Belgian teacher who hid Jewish children during Holocaust dies at age 101

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici risked her life to help save around 1,000 children from the Nazis, was recognized by Yad Vashem and given honorary Israeli citizenship

By MICHAEL HOROVITZ

Today, 

Belgian Andrée Geulen-Herscovici poses during a visit to the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, April 18, 2007. (Orel Cohen/Flash 90)

Andrée Geulen-Herscovici, a teacher from Belgium who helped save approximately 1,000 Jewish children during the Holocaust, died on Wednesday in Ixelles, Belgium, aged 101 years old.

As a young teacher, Geulen-Herscovici was disturbed by the Nazi occupation of her hometown of Brussels when Jewish students arrived at her school wearing yellow stars. She told her students — both Jewish and non-Jewish — to come to school wearing aprons to cover the symbol.

The discriminatory Nazi policies prompted Geulen-Herscovici to join the rescue organization Comité de Défence des Juifs (Jewish Defense Committee) in 1942. There, she met the Jewish activist Ida Sterno, who needed a non-Jewish person to assist her in rescue efforts.

Geulen-Herscovici was among several non-Jewish women who were tasked by the rescue organization with quietly approaching Jewish families to suggest they give up their children to hide them. She also transferred children between various hiding places.

“It was the hardest thing to do, not telling a mother where I was taking her son,” Geulen-Herscovici recalled in an interview.

Operating under the code name Claude Fournier, Geulen-Herscovici was instructed to live at the school where she taught, called Gaty de Gamont, where she helped to protect 12 Jewish students who had taken shelter there.

Belgian Andrée Geulen-Herscovici (second from right) observes a moment of silence in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem April 18, 2007. 

(Orel Cohen/Flash 90)

In May 1943, Nazis raided the school and arrested the students who were hiding there. Geulen-Herscovici and the other teachers were taken for questioning. The school’s headmistress, Odile Ovart, and her husband were sent to concentration camps, where they both died.

Geulen-Herscovici avoided arrest, and warned her Jewish students of the raid and to not return to the school.

From then on, Geulen-Herscovici operated under a false identity and helped accompany Jewish children to safety.

Geulen-Herscovici took the children to hide among Christian families and at monasteries. She ensured the families were able to provide for them and watched out for them for the duration of the war.

Geulen-Herscovici maintained coded records of the children, including their birth names and hiding locations, so that they could be reunited with their families after the war, but many of the parents who gave up their children perished in the Holocaust.

In 1989, Geulen-Herscovici was recognized by Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center as a Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts. The recognition is bestowed by the memorial center to those who are verified to have risked their lives to save Jews during World War II.

During a 2007 visit to Israel for an international convention for rescued Belgian children, she was granted honorary Israeli citizenship in a ceremony at Yad Vashem.

Israel’s ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon mourned her death, calling Geulen-Herscovici “a true hero of humanity… she was an amazing and wonderful woman, who saved many Jews during WWII.”

TOI staff contributed to this report.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

US government report flags attacks on minorities in India took place throughout 2021

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said there has been a rise in attacks on places of worship in India.

Scroll Staff

Citizens in New Delhi shout slogans and hold placards during a peace vigil organised on April 16 against rise in hate crimes and violence against Muslims in India. | Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

Attacks on minorities in India, including killings, assaults and intimidation, took place throughout last year, said the United States Department of State’s Report on International Religious Freedom for 2021, released on Thursday.

The report listed scores of incidents of violence against minorities including incidents of cow vigilantism, attacks on religious places and properties owned by Muslims and anti-conversion laws in several states of India.

While releasing the report, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noted the “rising attacks on people and places of worship” in India.

Ambassador-At-Large For International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain said that some officials in India were “ignoring or even supporting rising attacks on people and places of worship”.

What does the report say?

The section on India in the report said that attacks on minorities included incidents of vigilantism against non-Hindus based on allegations of cow slaughter or selling or possessing beef.

The report said that ten out of 28 states in the country have laws restricting religious conversions.

“Four state governments have laws imposing penalties against so-called forced religious conversions for the purpose of marriage although some state high courts have dismissed cases charged under this law,” it noted.

The report took note of an incident on September 26, when a 14-year-old Christian boy from Bihar’s Gaya district died after some persons allegedly threw acid on him. The report also referred to allegations by two Muslim men in Jamshedpur that the police on August 26 forced them to strip naked and beat them up during an interrogation.

“According to a media report, no action was taken against the accused police officers by year’s end,” the report said.

The Department of State also said that alleged militants in Jammu and Kashmir killed civilians from Hindu and Sikh minorities, leading to “widespread fear” among the communities.

It took note of reports of properties owned by Muslims, including mosques, shops and houses, having been damaged in attacks by Hindu nationalist groups.

The report made mention of incidents of hate speech against minorities, including at a conclave at Uttarakhand’s Haridwar city in December, where Hindu supermacist seer Yati Narsinghanand urged Hindus to take up weapons against Muslims.

It also referred to a statement made by Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui on October 15 calling for beheading of those who insult the Quran.

In April, the US Department of State had noted that Muslims in India are vulnerable to communal violence and discrimination. The state department made the observation on the chapter on India in its “2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”.

