Libyan lawyer launches campaign for return of Leptis Magna ruins from Windsor Castle


A Libyan lawyer has launched a new campaign calling for Roman ruins from the ancient city of Leptis Magna stolen by British army officers in the 19th century to be returned to Libya.

The crown is yet to provide evidence of legal ownership of the ruins,

 looted in 1817 from Libya 

[Getty]

Austin Cooper
15 April, 2022

A Libyan-British lawyer has launched a public campaign this week to reclaim 2,000-year-old Roman relics from the grounds of Windsor Castle in the UK.

Mohammed ben Shaban, the first Libyan to be licensed as a lawyer to the UK supreme court, is lobbying the crown estate to “follow the spirit of international convention in returning these items of important cultural heritage”.

The columns of Leptis Magna - a city built between modern-day Tripoli and Sirte - were stolen from the temple of Augustus in 1817 by British imperial officers Hanmer Warrington and William Henry Smyth.

In the 17th century, 600 columns from Leptis Magna had previously been taken by Louis XIV for use in his palaces at Versailles and Paris. Remains from the site can also be found in Rouen Cathedral and the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Preps in Paris.

Ben Shaban is representing the state of Libya and the Libyan Ministry of Culture in pursuing the return of the architectural remains stolen by the British.

Lobbying the crown

“We’ve said to the crown: If you have evidence that these Roman antiquities were legally removed from Libya, then please provide it. If you don’t, please return them to Libya,” ben Shaban told The New Arab.

“They currently lie on the crown estate, managed by the National Trust. They’re on the Queen’s land, sovereign land. The Empire has to realise returning items of significant cultural heritage is long overdue,” he said.

“It's like having part of the great wall of China in Bristol. It doesn’t belong there. If you visit it as a normal tourist you’ll appreciate its beauty. But if you’re from the country where it came from, you feel a sense of injustice.”

So far, the legal team lobbying the crown has had little response. “Thus far, the crown’s response has been at best quiet - and at worst, less than respectful,” ben Shaban said.

He believes the crown is “just batting us back, hoping we’ll go away”.

The National Trust is yet to speak publicly about the Leptis Magna columns, but has been contacted for comment.

Right of return

While some British institutions have started to repatriate stolen cultural artefacts, the British government’s line is still “return nothing or the floodgates will open”, according to ben Shaban.

British museums often claim custodianship of global heritage, preserving world history that would be at risk in countries experiencing conflict and instability such as Libya.

But the legal team behind the Leptis Magna campaign have spoken to experts who believe the remains are at risk of critical damage due to prolonged exposure to British weather.

“The marble from which these columns were made is not made for British weather. They’re not being looked after more here. The original stoneworkers used material better suited to Libyan weather. It’s next to a lake in the south of England, but it was built for the desert," ben Shaban said.

“This is just a standing example of how empires abused their colonies. They stole oil, gold, people - but when it’s your history, your culture, it’s like stealing part of you, like stealing your DNA.”

Biden Approval Still Higher Than Trump at Same Point in Presidency: Polls

BY JASON LEMON ON 4/16/22 

President Joe Biden's approval rating still remains narrowly higher than that of former President Donald Trump at the same point in his presidency—despite a substantial decline throughout his White House tenure.

Analysts and commentators have focused significant attention on Biden's tanking poll numbers, which have plummeted by double-digits since he first took office last January. While the president's approval rating remains underwater, it continues to hover just above that of Trump during the same period of his time serving as commander-in-chief.

FiveThirtyEight's compilation of polls shows that as of April 15, Biden's approval rating stood at an average of 41.6 percent while his disapproval among voters was 52.2 percent. While those numbers are less-than enviable for any politician, they were slightly above where Trump stood in the polls on April 15, 2018.

President Joe Biden's approval rating still remains slightly higher than that of former President Donald Trump at the same point in his White House tenure. Above, this combination of photos shows Biden gesture after speaking during election night at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, and Trump speaks during election night at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 4, 2020.

ANGELA WEISS,MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


The former president had an average approval rating of 40.6 percent exactly four years ago on Friday, according FiveThirtyEight's compilation of polls. That was just 1 percent worse than Biden's current average. Trump's disapproval among voters was also slightly higher, at 53.8 percent—or 1.6 percent above that of the current president.

Biden entered office last year with an average favorability of 53 percent with just 36 percent saying they disapproved of the new president, according to FiveThirtyEight's averages. Comparatively, Trump started his presidential term in January 2017 with only 45.5 percent of Americans saying they approved as 41.3 percent disapproved.

