#Israeli President Isaac Herzog

[munib4444]

[thejewishlink]

Netanyahu Formally Tasked With Forming New Israeli Government

Netanyahu Formally Tasked With Forming New Israeli Government

By Pesach Benson • 13 November, 2022   Jerusalem, 13 November, 2022 (TPS) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog formally tasked to form a new governing coalition on Sunday. Netanyahu will have 28 days to form a government. A 14-day extension is customarily given if more time is needed. In his remarks at the President’s Residence, Herzog noted that appointing Netanyahu wasn’t easy because “it hasn’t…

[troythecatfish]

South Korea took the unprecedented move to file lawsuits against 7 Israeli leaders for crimes against humanity

The shock move, Seoul has filed lawsuits targeting high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Source: Mintpress

[zvaigzdelasas]

South Africa’s genocide case has put the spotlight on a deeper fault line in global geopolitics. Beyond the courtroom drama, experts say divisions over the war in Gaza symbolize a widening gap between Israel and its traditional Western allies, notably the United States and Europe, and a group of nations known as the Global South — countries located primarily in the southern hemisphere, often characterized by lower income levels and developing economies.

Reactions from the Global North to the ICJ case have been mixed. While some nations have maintained a cautious diplomatic stance, others, particularly Israel’s staunchest allies in the West, have criticized South Africa’s move.

The US has stood by Israel through the war by continuing to ship arms to it, opposing a ceasefire, and vetoing many UN Security Council resolutions that aimed to bring a halt to the fighting. The Biden administration has rubbished the claim that Israel is committing genocide as “meritless,” while the UK has refused to back South Africa.[...]

As a nation whose history is rooted in overcoming apartheid, South Africa’s move carries symbolic weight that has resonated with other nations in the developing world, many of whom have faced the burden of oppression and colonialism from Western powers.

Nelson Mandela, the face of the anti-apartheid movement, was a staunch supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its leader Yasser Arafat, saying in 1990: “We align ourselves with the PLO because, akin to our struggle, they advocate for the right of self-determination.”

Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that while South Africa’s case is a continuation of its long-standing pro-Palestinian sympathies, the countries that have rallied behind it show deeper frustrations by the Global South.

There is “a clear geopolitical context in which many countries from the Global South have been increasingly critical over what they see as a lack of Western pressure on Israel to prevent such a large-scale loss of life in Gaza and its double standards when it comes to international law,” Lovatt told CNN.

Much of the non-Western world opposes the war in Gaza; China has joined the 22-member Arab League in calling for a ceasefire, while several Latin American nations have expelled Israeli diplomats in protest, and several Asian and African countries have joined Muslim and Arab nations in backing South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ.

For many in the developing world, the ICJ case has become a focal point for questioning the moral authority of the West and what is seen as the hypocrisy of the world’s most powerful nations and their unwillingness to hold Israel to account. [...]

Israel sided with the West against Soviet-backed Arab regimes during the Cold War, and Western countries largely view it “as a fellow member of the liberal democratic club,” he added.[...]

“But the strong support of Western governments is increasingly at odds with the attitudes of Western publics which continue to shift away from Israel,” Lovatt said.

Israel has framed the war in Gaza as a clash of civilizations where it is acting as the guardian of Western values that it says are facing an existential threat.

“This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told MSNBC in December. “It’s a war that is intended – really, truly – to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization.”

So far, no Western countries have supported South Africa’s case against Israel.

Among Western states, Germany has been one of the most vocal supporters of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The German government has said it “expressly rejects” allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that it plans to intervene as a third party on its behalf at the ICJ.

An opinion poll by German broadcaster ZDF this week however found that 61% of Germans do not consider Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip as justified in light of the civilian casualties. Only 25% voiced support for Israel’s offensive.

But it is in Germany’s former colonial territory, Namibia, that it has attracted the fiercest criticism.

The Namibian President Hage Geingob in a statement on Saturday chided Berlin’s decision to reject the ICJ case, accusing it of committing “the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most inhumane and brutal conditions.” The statement added that the German government had not yet fully atoned for the killings.

Bangladesh, where up to three million people were killed during the country’s war of independence from Pakistan in the 1970s, has gone a step further to file a declaration of intervention in the ICJ case to back South Africa’s claims, according to the Dhaka Tribune.

A declaration of intervention allows a state that is not party to the proceedings to present its observations to the court.

“With Germany siding with Israel, and Bangladesh and Namibia backing South Africa at the ICJ, the geopolitical divide between the Global South and the West appears to be deepening,” Lovatt said.