The report had mentioned discrimination against minorities in India, extrajudicial killings, degrading treatment or punishment by the police and prison officials and arbitrary arrests and detentions by government authorities among other concerns.

Essay

The truth about Ukraine’s far-Right militias

Russia has empowered dangerous factions

BY ARIS ROUSSINOS

June 1, 2022

Torch-bearing Azov fighters. Credit: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty

Like any war, but perhaps more than most, the war in Ukraine has seen a bewildering barrage of claims and counter-claims made by the online supporters of each side. Truth, partial truths and outright lies compete for dominance in the media narrative. Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia invaded Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country is surely one of the clearest examples. The Russian claim that the Maidan revolution of 2014 was a “fascist coup” and that Ukraine is a Nazi state has been used for years by Putin and his supporters to justify his occupation of Crimea and support for Russian-speaking separatists in the country’s east, winning many online adherents.

But the Russian claim is false: Ukraine is a genuine liberal-democratic state, though an imperfect one, with free elections that produce significant changes of power, including the election, in 2019, of the liberal-populist reformer, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine is, unequivocally, not a Nazi state: the Russian casus belli is a lie. And yet, there is a danger that the understandable desire by Ukrainian and Western commentators not to provide ammunition for Russian propaganda has led to an over-correction — and one that may not ultimately serve Ukraine’s best interests.

During one recent news bulletin on BBC Radio 4, the correspondent referred to “Putin’s baseless claim that the Ukrainian state supports Nazis”. This is, itself, disinformation: it is an observable fact, which the BBC itself has previously reported on accurately and well, that the Ukrainian state has, since 2014, provided funding, weapons and other forms of support to extreme Right-wing militias, including neo-Nazi ones. This is not a new or controversial observation. Back in 2019, I spent time in Ukraine interviewing senior figures in the constellation of state-backed extreme Right-wing groups for Harper’s magazine; they were all quite open about their ideology and plans for the future.

Indeed, some of the best coverage of Ukraine’s extreme Right-wing groups has come from the open-source intelligence outlet Bellingcat, which is not known for a favourable attitude towards Russian propaganda. Bellingcat’s excellent reporting of this under-discussed topic over the past few years has largely focused on the Azov movement, Ukraine’s most powerful extreme Right-wing group, and the one most favoured by the state’s largesse.

Over the past few years, Bellingcat researchers have explored Azov’s outreach effort to American white nationalists and its funding by the Ukrainian state to teach “patriotic education” and to support demobilised veterans; it has looked into Azov’s hosting of neo-Nazi black metal music festivals, and its support of the exiled, anti-Putin Russian neo-Nazi group Wotanjugend — practitioners of a very marginal form of esoteric Nazism, who share space with Azov in their Kyiv headquarters, fight alongside them in the front line, and have also played a role translating and disseminating a Russian-language version of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. Unfortunately, Bellingcat’s invaluable coverage of Ukraine’s extreme-Right ecosystem has not been updated since the current hostilities began, despite the war with Russia providing these groups with something of a renaissance.

The Azov movement was founded in 2014 by Andriy Biletsky, former leader of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi group Patriot of Ukraine, during the battle for control of Kyiv’s central Independence Square during the Maidan Revolution against the country’s Russia-leaning, elected president Viktor Yanukovych. Back in 2010, Biletsky claimed that it would one day be Ukraine’s role to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led untermenschen“. The revolution, and the war which followed, would give him the national stage for which he had so long craved.

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Alongside other far-Right groups, such as Right Sector, the nascent Azov movement played an outside role in the fighting against Ukrainian security police which left 121 dead and secured the success of the revolution. Acquiring control of a large property, just off Independence Square, from the Ministry of Defence, Azov turned the building, now named Cossack House, into its Kyiv headquarters and recruiting centre. Though Azov has since toned down its rhetoric, and many of its fighters may be non-ideological and simply attracted by its martial reputation, its activists are often to be seen covered in tattoos of SS totenkopfs and lightning bolt runes, or sporting the Sonnenrad or Black Sun symbol of esoteric Nazism. Derived from a pattern created for Himmler at Wewelsburg castle in Germany, chosen as an occultic Camelot for senior SS officers, the Sonnenrad is like the Wolfsangel rune of the SS Das Reich division one of Azov’s official symbols, worn on their unit patches and on the shields behind which their fighters parade in evocative torchlit ceremonies.

I’ve visited Cossack House multiple times to interview senior Azov figures, including the leader of its National Militia (which provides auxiliary patrolling muscle to Ukraine’s official police force), Ihor Mikhailenko, and Azov’s International Secretary and intellectual linchpin, Olena Semenyaka. It’s an impressive setup: along with classrooms for the educational lectures they provide with state funding, Cossack House is home to Azov’s literary salon and publishing house, Plomin, where glamorous young hipster intellectuals busy themselves with organising Right-wing seminars and book translations, beneath glossy posters of fascist luminaries such as Yukio Mishima, Cornelius Codreanu, and Julius Evola.

But Azov’s power derives from the gun, not their literary efforts. Back in 2014, when the Ukrainian army was weak and underequipped, Azov volunteers under Biletsky’s leadership fought at the vanguard of the battle against Russian-speaking separatists in the east, reconquering the city of Mariupol, where they are currently under siege. Effective, courageous and highly ideological fighters, Azov’s efforts in the east won them great renown as defenders of the nation, and the support of a grateful Ukrainian state, which incorporated Azov as an official regiment of Ukraine’s National Guard. In this, Azov is believed to have enjoyed the support of Arsen Avakov, a powerful oligarch and Ukraine’s Interior Minister between 2014 and 2019.