Meanwhile, Trump's current favorability is higher than that of Biden. FiveThirtyEight's average shows that, as of April 13, about 43.7 percent of Americans viewed the former president favorably. Meanwhile, an average of 52.3 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump.

Polls also show that Trump would be well-positioned for a rematch against Biden if the next presidential election were held now. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls show that about 45.4 percent of voters say they would back Trump in 2024 while just 41.7 percent say they'd support Biden—a lead of 3.7 percent for the former president.

READ MORE
Younger Voters Are Turning on Biden More Than Any Other Age Group: Poll

Although Biden has repeatedly said that he plans to seek reelection in 2024, Trump has not confirmed whether he will run again. However, the former president has consistently teased the possibility—regularly responding to questions about his future political ambitions by saying his supporters will be "very happy" with his decision.

In an interview this month with The Washington Post, Trump said that he expects that other potential Republican candidates will step aside if he announces another White House bid.

"If I ran, I can't imagine they'd want to run. Some out of loyalty would have had a hard time running. I think that most of those people...[are] there because of me. In some cases, because I backed them and endorsed them," he said.

As for Biden, he's said that Trump seeking another presidential term would only embolden him to seek reelection in 2024.

"Why would I not run against Donald Trump if he were the nominee? That would increase the prospect of running," the president told ABC News in December.

US Arrests 210,000 Migrants at Mexico Border in March, Rivaling Record Highs

April 16, 2022
Reuters

Asylum-seeking migrants are detained by a U.S. Border Patrol agent after crossing the Rio Bravo river, in El Paso, Texas, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, April 6, 2022.

WASHINGTON —

U.S. border authorities arrested 210,000 migrants attempting to cross the border with Mexico in March, the highest monthly total in two decades and underscoring challenges in the coming months for U.S. President Joe Biden.

The March total is a 24% increase from the same month a year earlier, when 169,000 migrants were picked up at the border, the start of a rise in migration that left thousands unaccompanied children stuck in crowded border patrol stations for days while they awaited placement in overwhelmed government-run shelters.

Biden, a Democrat who took office in January 2021, pledged to reverse many of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, but has struggled both operationally and politically with high numbers of attempted crossings.

Republicans, who hope to gain control of the U.S. Congress in November 8 midterm elections, say Biden's rollback of Trump-era policies has encouraged more illegal immigration.

Biden officials have cautioned that migration could rise further after U.S. health officials said they will end a pandemic-era border order by May 23. The order, known as Title 42, allows asylum seekers and other migrants to be rapidly expelled to Mexico to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

While more than half of the migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months have been from the traditional sending countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, migrants have increasingly been arriving from more far-flung places, including Ukraine and Russia.

U.S. officials are preparing for as many as 18,000 migrant encounters per day in the coming weeks but are also readying for smaller increases.

The 210,000 migrants arrested in March, a figure made public in a court filing on Friday night, is the highest monthly total on record since February 2000, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics dating back to 2000.

Another 11,000 migrants attempted to enter at a legal crossing along the southwest border in March without a valid visa or permission, the court filing said.

Roughly half of the migrants encountered in March were expelled under the Title 42 order, the court filing said.

DESCANSA EN EL PODER

Rosario Ibarra, Mexico’s champion of the disappeared, dies aged 95

16 April 2022, 

Mexico Obit Ibarra. Picture: PA

Her son Jesus Piedra disappeared in 1975, apparently at the hands of authorities.

Rosario Ibarra, whose long struggle to learn the fate of her disappeared son helped develop Mexico’s human rights movement and led her to become the country’s first female presidential candidate, has died at the age of 95.

The National Human Rights Commission now headed by her daughter Rosario Piedra announced the death on its Twitter account, calling her a “pioneer in the defence of human rights, peace and democracy in Mexico”.

Ms Ibarra died in the northern city of Monterrey following several years of failing health.

Her son Jesus Piedra belonged to an armed communist group and disappeared in April 1975, apparently at the hands of authorities, after being accused of killing a police officer.

Ms Ibarra founded the Eureka Committee, a movement demanding information about the fate of her son and other disappeared persons, though his case was never fully clarified.

She was the first woman to appear on a Mexican presidential ballot in 1982, though she won relatively few votes for the Revolutionary Party of the Workers. She was twice a federal deputy and once a senator.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who she considered a friend, said: “We will always remember her most profound love for the children and her solidarity with whose who suffered because of the disappearance of their loved ones.”