Traditionally, the West has wielded significant influence in international affairs, but South Africa’s move signals a growing assertiveness among Global South nations that threatens the status quo, says Adekoya.

“One clear pattern emerging is that the old Western-dominated order is increasingly being challenged, a situation likely to only further intensify as the West loses its once unassailably dominant economic position,” Adekoya said.

19 Jan 24

[odinsblog]

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.

👉🏿 https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-748435

👉🏿 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-no-longer-star-us-flag-says-ben-gvir

👉🏿 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/protesters-block-israel-highways-over-new-supreme-court-bill-2023-07-11/

👉🏿 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/03/palestinians-killed-israeli-strike-west-bank-jenin

👉🏿 https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/

👉🏿 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-07-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/president-isaac-herzog-israels-good-cop-to-netanyahus-bad-cop/00000189-131a-dbf5-a3cf-bbbe4c770000

👉🏿 https://www.gq.com/story/israel-bans-ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib

[probablyasocialecologist]

Palestine brings to legal analysis an unmasking force: It unveils and reminds us of the ongoing colonial condition that underpins Western legal institutions. In Palestine, there are two categories: mournable civilians and savage human-animals. Palestine helps us rediscover that these categories remain racialized along colonial lines in the 21st century: the first is reserved for Israelis, the latter for Palestinians. As Isaac Herzog, Israel’s supposed liberal President, asserts: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.”

The Harvard Law Review Refused to Run This Piece About Genocide in Gaza

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

Washington, DC — Hundreds of thousands of Jewish Americans and pro-Israel advocates packed the National Mall in Washington, DC on Tuesday in a historic show of solidarity with the Jewish state amid its war with the Hamas terror group.

US Jewish groups organized the “March for Israel” to demand the release of hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza and to demonstrate support for both the Jewish state and the Jewish community amid a global surge in antisemitism that has followed the Palestinian terror group’s Oct 7. massacre across southern Israel.

William Daroff — CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which co-organized the rally along with the Jewish Federations of North America — told The Algemeiner that 290,000 people were at the event, based on tallies according to those who went through the metal detector at the entrance. However, large numbers of attendees did not appear to have the required wristbands to go through security, making the actual totally potentially higher.

Either way, Tuesday’s rally was both the largest ever pro-Israel gathering and the largest Jewish gathering in US history.

Speakers included the famed human rights activist Natan Sharansky, US Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who appeared via live feed, among many other voices.

“The people of Israel are eternal, and no one will break us,” Herzog said, prompting an eruption of cheers and applause. “From the Jewish symbols of fulfillment of our ancient dreams to the American symbols of freedom, liberty, and democracy, thank you, thank you, the hundreds of thousands who have gathered from all over the United States, all people of good will, friends from different communities, faiths, and denominations who gathered today for this massive show of solidarity.”

The marchers, who traveled from across the US, represented a full spectrum of the Jewish communitiy and its allies. As one participant told The Algemeiner, it was an important display of unity and the peaceful intentions of the Jewish people.

“I think it’s beautiful. It just shows that we are in peace, that we come in peace, and we’re not interested in violence, and on the contrary we’re fighting that in the world and all antisemitism and hatred of all kinds,” said Beverly Mehl, from New York. “It’s very important to show strength, to do something and take action.”

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Hamas’ Doctrine of Indiscriminate Cruelty & Barbarism

To understand Hamas’ battle ethics, one of the key documents is The Warrior’s Guide: Jihadi Version, an eight-page booklet that was recovered from the body of a dead terrorist following Hamas’ barbaric October 7 invasion of southern Israel.

This manual, which was first brought to light by Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a CNN interview, contained a detailed chart on the IDF’s hierarchy, in-depth analysis of the Israeli military’s arms and technology, as well as step-by-step instructions for taking Israeli hostages.

Included in the nine-step process were directions on how to assert control over the captives using threats, electric shocks, gunfire, and incapacitating grenades, the killing of hostages when necessary, and the use of hostages as human shields, regardless of their gender, age, or ethnic identity.

This barbaric guide is rooted in Hamas’ chief ideological documents, its 1988 charter which calls for a “struggle against the Jews” and its 2017 declaration of General Principles and Policies, which asserts that resistance against Israel “with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws” (emphasis added).

Thus, between Israel’s efforts to reduce civilian casualties and Hamas’ flagrant use of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians as pawns for their own nefarious purposes,  it is clear that the values imparted by the IDF’s and Hamas’ texts are being fully expressed by each side on the battlefield.