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Both Ukrainian human rights activists and leaders of rival extreme Right-wing groups have complained to me, in interviews, about the unfair advantage Avakov’s patronage gave the Azov movement in establishing its dominant role in Ukraine’s Rightwing sphere — including official functions as election observers and state-sanctioned auxiliary police. Ukraine is not a Nazi state, but the Ukrainian state’s support — for whatever reasons, valid or otherwise — of neo-Nazi or Nazi-aligned groups makes the country an outlier in Europe. The continent has many extreme Right-wing groups, but only in Ukraine do they possess their own tank and artillery units, with the state’s support.

This awkwardly close relationship between a liberal-democratic state supported by the West and armed proponents of a very different ideology has caused some discomfort in the past for Ukraine’s Western backers. The US Congress has gone back and forth in recent years on whether Azov should be blocked from receiving American arms shipments, with Democrat lawmakers even urging in 2019 that Azov be listed as a global terrorist organisation. In interviews, Semenyaka complained to me that this unease was a result of their listening to Russian propaganda, and insisted that American cooperation with Azov would be beneficial for both parties.

In this, the current war has surely come as a blessed relief for Azov. Biletsky’s attempt to found a political party — the National Corps — met with almost zero success, with even a united bloc of Ukraine’s far- and extreme Right-wing parties failing to clear the very low hurdle for parliamentary representation in the last election: Ukrainian voters simply do not want what they are selling, and reject their worldview. Yet in time of war, Azov and similar groups come to the forefront, with the Russian invasion seemingly reversing the downward spiral that set in for them following Avakov’s resignation due to international pressure. Judging by their social media, Azov’s armed units are expanding: they’re forming new battalions in Kharkiv and Dnipro, a new special forces unit in Kyiv (where Biletsky is organising at least some aspects of the capital’s defence) and local defence militias in western cities such as Ivano-Frankivsk.

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Along with other extreme Right-wing groups such as Karpatska Sich (whose militancy against Western Ukraine’s Hungarian-speaking minority, including Roma, has drawn criticism from the Hungarian government), the Eastern Orthodox group Tradition and Order, the neo-Nazi group C14, and the extreme Right-wing militia Freikorps, the Russian invasion has allowed Azov to restore its earlier prominence, burnishing its heroic reputation with its dogged defence of Mariupol alongside regular Ukrainian marines. While just a few weeks ago there was still a concerted Western effort to not directly arm Azov, now they seem to be a prime beneficiary of Western munitions and training: these pictures tweeted by the Belarusian opposition outlet NEXTA show Azov fighters being instructed in the use of British-made NLAW anti-tank munitions by blurred-out trainers.

Similarly, until the Russian invasion, Western governments and news outlets frequently warned of the dangers of Western neo-Nazis and white supremacists gaining combat experience fighting alongside Azov and their allied Nazi subfactions. Yet in the heat of the moment, these concerns seem to have dissipated: a recent photograph of newly-arrived Western volunteers, including Britons, in Kyiv shows Azov’s Olena Semenyaka smiling happily in the background, alongside the Swedish neo-Nazi and former Azov sniper Mikael Skillt. Indeed, Misanthropic Division, a unit of Western neo-Nazis fighting alongside Azov, is currently advertising on Telegram for European militants to join the flow of volunteers and link up with them in Ukraine, “for victory and Valhalla.”

Like Ukraine’s other extreme Right-wing militias, Azov are dogged, disciplined and committed fighters, which is why the weak Ukrainian state has found itself forced to rely upon their muscle during its hours of greatest need: during the Maidan revolution, during the war against separatists from 2014 onwards, and now to fend off the Russian invasion. There has been a certain new-found reticence abroad to speak frankly about their role, no doubt for fear that doing so will provide ammunition for Russian propaganda. This fear is surely misplaced: after all, groups such as Azov are only prominent precisely because of Russia’s meddling in Ukraine. Instead of de-Nazifying the country, Russian aggression has helped solidify the role and presence of extreme Right-wing factions in Ukraine’s military, reinvigorating a waning political force rejected by the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians.

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If anything, the primary threat posed by groups such as Azov is not to the Russian state — Russia happily supports extreme Right-wing elements in its Wagner mercenary group and in the separatist republics, after all — nor to Western nations whose disaffected citizens may find themselves drawn to a combat role alongside them. Instead, the threat is to the future stability of the Ukrainian state itself, as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have long warned. While they may be useful now, in the event of the decapitation or evacuation of Ukraine’s liberal government from Kyiv, perhaps to Poland or Lviv, or more likely, in the event of Zelenskyy being forced by events to sign a peace deal surrendering Ukrainian territory, groups like Azov may find a golden opportunity to challenge what remains of the state and consolidate their own power bases, even if only locally.