Ms Ibarra de Piedra shows a photo of her son Jesus who disappeared during Mexico’s so called ‘dirty war’ (AP)

However, even during Mr Lopez Obrador’s administration in 2019, she refused an honour voted for by the Mexican senate, saying she would only accept it when Mexico learns the truth about its disappeared, who now number nearly 100,000 – 98% of these cases dating from 2006 onwards, during an era of cartel violence rather than “dirty war” politics.

“I don’t want my struggle to be unfinished,” she said at the time in a text read by her daughter, as her condition prevented her from appearing.

Referring to the president, she added: “I leave in your hands the custody of so precious a recognition and ask you to return it to me with the truth about the whereabouts of our loved and missed children and relatives.”

Her decades-long demands for information – as well as amnesty for political prisoners – took the form of marches, hunger strikes, visits to military prisons and to United Nations offices and made her a widely respected figure on the left.

When Mr Lopez Obrador alleged fraud in the 2006 presidential election that he very narrowly lost, he chose Ms Ibarra to present him with a presidential sash of office in a ceremony declaring him “legitimate president”.

After his universally recognised victory in 2018, Ms Ibarra urged him in her message before the senate “not to permit that the violence and perversity of the earlier governments continues to lie in wait”.

She lamented that disappearances continued in Mexico and called once more for progress, saying in the letter read by her daughter: “The families of Eureka continue today the same as a few years ago.

“The open wound will stop bleeding only when we know where our (loved ones) are.”

By Press Association

AUSTRALIA

Traditional Indigenous burning protecting last-known koalas on NSW far south coast

ABC South East NSW / By Vanessa Milton

YOUTUBE

Cultural burns protect a threatened koala population.

Dan Morgan retraces steps he has taken hundreds, maybe thousands of times through the forest surrounding Biamanga mountain.

Somewhere, dispersed through the canopy above, lives the last-known population of koalas on the NSW far south coast.

"Biamanga is a place of initiation, it's where we get taught lore," Mr Morgan, a Yuin-Djiringanj traditional custodian, said.

"And the koala, he is like the protector-custodian of this area.

"When we grow up, we're taught that all the animals that live on our sacred sites are our ancestors, and it's our obligation to protect them."

 

This koala was spotted in the Murrah flora reserve in September 2020.

(Supplied: David Gallan)

Two and a half years ago, in the space of a few terrifying hours, bushfires tore through hundreds of kilometres of bushland and paddocks to the west of Biamanga.

The fires destroyed hundreds of homes and flattened buildings on the main streets of Cobargo and Quaama, then climbed toward the ridge line of Biamanga mountain.

The 2019-2020 bushfire season led to the declaration of koalas as endangered across most of eastern Australia.

But another legacy of the Black Summer has been a surge in support for a different kind of fire.

Mr Morgan is a cultural fire practitioner, working with Firesticks Alliance to return traditional Indigenous fire management to koala country, on land sacred to the Yuin people, spanning the boundaries of National Parks estate, State forests and private landholdings.

He said once the Black Summer fires got to the top of Biamanga mountain they "just sat down, and they trickled around here for more than a month".

Mr Morgan said it was "like the old spirits of the land just sat that fire down and protected the koala habitat".

When he first came back into the forest after the bushfires, Mr Morgan found fresh koala scats on the burnt ground.

Surveys indicated that the estimated 50-60 koalas that live in the forests between Bega and Bermagui survived.

Koala survey contractor Rob Summers holds the scats of a koala mother and young.

(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

How koalas helped protect the forest

Chris Allen, a former Senior Threatened Species Officer with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, said the country had originally been scheduled for logging.

"In 1998, the NSW and Commonwealth governments committed millions of tons from these forests to the woodchipper and sawmill, without knowing about the koalas here," he said.

In the 1970s, the newly-built woodchip mill in Eden transformed the region's forests into a battleground, with heated protests against intensive logging, thousands of arrests and deep division within the community.

After a number of reports of koala sightings by local landholders, Mr Allen initiated a community-based koala survey program.

Chris Allen has spent decades researching koalas in the forests of south east NSW.

(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

For more than 25 years, community volunteers, agency staff and local contractors, including from Local Aboriginal Land Councils, have searched the leaf litter under more than 100,000 trees to look for koala scats.

"Our survey program extended right through the coastal forests, and our results were trusted, even by Forestry," he said.