[lesfruitsdores]

Articles about the kids orphaned on October 7 and the subsequent war, as well as the community efforts to care for them.

It is so simple, what Rotem misses about his parents, and so utterly irreplaceable. “They knew me very well. They knew how to help me,” he says, in one of the simplest but most profound tributes a parent might hope to hear from their children. (The Guardian)

[thejewishlink]

Israeli president to address joint session of Congress

Israeli president to address joint session of Congress

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer extend the invitation to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding. (October 26, 2022 / JNS) House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have invited Israeli President Isaac Herzog to address a joint session of Congress as the Jewish state prepares to celebrate 75 years since its founding. “It…

[mightyflamethrower]

Israel slammed the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday after a Red Cross official claimed that Israel was responsible for a lack of food and water in Gaza, ignoring the fact that Hamas steals humanitarian aid that Israel delivers there.

Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government, told reporters in a press briefing on Friday that the Red Cross had lost its “neutrality.” He added — as he has for several days — that Israel is not the limiting factor in aid reaching Palestinians in Gaza, since it is speeding up the inspection and delivery of aid trucks across various border points. Rather, he said, Hamas’s role in stealing humanitarian aid — documented on social media accounts in Gaza, and even on Al Jazeera — was a major limiting factor.

On Thursday, as the Times of Israel reported, “International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger … met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, President Isaac Herzog and representatives of the families of the hostages, but offered no real response to the matters raised about the 135 hostages still in Gaza.” The Red Cross has yet to visit the hostages; in contrast, Red Cross representatives regularly meet Palestinian convicts in Israeli prisons.

The Red Cross has tried to defend its inaction, saying that “we’re not bulletproof,” and that the agency has to be invited by the warring sides in a conflict. “We can only take humanitarian action when the authorities in a given area give us the permission.”

However, as UN Watch pointed out earlier this week, the Red Cross has been overwhelmingly anti-Israel in its public statements, ignoring the responsibility of Hamas for starting the war and for causing suffering among civilians on both sides. It has also made videos about the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza — for which it had full access to the territory – while ignoring Israeli civilians, 250,000 of whom have been displaced. It has also participated in Hamas propaganda videos during hostage releases.

[zvaigzdelasas]

U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday pledging solidarity in its war against Hamas and saying that a blast that killed huge numbers of Palestinians at a Gaza hospital appeared to have been caused not by Israel but by its foes.[...]

Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: "I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion of the hospital in Gaza yesterday, and based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you."[...]

Netanyahu thanked Biden for his "unequivocal support". President Isaac Herzog's office said the head of state had told Biden: "God bless you for protecting the nation of Israel."

18 Oct 23

[readingsquotes]

The host city for the DNC is Chicago, whose metro area is home to more Palestinian Americans than anywhere else in the country. But you would not know this looking at that stage. Despite the appeals of Palestinian American delegates and activists, no Palestinian American is scheduled to address the convention from the main stage. I suspect this is because of what such a speaker might feel compelled to say. In response to the massacre perpetrated by Hamas last October, the state of Israel has killed some 40,000 Palestinian people. The intention behind this carnage has been declared openly. “We are fighting human animals,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said. “And we are acting accordingly.” Acting accordingly has meant the erasing of roughly two percent of the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a fact not to be mourned since, according to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”

The most destructive bombs that have actualized this rhetoric of extermination are being furnished by America, and more specifically, by the head of the Democratic party. In February, as President Joe Biden sought to seal the nomination from that party, activists in Michigan rallied registering voters in the state to check “uncommitted” as a protest against the Biden administration’s backing of the war. The campaign garnered 13 percent of the vote and quickly spread to other states. By Democratic party rules, this entitled the Uncommitted movement to 29 delegates, who are here in Chicago to press their case against what has been labeled, convincingly I might add, a genocide.

....

This is a formulation that depends on seeing Palestinians, and Palestinian life, with the same clarity as all other human life. One way this clarity and equality is expressed in our society is through our arts, our media, our public rituals—rituals like national political conventions. Maybe more than in any other year, this DNC has urged its various constituencies to highlight their identities and the collective pain that animates them. Racism, forced birth, land theft. It has been an exhibition of what the Palestinian scholar Edward Said called “the permission to narrate,” and it is that permission that Palestinian Americans have been denied. They have heard their names mentioned fleetingly by a handful of speakers but have not been granted the right to speak their names themselves. Perhaps that is for fear of what else a Palestinian American speaker might name. I cannot say that fear is unwarranted.