Back in 2019, I asked Semenyaka if Azov still saw itself as a revolutionary movement. Thinking carefully, she replied, “We are ready for different scenarios. If Zelenskyy is even worse than [ex-president] Poroshenko, if he is the same kind of populist, but without certain skills, connections and background, then, of course, Ukrainians would be heavily in danger. And we have already developed a plan of what can be done, how we can develop parallel state structures, how we can customise these entry strategies to save the Ukrainian state, if [Zelenskyy] would become a puppet of the Kremlin, for instance. Because it’s quite possible.”

Senior Azov figures have been explicit, over the course of years, in stating that Ukraine has unique potential as a springboard for the “reconquest” of Europe from liberals, homosexuals and immigrants. While their broader contintental ambitions may have a very doubtful chance of success, a broken, impoverished and angry postwar Ukraine, or worse, a Ukraine suffering years of bombardment and occupation with large areas outside central government control, would surely be a fertile breeding ground for a form of extreme Right-wing militancy not seen in Europe for many decades.

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Right now, Ukraine and Zelenskyy may well need the military capabilities and ideological zeal of nationalist and extreme Right-wing militias simply to fight and win their battle for national survival. But when the war ends, both Zelenskyy and his Western backers must be very careful to ensure that they have not empowered groups whose goals are in direct conflict with the liberal-democratic norms they both pledge adherence to. Arming and funding Azov, Tradition and Order and Karpatska Sich may well be one of the hard choices forced by war, but disarming them must surely be a priority when the war ends.

As we have seen in Syria, there is nothing that radicalises a civilian population more than dispossession, bombing and bombardment. Just as in Syria, there is surely a danger that temporarily empowering extremist factions for their military utility, even indirectly, may have grave and unintended consequences. And in Syria, too, there were strong early taboos among Western commentators in discussing the rise of extremist militias that would later cannibalise the rebel cause, for fear of validating Assad’s propaganda that the rebels were all terrorists: this early reticence did not, in the end, work in the rebels’ favour.

It is not doing Putin’s work for him to observe frankly that there are extremist elements fighting against him in Ukraine: indeed, it is only by carefully monitoring — and perhaps, curtailing — their activities now, that we can ensure they will not deepen Ukraine’s misery in the years to come. For years, liberal Western commentators complained that the Ukrainian state was turning a blind eye to its Right-wing extremist factions: it serves no good purpose for the same commentators to now do the same thing themselves.

Aris Roussinos is UnHerd's Foreign Affairs Editor,

 and a former war reporter.
arisroussinos

Pain management: Tulsa shooting exposes threats doctors face

The deadly mass shooting at an Oklahoma medical office by a man who blamed his surgeon for pain following back surgery underscores the escalating threats doctors face

By Andrew Demillo 

Associated Press
June 02, 2022

The deadly mass shooting at an Oklahoma medical office by a man who blamed his surgeon for continuing pain following an operation on his back underscores the escalating threat of violence doctors have faced in recent years.

Michael Louis, 45, fatally shot Dr. Preston Phillips and three other people in Tulsa on Wednesday before killing himself. Police said Louis had been calling the clinic repeatedly complaining of pain and that he specifically targeted Phillips, who performed his surgery.

“What we currently know is that Louis was in pain, Louis expressed that he was in pain and was not getting relief and that was the circumstance surrounding this entire incident,” Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said at a news conference.

Doctors have been increasingly threatened with or become victims of violence by patients complaining of pain, especially in recent years when they have prescribed alternatives to opioids and tapered patients off addictive painkillers. Police have not said that Louis was seeking opioids to relieve his pain.

More than two-thirds of pain specialists surveyed during a violence education session at a 2019 American Academy of Pain Medicine meeting said a patient threatened them with bodily harm at least once a year. Nearly half said they had been threatened over opioid management.

“We only become aware of it when these dramatic and tragic events occur,” said Dr. W. Michael Hooten, a former president of the academy and a professor at the Mayo Clinic. “Some of the lower-level threats and lower-level occurrences of violence, we're simply not aware of them because they don’t get the attention.”

A jury in Minnesota returned a guilty verdict on all counts Thursday against Gregory Paul Ulrich, who was charged in the 2021 health clinic shooting that left one person dead and four injured. Sentencing is scheduled for June 17.

Investigators have said the alleged gunman's addiction to opioid medication was the “driving factor" behind the shooting.

A police report says Ulrich had threatened a similar mass shooting in 2018, allegedly as revenge against people who he said “tortured” him with back surgeries and prescribed medication.

In 2017, an Indiana man shot and killed a doctor who refused to prescribe opioids to his wife.

Oklahoma has been hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis. State statistics show that from 2007 to 2017, more than 4,600 people in Oklahoma died from opioid overdoses, including prescription painkillers and illicit drugs such as heroin and illegally made fentanyl. Nationally, opioids have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths since 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the Tulsa shooting, Franklin said Louis was carrying a letter that said he was targeting Phillips, an orthopedic surgeon with an interest in spinal surgery and joint reconstruction.

Franklin said Phillips performed the surgery on Louis on May 19 and that the patient was released from the hospital on May 24.

He said Louis called the doctor’s office “several times over several days” reporting he was still in pain and that he saw Phillips on Tuesday for “additional treatment.” Louis called the office again Wednesday “complaining of back pain and wanting additional assistance,” he said.

The threats have prompted some facilities to take steps including installing panic buttons, restricting high-risk patients’ access and seating doctors closer to the door than patients. Dr. David Holden, president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, said it’s also meant reviewing access points to their facilities.