"We established that, although numbers were low, koalas were dispersed across more or less the entire landscape, each animal possibly having a home range of hundreds of hectares."

The Aboriginal community added their own powerful voice to the conservation movement when significant cultural sites on Biamanga mountain were threatened by logging.

"Forestry were pulling a lot of trees down, and they were about 50 metres away from a huge, sacred rock," Yuin Biripi traditional knowledge holder Lynne Thomas said.

"My dad tried to explain to them. When you go up to the sites up there on the mountain, it's like our churches."

Lynne Thomas’ father Guboo Ted Thomas led the campaign to protect Biamanga Mountain from logging.

(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

Ms Thomas was a little girl when her father, tribal elder Guboo Ted Thomas, led the campaign with Percy Mumbulla and other elders to recognise and protect the cultural heritage on Biamanga and Gulaga mountains.

After decades of activism, Biamanga and Gulaga were proclaimed as national parks, and handed back to traditional custodians in 2006.

With conclusive evidence of a significant koala population, four state forests near Biamanga Mountain and further north toward Gulaga Mountain were reclassified as the Murrah Flora Reserves in 2016, and protected from logging.

For Dan Morgan, the next, crucial step to secure the future of the forests and vulnerable wildlife is to restore the country's traditional fire regime.

He is working with Yuin traditional knowledge holders and the local Koori community, to reclaim and apply cultural fire practices on their traditional lands.

"Our old people knew every insect, every animal and every tree, and how they all connected with the winds and the seasons", Yuin-Djiringanj traditional knowledge holder Warren Foster said.

"They knew the signs the land gave us that it was the right time to burn.

"All that knowledge is still here, locked away in the landscape."

Traditional knowledge holder Warren Foster is a cultural advisor to the burning program at Biamanga

(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

Private landholders embrace traditional Indigenous burning

Anne Browne watches as Dan Morgan and a small crew of cultural fire practitioners apply a traditional burn on her property, on the edge of Biamanga National Park.

"I think people are getting desperate now, and realise that things are changing so quickly," Ms Browne said.


"We're at a very critical stage with the country. We can't just go on the way we are, with one catastrophe after another."

Anne Browne has lived on the edge of Biamanga National Park for close to 40 years.

(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

Ms Browne is 94, and has witnessed the degradation of the forest by logging, the steady depletion of wildlife, and the horror of bushfires at her doorstep.

In the wake of the Black Summer bushfires, the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements and NSW Bushfire Inquiry both called for greater support for traditional Aboriginal land management practices, and there has been a flood of interest in cultural burning from private landholders.

Scott Parsons and Byron Lonsdale-Patten are among the next generation of traditional fire practitioners.(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

For Dan Morgan, it presents the chance to start caring for country as one cohesive landscape.

It is a complex path to navigate, reclaiming ancient fire practices within the constraints of the prescribed burning regimes and regulations of different land tenures, and to support a koala population that is more vulnerable than ever.

But Morgan's determination is deep-seated.

"It's our cultural responsibility, to care for the land the way our ancestors did for thousands of years," Mr Morgan said. "Because that represents who we are.

"It's going to be an awakening, for country, and for people, to realise that we need to be connected to this land."

The Yuin community are reclaiming cultural fire practices on their traditional lands around Biamanga mountain.(ABC South East NSW: Vanessa Milton)

STOP #FEMICIDE

Hundreds protest against threat to close Turkish women's rights group

Hundreds took to the streets in Turkey to demonstrate against a move to close a prominent women's rights group in the country.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
16 April, 2022

Representatives of opposition parties as well as relatives of domestic abuse victims took part in the demonstration [Getty]

Hundreds of people demonstrated on Saturday in several Turkish cities including Istanbul and Ankara against a move to close one of the country's most respected women's rights groups.

"It is not possible to stop our fight. We are not going to allow the closure of our association," the secretary-general of We Will Stop Femicide, Fidan Ataselim, told AFP.

An Istanbul prosecutor on Wednesday filed a lawsuit aimed at shutting down the association for "activity against law and morals".

We Will Stop Femicide publicises the murder and abuse of women in the mostly Muslim but officially secular state.

According to Ataselim, the lawsuit accuses the group of conducting activities that violate Turkey's "laws and morals".

The association was a vocal critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision last year to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention, which requires countries to set up laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence against women.

We Will Stop Femicide says 280 women were killed in Turkey last year, many of the murders committed by family members.

