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24 “One year ago, I couldn’t imagine that the Japanese people would support this kind of security initiative,” said Tetsuo The Jewish Home | DECEMBER 22, 2022 Kotani, a professor of international relations at Meikai University and a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs. When Japan released its first national security strategy nine years ago, it identified North Korea and its nuclear program as the country’s greatest security concern. While the North’s flurry of missile tests this year and its expanding nuclear arsenal show that it has not receded as a threat, the security strategy now labels China the biggest challenge. (© The New York Times)
Mexico is Dangerous for Journalists
2022 has been deadliest year in at least three decades for Mexican journalists and media workers, with 15 slayings. Last week, two gunmen on a motorcycle attempted to assassinate radio and television journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva in his armored vehicle 200 yards from his home. Gómez Leyva, one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists, managed to survive. He is a regular critic of the government and a frequent target of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tirades against press criticism.
Solidarity has grown among Mexico’s press corps amid the carnage, and its members are making increasing noise after each killing. They also have pushed back against a longtime government narrative that the victims weren’t real journalists or were corrupt.
Still, the killings — 15 counted by The Associated Press — have continued to rise.
This year, many of the dead were small town reporters running their own outlets on a shoestring. Others were freelancers, including for national publications, in big cities like Tijuana.
Also on Thursday, assailants took aim at journalist Flavio Reyes de Dios, director of an online news site in Palenque, a town in the southern state of Chiapas. A vehicle without license plates followed him and then ran his motorcycle off the road, injuring the journalist, the press advocacy group Article 19 said.
Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that this year the only nation to see more journalists killed is Ukraine, which is fighting the Russian invasion.
Some are opining that the massive killings are due to the fact that the government may be behind some of them. Others note that the press has become more independent and aggressive, going after key people in society.
Putin Visits Belarus
President Vladimir Putin of Russia made a rare visit to Belarus on Monday to strengthen his bond with the country’s president and his closest regional ally, Alexander Lukashenko, a fellow strongman who has been under growing pressure from Moscow to provide more support for the war in Ukraine.
Appearing together at a palace in Minsk after their talks, Putin and Lukashenko spoke about the need to withstand Western economic pressure. Putin said the two had also discussed the formation of a “unified defense space,” without describing what that would entail, and had agreed to continue joint military exercises.
Putin’s visit took place as Russia continued its nighttime bombardment campaign against Ukraine’s power plants and other crucial infrastructure, deepening the country’s misery. And the trip seemed certain to escalate concerns in Kyiv about the possibility of a fresh ground offensive that could use Belarus as a launchpad.
Ukraine has repeatedly warned in recent days that Russian forces could be preparing a new assault from Belarus aimed at trying once again to seize Kyiv, only about 55 miles from the Belarusian border, or at disrupting the flow of Western arms and aid into Ukraine from Poland.
As the talks began, Russia had just finished carrying out a wave of predawn attacks with Iranian-made drones on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian officials said, continuing a pattern of nighttime strikes that Moscow has adopted to try to evade Ukrainian air defenses.
Most of the exploding drones targeted power plants and other important infrastructure in Kyiv, where at least four loud explosions were heard. The city government issued warnings for residents to take shelter.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that critical infrastructure had been hit and that power and heat had been knocked out in some neighborhoods. In the region around the capital, three people were wounded and nine houses were damaged, the police said in a statement.
The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed speculation that Belarus could become more directly involved in the war, telling reporters on Monday that such talk was based on “totally stupid, groundless fabrications.”
Peskov similarly dismissed warnings from the United States at the start of the year that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine, insisting that Moscow had sent troops to Belarus only for training exercises. (© The New York Times)
Terrorist Dies of Cancer
A founding member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terrorist group convicted of killing seven Israelis and five Palestinian collaborators died of cancer in Israeli custody on Tuesday morning.
Nasser Abu Hmeid, 51, was diagnosed with lung cancer last August. His cancer had since spread throughout his body.
The Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, along with other Palestinian groups, accused
the Israel Prison Service of negligence and deliberately killing Abu Hmeid, saying his cancer should have been discovered earlier and treated better.
The Prison Service rejected the allegation, saying the prisoner “received regular and close care from IPS medical staff and external professionals.”
In recent months, Palestinian groups had called for Abu Hmeid to be released from prison due to his health condition and threatened to carry out attacks if he died in Israeli custody.
Following Abu Hmeid’s death, some Palestinian groups called for a general strike in the West Bank, including the Palestinian Bar Association and General Union of Palestinian Teachers, who called for work to halt beginning at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.
In 2002, Abu Hmeid, the right-hand man to arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, was convicted of murdering seven Israelis — Eliyahu Cohen, Binyamin and Talia Kahane, Gad Rejwan, Yosef Habi, Eli Dahan and Salim Barakat — in a number of terror attacks during the Second Intifada that he either personally carried out or directed from afar. During the trial, Israeli authorities described him as a “killing machine.”
He was also convicted of 12 counts of attempted murder and a number of other security-related charges and has been serving multiple life sentences.
Abu Hmeid had also previously been
IDF Downs Hezbollah Drone
The Israel Defense Forces announced on Tuesday the interception of a drone crossing from Lebanon into Israeli airspace.
The military said it suspected that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group launched the small unmanned aerial vehicle.
According to the IDF, the aircraft was monitored throughout its flight until being downed in an unspecified manner near the border moshav of Zar’it.
The military added that it would continue to prevent any attempt to violate Israeli sovereignty.