Holden, an orthopedic surgeon, said doctors have long dealt with concerns about threats from patients over care. But the violence in recent years has taken that concern to a new level.

“We've had those concerns forever, so that's not new," Holden said. “What is new is the sudden, targeted violence to the extreme."

ASKING FOR A HAUNTING

Graves of nuns to be moved as cemetery will become housing, business space in Colorado

Vandana Ravikumar, The Charlotte Observer - Yesterday 

The graves of 62 nuns buried in a Denver cemetery will soon be moved to another location, local media reports.

The nuns were buried near Loretto Heights, a campus that has acted as an educational institution in several ways, including as a girls boarding school, a college, a high school, nursing school and a military training ground, according to the website Historic Denver.

The nuns, who were among the Sisters of Loretto, operated the campus. The 62 women were buried in the cemetery from the late 1890s to 1969, according to The Denver Post.

Surviving members of the Sisters of Loretto owned the campus until 1988, and the college closed in 2017, 9 News reported. The campus was sold to the Colorado-based developer Westside Investment Partners the year after, in 2018, according to the outlet.

Now, the nuns’ bodies will be moved from the 123-year-old cemetery so the former campus can be redeveloped into housing and business space, according to The Denver Post.

The Denver City Council approved plans to redevelop the campus in September 2019, Denverite reported. Those plans include adding housing and “preserving and reusing historic structures,” the outlet reported.

Mark Witkiewicz, principal at Westside, told Denverite in 2021 that the goal of developing the campus is “not about changing the neighborhoods, it’s about enhancing the neighborhoods.”

But before the land around the historic campus can be converted into housing and “retail and cultural facilities,” the bodies of the 62 nuns will have to be moved, 9 News reported. Witkiewicz told the outlet that the decision to move the bodies was not made by the development company and that it was prepared to incorporate the cemetery into the plans.

But the Sisters of Loretto were concerned about the maintenance of the cemetery, even prior to the campus’ sale, and felt that the nuns’ bodies should be moved to the Mt. Olivet Catholic Cemetery, The Denver Post reported.

According to the Loretto Community Facebook page, the first of the nuns was buried on the campus before it was an official cemetery. Sr. Frances O’Leary died on Nov. 5, 1898, and was buried there shortly after, the organization said.

The last burial took place in 1969, after Sr. Rita Therese DuBor died on Oct. 22, the organization said.

Efforts to exhume and relocate the nuns’ bodies are set to begin on June 20, and the site of their original burials will be turned into a memorial park, according to The Denver Post.


©2022 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Sony to build space lasers with new satellite services unit

03 Jun 2022 

WASHINGTON : Sony on Thursday said it formed a new company that will build and supply devices that allow small satellites in orbit to communicate with one another via laser beams, dipping into the fast-growing space sector.

Sony Space Communications Corp, registered on Wednesday, is meant to take advantage of laser technology to avoid a bottleneck of radio frequencies. The devices will work between satellites in space and satellites communicating with ground stations.

The company did not say when it expects to have its first commercial device operating in space, whether it has existing customers lined up or how much money it has invested into the technology to date.

There are roughly 12,000 satellites in orbit, a number that is projected to increase rapidly in the coming years as rocket companies slash the cost of launching things to space, and as firms like Amazon and SpaceX build vast networks of low-earth satellites to carry internet communications to all the globe.

"The amount of data used in orbit is also increasing year by year, but the amount of available radio waves is limited," the new company's president, Kyohei Iwamoto, said in a statement.

SpaceX makes its own laser communications devices in-house and first launched them on its Starlink satellites late last year.

Sony said one of its first successful tests occurred in 2020 when it transmitted high-definition image data by laser from the International Space Station to a ground station in Japan.

Israel: Doubt over bill 'constituting apartheid' in West Bank throws government off

The routine emergency law extension is likely to pass in the end, experts tell MEE, but mere uncertainty over its status reveals uncomfortable truths

Israeli settlers raise Israeli flags on a building in the middle of the market

 in the town of Hawara, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank (Reuters)

By Huthifa Fayyad
Published date: 2 June 2022 


The absence of a clear majority in the Israeli parliament has raised fears that a critical regulation governing West Bank settlers will not be extended, potentially placing them under military rule and causing Israel a legal nightmare.

 

For Israelis, the future is impossible to see

Gideon Levy

Read More »

On Monday the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, postponed a vote on the extension of the emergency law, in place since 1967, after doubts rose over it attaining enough votes to pass.

The temporary regulation is renewed every few years to ensure that civilian Israeli law is applied to settlers living in West Bank settlements, as opposed to the military law governing Palestinians living adjacent to them.

The right-wing Likud Party, which leads the opposition in parliament, has vowed not to vote on any laws brought forward by the ruling coalition, which has half the seats in parliament.

With pressure from Palestinians mounting on the United Arab List - made up of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are part of the ruling coalition - to vote against the extension, fears have grown over its failure to pass, which could trigger a legal mess.

A new vote is scheduled for next Monday, giving the ruling coalition extra time to gather enough supporters to pass the extension, which is due to expire by the end of June.