Another 217 women died in suspicious circumstances, including those officially registered as suicide, the group says.

Ataselim said the lawsuit was filed based on a complaint registered by a group of Turks through a website set up by the presidency to field citizens' requests.

The complaint accused the group of "destroying the family based on the pretext of defending women's rights", Ataselim said.

The language is similar to that used by Erdogan in his decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, which Turkey signed in 2011.

Social conservatives in Turkey claim the convention promotes homosexuality and threatens traditional family values.

"Don't prosecute women, but murderers!" Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Istanbul shouted.

Representatives of opposition parties as well as relatives of domestic abuse victims took part in the demonstration.

"These women are fighters... I wanted to be there to support them," said Nihat Palandoken, the father of a young girl killed in 2017.

Arab leaders decry Israeli violence on al-Aqsa mosque

The New Arab Staff
16 April, 2022

The Palestinian foreign ministry has responded saying that international condemnation has not gone far enough

Videos emerging on social media show Israeli forces smashing windows, firing teargas inside the mosque and performing violent arrests [Getty]

Arab states have condemned Israeli violence at Al-Aqsa mosque, which left scores of Palestinians seriously injured and nearly 400 arrested after Israeli forces stormed the mosque during dawn prayers on Friday.

Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and others all released statements decrying Israel's actions - while the US state department called for all "sides to exercise restraint (and) avoid provocative actions and rhetoric".

The Saudi foreign ministry statement condemned “the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, closing of its gates, and attacking defenceless worshipers inside the mosque and in its external squares”.

“Israeli authorities must respect the right of Palestinians to practice their religious rights and to stop any practices that violate the sanctity of al-Aqsa mosque,” said the Emirati foreign ministry in their statement.

The Libyan supreme council condemned “repeated incursions and transgressions” by Israeli forces at the mosque, calling the actions “a coordinated escalation, and a blatant assault on the mosque for its unique position in the Islamic consciousness”.

Al-Aqsa mosque is the third holiest site in Islam and has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

Israeli soldiers stormed the heart of the al-Aqsa complex on Friday morning, firing live rounds, smashing windows and performing violent arrests on men, women and children - according to videos circulating on social media.

Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for “the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem to be upheld and respected”, in a statement made by his spokesperson in New York.

The status quo at al-Aqsa mosque has been years of weekly incursions into the holy site by occupying forces and extremist Israeli settlers.

The Palestinian ministry for foreign affairs welcomed the supportive statements but spoke out saying that many did not reflect the seriousness of Israeli transgressions at al-Aqsa on Friday.

“The statements, in their entirety, did not live up to the level of the event and expectations, and did not touch on the truth or reflect on what happened but rather hid behind general rhetoric condemning an anonymous party - and calling on everyone to calm down,” said the Ministry.

“This aggression must be condemned by everyone and not covered up in general statements that provide protection for these racist behaviours…What we witnessed was violent aggression against worshipers, against Muslims and humanity,” the statement added.

Cuba condemns Israeli assault on Al-Aqsa Mosque

TEHRAN, Apr. 16 (MNA) – In continuation of the widespread condemnation of the Israeli brutal assault on Palestinian worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque, the foreign minister of Cuba Bruno Rodríguez strongly condemned it.

"We condemn the Israeli attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque which hosted hundreds of worshipers, including women, the elderly and children,"  Bruno Rodríguez strongly wrote in a post on his Twitter account.

The Cuban foreign minister further expressed his country's solidarity with the people of Palestine and their cause.

Dozens of Palestinians have been martyred and hundreds injured since the beginning of this holy month of Ramadan in the Israeli regime's raid on Al-Aqsa.

Russians flee Putin regime to join Ukraine refugees in Israel


People protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in front of the Russian embassy in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv - 

Copyright AFP/File JACK GUEZ

Delphine Matthieussent

By AFP
Published April 16, 2022

The moment Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Russian filmmakers Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova and Dmitry Bogolyubov knew they had to leave Moscow.

“We were the next on the list,” the couple told AFP in their borrowed flat in Rehovot, a quiet Israeli city 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Tel Aviv.

Once you’re on the list of alleged “foreign agents”, you face a life of “self-censorship or, sooner or later, prison”, said Bogolyubov, who directed the German-financed 2019 documentary “Town of Glory”.

The film portrays President Vladimir Putin’s use of references related to the fight against Nazi Germany to establish his authority in Russian villages.

As its international isolation has deepened, Moscow has come to view all movies made with foreign financing with suspicion, including documentaries, and the couple said theirs was no exception.