In July, the IDF shot down three Hezbollah drones sent towards Israel’s Karish offshore natural gas platform. Bottom of Form
The UAVs flew at low speed and low altitude in an attempt to evade Israel’s interception systems; however, they were detected “at an early stage” before being neutralized “at the optimal operational point.”
In February, the IDF used electronic warfare to bring down a drone launched by a Hezbollah special-forces unit from Lebanon.
A drone the IDF downed in Januarycontained images apparently showing a Hezbollah-affiliated force training with UAVs. (JNS)
Knesset Tackles New Bills
Following an intense session, the Knesset Plenum on Monday approved a bill increasing the minimum number of MKs needed in order to split into a new faction in the parliament, marking a political achievement for Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu in his quest to form a government.
Within his Likud party, Netanyahu might soon face standoffs with some disgruntled MKs who are not appointed to the government positions they desire. The new law eliminates the current option for four MKs to break away from their parliamentary group in that kind of scenario.
“The incoming government has a new catchphrase: ‘Bite Us,’” accused outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid during the plenum session before the vote. “The message is that it only cares about itself. Charedim only care about charedim, Religious Zionism only cares about settlers and Likud members only care about Netanyahu and his trial. Anyone else, who didn’t vote for them, can ‘go bite them’— they will not work or be responsible for him. They have no interest in common life, in abiding the law, in balancing between Judaism and democracy and between security and civil rights.”
Netanyahu sarcastically replied to Lapid via Twitter.
“Yair Lapid is unable to make a shot at the goal even after the game has ended,” he wrote, referring to the World Cup, which ended the day before. “He still does not accept the election results—he lost and the right-wing won. Very soon we will form a strong right-wing government that will fix Lapid’s failures and take care of all of Israel’s citizens.”
During the plenum session, outgoing Justice Minister Gideon Saar addressed the proposed bill and took a shot at Netanyahu. “This bill raises an interesting question: can it be that the designated Prime Minister does not trust his own party members, so he has to block them by force from splitting?”
Netanyahu’s main political concerns within Likud are focused on a group of senior party members, including Israel Katz, Dudi Amsalem, David Bitan and Danny Danon. Under the previous law, four MKs could form a new faction in the Knesset without any ramifications. The new law, which rolls back the change initiated by Lapid’s government in order to destabilize Likud, reinstates the previous situation in which at least one-third of a party’s members are needed in order to split and form a new faction.
The bill was the first in a “legislation blitz” that also includes the “Deri Bill,” aimed at enabling the leader of the Shas party, Aryeh Deri, to serve as a minister in the next government despite his recent conviction in tax evasion charges; and the “Ben-Gvir Bill,” aimed at shifting powers from the police commissioner to the designated minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both bills are expected to pass in the next few days, before the new government will be sworn in. (JNS)
EU Wants to Give Palestinians Area C
according to a confidential document reported by Israeli television.
The six-page document from June 2022, titled “European Joint Development Programme for Area C,” says that the EU “aims at defending the right of Palestinians living in Area C and preserving Area C as part of a future Palestinian State in line with the Oslo Accords.”
It also lays out practical steps such as mapping out land in Area C, according to Israel’s Channel 13 news, which broke the story on Monday.
The EU document discusses the need to provide legal aid to Palestinians in Israeli courts to protect their claims, and to monitor Israeli archaeological digs in Area C, which it sees as a tool Israel uses to tighten and justify its control over the West Bank.
Ultimately, the EU would like to see Area C combined with Areas A and B, with no distinction between them, according to the report.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the West Bank was split into three administrative divisions, with Area A controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Area B under split control, and Area C — the largest section, constituting about 60 percent of the territory — remaining fully under Israeli control.
Area C, which is the only contiguous section of the West Bank and contains the most fertile land and valuable natural resources, was supposed to be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction. The Israeli settlements are located in Area C.
The EU’s delegation to Israel did not confirm the report authenticity. “Our policy regarding the West Bank has not changed: The EU is united in its commitment to achieving a two-state solution with the State of Israel living live side by side in peace, security and mutual recognition with an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states,” it said.
Area C is home to around 400,000 Israelis, with 70% of the land off-limits for Palestinian development.
Israel Deports Palestinian to France
France on Sunday denounced as “against the law” Israel’s deportation of a former Palestinian security prisoner
Israel’s Interior Ministry announced earlier in the day that Salah Hamouri, currently a lawyer and field researcher for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a group linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization, had been deported from the country.
“We condemn today the Israeli authorities’ decision, against the law, to expel Salah Hamouri to France,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement in response.
It added that Paris had “fully mobilized, including at the highest level of the state, to ensure Salah Hamouri’s rights are respected, that he benefits from all possible assistance and that he can lead a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born, resides and wishes to live.
“France also took several steps to communicate to the Israeli authorities in the clearest way its opposition to this expulsion of a Palestinian resident of [eastern] Jerusalem, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the statement continued.
Hamouri was previously sentenced by an Israeli court to seven years in prison, as part of a plea bargain in exchange for admitting to plotting to murder the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Hamouri was released by Israel as part of the 2011 Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.
Born to a French mother and a Palestinian father in Kafr Aqab, a neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem, Hamouri retains French citizenship; his wife and children reside in France.
“Today, in good time, the law has been implemented against the terrorist Saleh Hamouri and he was evicted from Israel,” Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said in a statement on Sunday.
“This has been a lengthy procedure and it is a major achievement, a moment before ending my term I was able to lead to his eviction using the tools at my dis-
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