The extension will most likely pass in the end, experts say, but the mere uncertainty over it raises uncomfortable questions about the state of Israeli politics and the occupation.
'Constitution of the apartheid'

The "Emergency Regulations – Judea and Samaria, Jurisdiction and Legal Aid" was introduced in the West Bank after Israel occupied the Palestinian territory following the 1967 Middle East war.

The emergency regulation became an important centrepiece of the Israeli legal system, particularly after the flow of settlers into the West Bank began to grow, an illegal practice under international law that prohibits the transfer of an occupying power's civilian population to occupied territory.

The regulation allowed hundreds of thousands of Israelis to live on land outside of its boundaries while enjoying full privileges of Israeli citizenship and residency.

Under this umbrella, Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts, allowed to receive social and health benefits and run for public office, among other rights.

All the while, the three million Palestinian population of the West Bank are subjected to military rule under which they are tried in military courts, denied full freedom of movement and restricted from accessing land and resources.

A Palestinian flag flutters on a hilltop in the town of Beita near Nablus city in the occupied West Bank, near the settler outpost of Eviatar (AFP)

"This law is the constitution of the apartheid regime in the West Bank," Israeli legal expert Michael Sfard told Middle East Eye.

"It is the legislation by which differentiation in the legal application is imposed on Israelis and Palestinians. It is something I consider to be shameful and morally despicable."

Today, more than 600,000 settlers live in over 200 West Bank settlements, including Supreme Court judges, members of parliament and high-ranking military officers.
Legal nightmare

If the regulation is not extended, settlers will overnight become subjected to military law - the same law imposed on Palestinians.

"It's like shutting down the police," Sfard said.

"If it's not extended, then it redraws the Green Line and reintroduces military rule on Israelis...they become citizens who live abroad."

In theory, Israeli police will not be able to operate in the settlements, settlers who commit crimes in the West Bank would be tried in military courts, and their right to receive government health insurance would be rescinded.

'It's like shutting down the police'

- Michael Sfard, Israeli legal expert

It will also have an immediate impact on at least two judges serving in the Supreme Court and some MPs, who will all cease to be residents of Israel, a requirement for them to serve in public posts.

The regulation also allows prisons in Israel to hold Palestinians charged by military courts. If it is not extended, Israeli jail authorities will no longer have the power to keep some 3,600 Palestinian prisoners who will need to be sent back to the West Bank, Sfard explained.

It's such a "central piece in the legal architecture of the Israeli regime in the West Bank," Sfard said, that it's nearly impossible to imagine the extension not passing next week.

"The only reason we are talking about it is because there is suddenly a political mess which raises doubts whether they will be able to extend it."

'Holding on by a thread'

Earlier this week, doubt over the extension of the bill emerged after the opposition - who hold 60 seats out of 120 Knesset seats - said they would not support it, in an attempt to put pressure on the ruling coalition.

Further concerns came from the reluctance of the United Arab List to vote on it since many Palestinians view it as a bill institutionalising apartheid.

Justice Minister Gideon Saar, who is seeking to extend the bill by five years, warned that the "game being played by the opposition is not only unprecedented but dangerous", in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Kan on Tuesday.

"A coalition MP who opposes the bill is saying, 'I don't want this government to continue,'" he said.

But Saar himself has been named in media reports as holding talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition, to form an alternative coalition in case the current government falls.

His right-wing party, New Hope, and Netanyahu's Likud both dismissed the reports.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett held meetings on Wednesday with the heads of parties forming the ruling coalition, hoping to secure a majority for the emergency law vote next week.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, on 15 May 2022 (AFP)

"It is a very unusual situation, almost amusing," said Orly Noy, an Israeli political activist and journalist, puzzled at how such a routine vote over a legal technicality is throwing the government off.

"As children, we used to amuse ourselves with this silly riddle, can God create a stone so heavy that even God itself can't lift it? So now I think we are facing a similar question. Has Israeli apartheid finally arrived at a situation where its supremacy is collapsing from within?"

'Beginning of the end': Israel's government set to fall amid secular-religious tensions

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On Thursday, Mansour Abbas, leader of the United Arab List, was quoted as saying to Kan that he did not oppose voting in favour of extending the bill, but rather the timing of it, as it comes immediately after a series of Israeli raids on al-Aqsa Mosque and the right-wing flag march in Jerusalem where Israeli police and ultra-nationalists assaulted Palestinians.

"Next week is a new week, and we will study the vote on the law in another atmosphere," Abbas said, hinting that his list could vote in favour, giving a boost to Bennett.

But negotiations are continuing to secure the majority needed, as doubt still presides over the position of some members of the left-wing party, Meretz

Sooner or later, Noy believes, the government will find a way around it and pass the bill. But what this confusion reveals is a "very meaningful thing about the true nature and incentives that operate and make Israeli politics".

"The government is holding on by a thread," she said. "If it's not this, it will be something else that brings the government down."

Palestinians remind us the right to protest is ours

Huda Ammori
02 Jun, 2022

Palestinians don’t wait for the ‘right to protest’ by Israel, some solidarity groups should follow their example and rethink their strategy in response to the anti-boycott bill announced in the Queen’s Speech, writes Huda Ammori

Palestine solidarity groups and activists should be inspired by the resistance of Palestinians in the face of the Israeli apartheid regime, argues Ammori. [AFP]

For too long, reactive campaigning has been the go-to tactic for international organisations acting in solidarity with Palestine. A constant offensive launched by Israel’s apartheid state and its supporters, means organisations are susceptible to limiting their agenda on Palestine to fending off the latest attacks.