“Over the past few years, we felt threatened. In the past few months in particular, people were spying on us and taking photographs on our film sets,” Shishova-Bogolyubova said.

The couple decided to continue working in Russia but, taking advantage of their Jewish ancestry, they obtained Israeli citizenship just in case.

Israel’s Law of Return gives the right of citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, a criterion that tens of thousands in both Russia and Ukraine meet.



– Opposition to war –



Since Russian troops invaded on February 24, nearly 24,000 Ukrainians have fled to Israel, some but not all taking advantage of the law, according to immigration ministry figures.

They have been joined by around 10,000 Russians, an Israeli immigration official told AFP.

“Most of those are young graduates, from the urban middle class,” the official said, asking not to be identified.

Like the Bogolyubovs, Moscow-born linguist Olga Romanova had prepared for the day when she no longer felt safe in Russia.

She applied for an Israeli passport after Putin’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“I always thought that one day I would join my children in Israel, but it was then that I realised that things were going wrong in Russia,” the 69-year told AFP in her son’s house outside Jerusalem surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren.

When the invasion started on the morning of February 24, “it was proof that I needed to leave as quickly as possible.

“The war in Ukraine is incompatible with my way of thinking and my moral values. It makes me sick,” she said, fighting back the tears.



– New home or stopover? –



The wave of immigration from Ukraine and Russia over the past seven weeks is the largest Israel has seen since the early 1990s when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted hundreds of thousands to seek a new life on the shores of the Mediterranean.

“Here, we feel safe and we can sleep peacefully once more,” said Shishova-Bogolyubova.

“My four-year-old daughter, who is diabetic, is completely taken care of.

“But we don’t know if we will stay — that depends on our work. Right now, we just want to live for the moment and recover from our emotions. Afterwards, we will see.”

Sergey, a violinist who asked to be referred to by a pseudonym for fear of retribution, left Moscow for Israel with his pianist wife and three young children but expects to move on.

“I don’t know if we’ll stay here. We’ll probably go somewhere else,” he said.

Even for those who qualify for citizenship, Israel can be a terra incognita for new arrivals and nostalgia for Russia is never far below the surface.

Romanova, the linguist, found space in her 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of luggage for just two books, one an academic work, the other a novel by famed Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov which always accompanies her on her travels.

“I lost my country. It was stolen from me. It was taken by Putin and those KGB thugs,” she said wistfully.

‘We’re Exhausted’: Palestinians Decry Israeli Raids as Collective Punishment

At least 14 Palestinians have been killed in a widespread Israeli military operation in the West Bank, launched in response to a string of attacks in Israel that killed 14 people.

Khuloud Zakarneh, the mother of 16-year-old Mohammad Zakarneh, who she says was shot and killed by Israeli forces, comforts her daughter Sedra in their home in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


By Raja Abdulrahim
April 16, 2022

JENIN, West Bank — Ramadan nights in this Palestinian city are normally spent staying up late watching drama and comedy series during what is peak TV season, praying or drinking coffee and smoking hookah pipes at all-night cafes.

But this year in Jenin, amid a widespread Israeli military operation throughout the occupied West Bank, residents are staying up late waiting for the next military raid in their city.

“We’re exhausted,” said Israa Awartani, 32, who works at a theater. “We start to think: ‘When will it be my turn? When will it be my son or another family member?”

For the past week, Israeli forces have carried out a widespread campaign of raids into towns and cities across the West Bank, in a response to a wave of recent Palestinian attacks inside Israel that have killed 14 people. The Israeli authorities have imposed temporary economic sanctions and arrested dozens of people.

Israel says that the stepped-up military activities are a counterterrorism effort to prevent further attacks, and that it has focused them on the hometowns and villages of the recent attackers. However, Palestinian residents and critics say the operation amounts to collective punishment and is counterproductive, as it will only further stoke the cycle of hatred and bloodshed.



Walking through the Jenin refugee camp. On April 9, Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, closed border crossings between Jenin and Israel.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


At least 14 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of Ramadan on April 2, including 16-year-old Mohammad Zakarneh, who was shot and killed on Sunday during one of the Israeli raids in Jenin, his mother said. He was leaving work at a produce shop and was heading home to break his Ramadan fast. The Israeli military would not comment on his death.

Also killed was Ghada Sabteen, 47, a widow and mother of six who was shot in the leg as she approached soldiers at a checkpoint near Bethlehem. Palestinian authorities have called for an investigation into her killing, but the Israeli military has not commented on whether it would conduct one.

