Just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, Putin met with Xi in Beijing and the sides signed an agreement pledging a “no-limits” relationship. Beijing’s attempts to present itself as a neutral peace broker in Russia’s war on Ukraine have been widely dismissed by the international community.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The smell of death hits you at the entrance to kibbutz Be’eri. Until Saturday morning Be’eri had a population of 1,200, the largest of the 12 villages that make up the Eshkol regional council that runs along the border with Gaza.

Now it is a place indelibly associated with horror and tragedy, as one of the centres of the massacre undertaken by the militant Islamist group Hamas in southern Israel beginning on Saturday morning.

Be’eri, once popular with Israelis as a weekend getaway with its art gallery and nearby mountain-biking trails, had by Tuesday been turned into a war zone, the bloated bodies of the Hamas terrorists who attacked this place still dotted around the kibbutz, and tanks and armoured cars at the entrance where Hamas smashed in.

Audible in the distance the sound of detonations can be heard coming from the direction of Gaza, outgoing artillery firing close by from the positions now occupied by the army.

Be’eri, founded two years before the state of Israel, was once a pleasant place to live with houses and apartments set apart among the trees, and grassy verges joined by little sandy roads. Now the homes are broken and violated.

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In some places the doors of the surviving houses stand open as if the residents had simply left to go for a coffee at the kibbutz cafe, pictures of the families that lived here pinned with magnets to fridges.

In other places it is clear that the Hamas militants who stormed Be’eri set fire to buildings to drive out the occupants who were hiding there: to kill or capture. Mostly to kill.

Building after building has been destroyed, whether in the Hamas assault or in the fighting that followed, nearby trees splintered and walls reduced to concrete rubble from where Israeli tanks blasted the Hamas militants where they were hiding. Floors collapsed on floors. Roof beams were tangled and exposed like rib cages.

Building after building has been destroyed. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

Many of the juxtapositions on Wednesday were jarring, describing how very ordinary lives were ripped utterly apart. In the kibbutz’s communal dining hall, where residents once gathered to take meals, there are still menus and posters for the kibbutz’s running club and a personal trainer.

It is also where the bodies of the dead, 108 in all, were brought and laid out to await collection by the emergency services.

Now it is the Hamas dead who are being removed by workers from Zaka, an emergency group, in white overalls and orange helmets and masks.

For the Israeli soldiers who now populate Be’eri, these are scenes promoting conflicting emotions. Moving through the kibbutz journalists shouted questions to a harried Israeli soldier who it transpires had fought there.

The body of a Hamas militant in kibbutz Be’eri Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

“When I arrived I saw soldiers fighting here just to get into the kibbutz,” he said. “We were going from apartment to apartment. We will have difficult questions to ask [in the future]. For now we have to look forwards: to the defence of the people and getting the survivors out.”

“I feel anger. I feel speechless and frustration,” said Richard Hecht an army spokesperson accompanying the international media. “You can still smell the bodies here. It’s overwhelming.”

Itai Veruv, an Israeli major general who led the fighting here, could only describe it in historic terms of the Jewish history of persecution. “What happened here was a pogrom,” he says.

It is a word that has been used repeatedly about Be’eri. “[It’s] what happened in Europe in the old days,” adds Veruv. “This was not a war. They wanted to kill and kidnap to Gaza. Women and children.”

The picture of what happened in Be’eri has been emerging piecemeal over several days. How in the space of the horrifying hours of the murderous rampage on Saturday, at least 100 people were slaughtered here, dragged from their homes and murdered or dragged off at gunpoint as hostages to Gaza.

Family photos among the destruction. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian

That terrible experience was chronicled in text messages, and desperate calls to family calling for help, and in the gruesome videos shot by Hamas itself within the kibbutz.

In text messages during the attack with this Guardian reporter, one resident – who survived with their family – had pleaded for help in contacting the army as Hamas stormed neighbouring houses.

Describing sounds of nearby shooting, the resident said: “We need to get the army here. It’s not enough. Please get the army come to save us.”

Amit Man, a 25-year-old paramedic, was one of those who lived here. Her last contact was a text she sent to her sister Haviva from the kibbutz clinic, where she was treating the wounded members.

Then there was Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old who had lived in Be’eri for most of her life. Among those missing, believed captured, there is video of Yaffa sitting surrounded by young men telling her to “smile” in Arabic.

For those residents of Be’eri still alive, things can never be the same.

“I feel like the state of Israel ceased to exist,” Amit Halevi, the 70-year-old chairman of Be’eri, told the Haaretz newspaper on Monday, echoing Veruv. “What is this, some pogrom in Lithuania?”

Uri Ben Tzvi, another survivor from Be’eri, compared his experience to one of the Holocaust’s most famous victims

“I was like Anne Frank,” said Ben Tzvi, 71, who hid with his wife in a narrow corridor in one of the kibbutz’s structures. “It was a pogrom. Like going back to the Kishinev pogrom,” he said referring to a 1903 series of massacres in what is now Moldova.

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad received part of a $93 million payment through the sanctioned Russian crypto-exchange company Garantex, the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 13.

The sources used in the reporting alleged that Hamas likely used a similar funding scheme as a means of disguising their transactions and evading sanctions.

Garantex customers in Russia can deposit cash in rubles and then receive the equivalent in cryptocurrency, which can then be withdrawn abroad in a foreign currency, effectively disguising the origin of the funds. According to the WSJ’s reporting, there is “little trackable record of the transactions,” making it difficult for international financial crime regulators to crack down on such exchanges.

After the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned more than 80% of the Russian banking industry following the full-scale invasion, crypto has become one of the primary ways that Russians can move money around in foreign banks. The gaps in enforcement also provide opportunities for terrorist groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad to fund their operations.

Unnamed Treasury Department sources told the WSJ that the U.S. was considering additional actions against Garantex to stop the flow of illegal or sanctioned money.

The WSJ estimates that as much as $7-30 billion have been funneled through Garantex since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The company was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in April 2022.