Whether it’s placing all efforts into responding to the newest offensive by the Israel lobby or saving key mobilisations for when Palestinians are under the bombs, always acting on the defence is not an effective strategy.

A current example is the latest reaction to the introduction of a new ‘anti-boycott’ bill in the recent Queen’s Speech. With Prince Charles announcing legislation to “prevent public bodies engaging in boycotts that undermine community cohesion”, a renewal of the campaign for the ‘right’ to boycott and to speak up on Palestine began.

The proposed new bill, has dominated the agenda of large non-governmental organisations. Except it won’t be the first attempt by the British government to keep the funds flowing from Britain directly to Israel’s apartheid regime. In 2016, they issued legal guidance to councils which essentially restricted their right to divest from companies on the basis that they were assisting the oppression of the Palestinian people. In response, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) claimed for a judicial review.

''Palestinians do not sit around waiting for the right to protest by Israel, or the right to defend their homes, or the right to fight Israel’s apartheid regime. They act, because their lives and their freedom depend on it. For those of us who live in the imperial core, which is actively enabling Israel’s apartheid regime, who want to show true international solidarity, we must demonstrate the same resilience.''

During my time working at PSC and before the legal battle entered the supreme court, I embarked on a mission to find out how much money Local Government Pension Schemes were funnelling into corporations complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime. After sending off 450 Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, it was discovered that over £3billion was invested in corporations maintaining the illegal occupation of Palestine.

Eventually, the legal battle was victorious in 2020, and the Supreme Court upheld the right for councils to pull their billions out of the illegal occupation of Palestine. This was the perfect time to launch an undefeatable offensive grassroots campaign compelling councils to stop their funds entering the pockets of war criminals. Instead, organisations are resorting back to fighting for the ‘right’ to boycott.

But what is the goal? Is it simply to keep ourselves in the same position we are now? Or is it to achieve actual divestment from councils and other institutions? If it’s the latter, then the majority of resources must be ploughed into building grassroots campaign which can be effective in getting councils to pull their money out of complicit corporations.

Following the court victory, the only pension fund to divest, pulled their money from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company. East Sussex Pension Fund based their reasoning on the increased “environmental, social and governance risk” of Elbit Systems. The Israeli arms firm is the primary target of the direct-action movement, Palestine Action. Through pro-active campaigning, involving occupying, blockading and destroying their sites, activists have dragged Elbit’s name through the mud. With locals building pressure against the pension fund, coupled with the direct-action campaign against the company of which they held investments in, a victory for the Palestinian people was achieved.

Direct action requires no permission from governments. This makes the movement to end Israel’s arms trade in Britain immune to any attempts from the British government to stop them. For they already accept potential arrests, and state repression as part of the course they’ve embarked on. And when the police detain activists, they’re forced to react to Palestine Action’s sustained hits of Elbit’s sites.

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On the other hand, NGO’s are in a constant back and forth with the government for the ‘right to boycott’. Their latest tactic involves over 40 organisations opposing any restriction of the ‘right’ to boycott, but many of the signatories are not pushing for corporations and institutions to actually boycott Israel. Simply being granted the ‘right’ to boycott, a right which frankly, we always had, does not require any institutions or corporations to boycott the apartheid state. And they won’t, unless significant pressure through grassroots campaigns forces their hand.

The introduction of similar repressive bills, such as the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill was also met with opposition. The campaign designed to kill the bill, composed of mass mobilisation, awareness building, and lobbying politicians. Unfortunately, the bill was passed, with the government pushing it through regardless of attempts by the grassroots to stop it. Although the mass campaign did lead to the removal of certain repressive clauses, the government is now rushing them through in the new “Public Order” Bill.

Rather than follow in their footsteps, and hope for different results, we must switch the script entirely.

Palestinians do not sit around waiting for the right to protest by Israel, or the right to defend their homes, or the right to fight Israel’s apartheid regime. They act, because their lives and their freedom depend on it. For those of us who live in the imperial core, which is actively enabling Israel’s apartheid regime, who want to show true international solidarity, we must demonstrate the same resilience.

Yes, the British government can introduce a new law with the stroke of a pen, and maybe a well-funded organisation can spend years fighting it, only for it to be overturned through a new piece of legislation or guidance issued by the government.

The constant back and forth ping pong many fall into the trap of playing, just to win the ability to effectively campaign for Palestine, puts us right where they want us, in a constant standstill.

If we want to break the cycle, we must place our collective efforts into striking the corporations, institutions and governments that uphold Israel’s apartheid regime, and force them to react to us, rather than the other way round. No permission is needed to act.



Huda Ammori is a co-founder of the direct action network Palestine Action and has conducted extensive research and campaigns targeting British complicity with Israeli apartheid.
Follow her on Twitter: @HudaAmmori

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@alaraby.co.uk.
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

Four Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in two days as tensions flare

Smoke is seen as the Israeli forces blow up the house of assailant Palestinian militant 

Diaa Hamrasheh near Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank June 2, 2022. — Reuters pic

Friday, 03 Jun 2022 8:18 AM MYT

RAMALLAH, June 3 — Israeli troops shot dead a teen in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said, the fourth Palestinian killed in the occupied territory in two days.