On Wednesday, Mohammad Assaf, a 34-year-old lawyer, was shot in the chest and killed during a raid in the city of Nablus, reportedly shortly after dropping his children off at school.

Israel’s military operation comes in the wake of the worst wave of violence in Israel since 2016. The latest attack, on April 7, was carried out by a 28-year-old Palestinian gunman from Jenin who opened fire outside a busy bar in Tel Aviv, killing two people and wounding 13 others. He was later shot and killed by Israeli police forces. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the attack.

This week, Palestinian authorities also condemned Israel’s raids in the West Bank and killing of civilians, calling it collective punishment, and they urged the international community to intervene. The Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement that it held Israel fully responsible for the repercussions of its actions.


Posters in Jenin of Palestinians killed by Israel — some of them members of Palestinian militant groups, some of them civilians.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and controls over 60 percent of its territory. It maintains a two-tier legal system there — one for the five million stateless Palestinians and one for Israeli settlers — and restricts Palestinian movement and other rights, a system that a growing number of human rights groups and advocates have called apartheid.

The Israeli government, in response to a recent such accusation from a United Nations investigator, said that it was unfair to blame Israel for the system given the threats posed by armed Palestinian groups in the occupied territories.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel had gone on the offensive.

“The State of Israel will do everything necessary to overcome this terrorism. We will settle accounts with everyone who was linked, either directly or indirectly, to the attacks,” he said, adding, “We will reach anywhere necessary, at any time, in order to root out these terrorist operations.”

He said there were “no restrictions” on the country’s security forces.

For the last week, Israeli forces have raided Jenin nearly every day or night, local officials and residents said. The city, like most Palestinian urban centers in the West Bank, is governed by the Palestinian Authority, but Israeli forces still regularly carry out night raids and arrests in these areas. In January during one such raid in the village of Jiljilya, a 78-year-old Palestinian American man died while in custody.

Rather than containing the latest wave of attacks, Israel’s actions will have the opposite effect, said a Western diplomat in Ramallah. The aggressive Israeli approach risks creating a new cycle of frustration, despair and victims, said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political matters.

Before leaving for work each morning, Ms. Awartani checks the latest news on local social media.

“I fear I could be going to work and suddenly come upon Israeli soldiers in the street and they could shoot me,” said the mother of three girls, twin 7-year-olds and a 3-year-old. “I could die, I could become paralyzed. Then who is going to take care of my daughters?”



Israa Awartani and her daughters tidying up their bedroom. “I fear I could be going to work and suddenly come upon Israeli soldiers in the street and they could shoot me,” she said.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


Ms. Awartani works in accounting at the well-known Freedom Theater, the epicenter of cultural resistance in Jenin. The theater canceled its month of programming throughout Ramadan out of respect for those killed during Israeli raids in the city and its refugee camp.

Mustafa Sheta, the theater’s manager, said he feared taking his four kids to school each morning, worried Israeli snipers might still be positioned on rooftops.

Ms. Awartani said her sister-in-law refused to go to sleep before her two university-age sons did, fearful that they would leave the house at night and be shot dead during a raid.

“We’re all afraid of losing our children,” Ms. Awartani said.

Jenin was also targeted by economic sanctions. On April 9, Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, closed border crossings between Jenin and Israel, preventing tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel from coming to Jenin to shop — a major pillar of the city’s economy.

Jenin’s merchants and businesspeople who have permits to enter Israel were no longer allowed to cross, and the transportation of all goods and products from Jenin was also banned. Permits that had been issued for 5,000 Jenin residents to visit relatives in Israel were also revoked.

Border crossings were reopened Saturday, but it was unclear if other restrictions would also be lifted.


Mustafa Sheta, the Freedom Theater’s manager, sitting in an empty room. The theater canceled its month of programming throughout Ramadan out of respect for those killed during Israeli raids in the city and its refugee camp.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times


“The objective is always to increase pressure but it never works. If it worked you wouldn’t see the same cycle of violence we see annually,” said Tahani Mustafa, a West Bank analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Israel recycles the same heavy-handed response to what it sees as Palestinian provocation.”

The Recent Rise in Violence in Israel

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Confrontation at a holy site. On the first day of a rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter on April 15, clashes between the Israeli riot police and Palestinians erupted at the Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount — a complex in the Old City of Jerusalem that is sacred to both religions.

Escalating tensions. The clashes capped weeks of rising violence and deadly attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank. More than 30 people have died in what is now the biggest wave of violence, outside of a full-scale war, in several years.

A deadly sequence. Before violence erupted in Jerusalem, a shooting on April 7 was the fourth lethal episode in recent weeks. The series began on March 22, when an assailant killed four people in southern Israel. Other fatal attacks occurred near Tel Aviv and in Hadera, a city in northern Israel.

Israel steps up raids. In response to the attacks, Israeli forces have carried out a widespread campaign of raids into towns and cities across the West Bank. As a result, at least 14 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of Ramadan on April 2, including a 16-year-old boy.

In the wake of last week’s attack in Tel Aviv, some Israelis said the violence had brought up memories of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, and its violent suppression by Israel, a period of unrest that lasted from 2000 to 2005 and that killed about 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

For Palestinians, too, Israel’s response is evoking memories of the intifada, which has left scars still visible in Jenin. In the part of the city that originated as a refugee camp, bullet holes pockmark the walls of many buildings. Many homes were constructed after 2002, when Israel leveled hundreds of buildings in response to a string of suicide bombings.

Everywhere along the walls are posters of those killed by Israel — some of them members of Palestinian militant groups, some of them civilians. The faces of those killed in the last week of violence have yet to be added to the camp’s walls.

The belongings and bed of Mohammad Zakarneh remained untouched in his house.

Credit...Samar Hazboun for The New York Times

On a recent morning at intersections and roundabouts, schoolchildren walked past tires stacked like pillars and dumpsters used to block roads to slow Israeli incursions. Hours after Israeli forces pulled out, one dumpster was still smoldering as children walked home.

At a jewelry shop in Jenin’s main shopping district, lights glinted off rows of gold jewelry. But there were few buyers.

With Israel banning crossings into Jenin, business owners say they have lost more than half of their customers leading into the end of Ramadan, one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year.

The jewelry shop’s owner, Abdullah Dawaseh, 60, said that just as Palestinians had survived the intifada, they would survive this.

Hours earlier, the Israeli military had raided a neighborhood less than half a mile from the commercial drag.

“When you punish an entire population, then the entire population is going to erupt,” he said, speaking from behind a counter full of diamond rings. “Just as they want to be safe when they go to the market, we, too, want to be safe when we go to the market.”

Sweden prepares for more clashes as far-right, anti-Islam rallies continue

The Danish far-right group Stram Kurs is planning to go ahead with Quran-burning plan in southern Sweden, where more clashes are expected.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
16 April, 2022

Nine police officers were injured yesterday in clashes between demonstrators and far-right group Stram Kurs [Getty]

Police in Sweden say they are preparing for new violent clashes following riots that erupted between demonstrators and counter-protesters in the central city of Orebro on Friday ahead of an anti-Islam far-right group’s plan to burn a Quran there.

Kim Hild, spokeswoman for police in southern Sweden said that the police would not revoke permission for a planned demonstration by the Danish right-wing Stram Kurs party in the southern town of Landskrona on Saturday because the threshold for doing that is very high in Sweden, which values free speech.

The right of the protesters "to demonstrate and speak out weighs enormously heavily and it takes an incredible amount for this to be ignored," Hild told Swedish news agency TT.

Violence erupted between demonstrators and counter-protesters in the central city of Orebro on Friday (TT via AP)

Police said, however, that the rally would be moved to another undisclosed location, according to TT. Stram Kurs’ leader Rasmus Paludan was also planning a Quran burning in Landskrona, the agency said.

Hild said police were preparing for the demonstration and possible violence with extra resources "given what has happened in recent days" in the Nordic country.

Two days of riots in various Swedish cities and towns, triggered by Stram Kurs’ demonstration, culminated in the violent clashes in Orebro late Friday that left 12 police officers injured and four police vehicles set on fire.

Sweden Demonstration Violence. Picture: PA

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Video footage and photos from chaotic scenes in Orebro showed burning police cars and protesters throwing stones and other objects at police officers in riot gear.

Clashes were reported the past few days also in Stockholm and in the cities of Linkoping and Norrkoping- all locations where Stram Kurs either planned or had demonstrations.

Paludan, a Danish lawyer who also holds Swedish citizenship, set up Stram Kurs, or "Hard Line" in 2017. The website of the party, which runs on an anti-immigration and anti-Islam agenda says "Stram Kurs is the most patriotic political party in Denmark".