The ministry identified the slain Palestinian as 17-year-old Odeh Odeh, who was hit in the chest by what it said was an Israeli bullet near the village of Al-Madiya, west of Ramallah.

The Israeli army said “three suspects threw a firebomb” at soldiers “operating near the security barrier” adjacent to Al-Madiya.

“The soldiers responded with fire toward the suspects, and a hit was identified,” the army said.

It came hours after a Palestinian man was killed during a clash with Israeli forces conducting an arrest operation in the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.

On Wednesday, a woman approaching soldiers with a knife was shot, and later that day a man was killed in an Israeli raid in the northern West Bank.

The Israeli security forces have stepped up their operations in the West Bank in recent months, carrying out almost daily raids to arrest suspects after a spate of deadly attacks inside Israel.

Bullets and petrol bombs

The army said troops had entered Dheisheh to arrest a Palestinian “suspected of terrorist activities” and were met with volleys of petrol bombs and cement blocks.

They responded with live rounds.

Late Wednesday, Israeli troops mounted an incursion into the village of Yabad outside the flashpoint northern district of Jenin, to demolish the home of the assailant who carried out a March attack that killed five people in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak.

The health ministry said that after that raid a Palestinian man died in hospital in Jenin. He had been admitted in critical condition, having been “shot by live bullets in the chest and thigh”.

Palestinian news agency Wafa said that six Palestinians were wounded in the Israeli raid.

The army said it had also arrested the “terrorist’s father”.

It said it had informed the family of the shooter, Diaa Hamarsha, on April 17 of the demolition order against the family home.

Israel regularly destroys the homes of individuals it blames for attacks on Israelis. The practice, which often fuels tensions, has been condemned by critics as a form of collective punishment. Israel insists it deters attacks.

On Wednesday morning, Israeli soldiers in the southern West Bank near Hebron shot dead Ghofran Warasnah, 31, after she “advanced” towards soldiers with a knife, the army said.

Nineteen people, mostly Israeli civilians — including 18 inside Israel and a Jewish settler — have been killed in attacks by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs since late March.

Israeli security forces have responded with raids inside Israel and the West Bank, particularly in and around Jenin. Three Israeli Arab attackers and a police commando have died.

Thirty-nine Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank — suspected militants but also non-combatants, including an Al Jazeera journalist who was covering a raid in Jenin and bystanders. — AFP

Raglan Mine production halts as 630 union workers strike

Union leaders want more respect from employer, along with a pay increase.

By

 Jeff Pelletier, Nunatsiaq News

 -

May 31, 2022

Union members at Nunavik’s Raglan Mine are on strike after contract talks aimed at a new contract broke down Friday. (Nunatsiaq News file photo)

A breakdown in contract negotiations stopped production at Nunavik’s Raglan Mine over the weekend when unionized staff took strike action, calling for better working conditions and increased pay.

Negotiations for a new collective agreement between the company, part of the Glencore Group, and 630 members of the United Steelworkers union, began at the end of March. Their previous five-year contract expired April 30.

Raglan Mine is located in the northeast region of the Ungava Peninsula. It is the largest employer in Nunavik, with close to 1,200 workers who rotate in and out of the mine throughout the year. There are hundreds of contractors and non-union workers who are not affected by the strike.

On May 5, Raglan tabled an offer, which a majority of union workers voted to reject. The union also voted to forward a strike mandate to union negotiators.

Another “improved” offer was also rejected, according to the company.

A government-appointed mediator was named to help broker a deal between Raglan and the union. However, after those talks broke down Friday, the union announced it would strike.

This past weekend, unionized workers at the mine were flown back to their home communities.

Cimon Guy, a mine worker and member of the union’s negotiating committee, said he wants an agreement that shows more respect from Raglan to the employees.

A new contract, he said, should include provisions such as specific lunch times, commitments to better amenities for staff who spend long tours at the mine, as well as a pay increase to match the increased cost of living.

“Unfortunately, especially over the last five years, the relation between the employer and the employees has become more and more negative, so, by the strike we want to demand more respect from our employers,” Guy said in an interview.

“We hope that they understand that that’s something that’s important to us nowadays.”

He added: “It’s not only about money, it’s not only about who profits, it’s about some basic respect. We want to talk about it, we want it to be important in the discussion.”

In an interview, Raglan’s director of public affairs Amélie Rouleau disputed some of the claims, citing high employee satisfaction from employee surveys, a low turnover rate and high grades awarded the company for workplace safety.

Rouleau said its offer would have “placed its employees among the best-paid in the mining industry.”

As both sides meet with an independent mediator, as of Monday afternoon, no new date had been set to resume talks.

“We’re ready to talk at any time, so our teams are ready and just waiting [for] the cue for us to sit at the table,” Rouleau said.

Despite the lack of a deal, Guy said the process has been “polite” from the beginning. He said his side has been ready to make a new deal since Christmas, and he’s eager to meet with Raglan to make settle the talks.

“We are ready to sit back down with the company at any time of their choosing, with or without a mediator, and we want to keep negotiating the best collective agreement we can get,” Guy said.