[deenemaan]

Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated in a recent interview "we are peace seekers".

When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!”

Qur'an-2:11

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israeli president Isaac Herzog insisted that “an entire nation” was to blame for Hamas’s actions, and that the idea of “civilians not being aware, not involved” was “absolutely not true”. While Rageh Omar reported on this for ITV News, it did not make the BBC or the New York Times or Sky News. Nor did it make most anglophone outlets. Ariel Kallner, in a now-deleted tweet, called for another Nakba on the Palestinians, repeating the crime of 1948 in which 700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. “Right now, one goal: Nakba!” He exhorted. “A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.” This was picked up by Associated Press but missed by most anglophone broadcasters and press. When Tally Gotliv, a Knesset member for Likud, called for a nuclear strike on Gaza – “Jericho Missile! … Doomsday weapon!” ­– and for “crushing and flattening Gaza … Without mercy! Without mercy!”, this also went curiously unnoticed. Again, when an anonymous Israeli defence official briefed Israeli broadcasters that Gaza would become “a city of tents” where “there will be no buildings”, it was largely ignored. When Sara Netanyahu’s advisor, Tzipi Navon, said that it would not be enough to “flatten Gaza”, and that Palestinians suspected of involvement in the Hamas attack should have their nails pulled out, their genitals removed and their tongues and eyes saved for last “so we can enjoy his screams”, “so he can see us smiling”, that too was curiously overlooked. The studied obtuseness of Western media includes carefully ignoring the most severe warnings about what is about to be done by Israel to Gaza. On Friday 13th, Israel ordered residents in the north of Gaza to “evacuate” to the south within 24 hours on pain of being bombed. Former Israeli ambassador Danny Ayalon suggested with a cynical smirk that they could go to the Sinai desert and live in “tent cities”. The Biden administration appears determined to enable this to happen, lobbying Egypt to take the refugee population. The language of evacuation, widely used by newspapers, was euphemistic. Over a million Gazans had just been given a death threat. They were being told at gunpoint to flee in an unrealistic amount of time, on just two roads that they were assured were safe from bombardment, only for a convoy fleeing south to be bombed, killing seventy people. They had no reason to believe they could ever return to their homes or that their homes would even exist. Here was the second Nakba that Ariel Kallner shouted for. A UN press release warned of “mass ethnic cleansing”, that would repeat the Nakba of 1948 “yet on a larger scale”. Two days after that warning, only the Independent among British newspapers had covered it. One honourable exception to the general omerta on explaining what the “expulsion” order means is the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire who, interviewing former Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, quoted former UN head of humanitarian affairs Jan Egeland, saying: “The Israeli order for civilians to move from north to south is impossible and illegal. It amounts to forcible transfers and a war crime.” No anglophone newspaper, of course, mentions the word “genocide” in this context, though that is the term used by both Palestinians and Jewish groups opposed to Israel’s war, and is clearly what is implied by Israeli statements and actions. As Mustafa Bhargouti told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Israel is inflicting the triumvirate of “siege and collective punishment”, “genocide” through bombardment, and “ethnic cleansing”. The Israeli historian of the Holocaust, Raz Segal, describes Israel’s indiscriminate war on Gazan civilians and its assault on the conditions for life for the whole community, as “a textbook case of genocide” unfolding in front of us. For the press and the majority of pundits, the problem cannot be named. At most, liberal dissent attains to the insight that vengeance is not justice, as though what Israel is now threatening is merely reactive rather than programmatic.

[the-light-of-stars]

President of Israel announces "strong presence" Israel's in Gaza even after the end of the current attacks, likely involving the US, while Israel's military now also calls for evacuation of the south of Gaza and israeli Minister of Defence announces the ultimate expansion of ground operations into both north and south. Also: israeli Minister of Finance calls for "voluntary emigration" of all specifically 'arab' palestinians into other countries as "a humanitarian solution to end arab and jewish suffering"

"Herzog: Must not accept a vacuum in the Gaza strip. According to President Isaac Herzog's assessment Israel has to show a strong presence in the Gaza strip for the time being, even after the war, to prevent a renewed strenghthening of the radical islamist Hamas. "If we draw back then who is going to take over? We can't leave a vacuum behind. We have to think about what the mechanism is going to look like." said Herzog in an interview by the "Financial Times". Currently many ideas for this are going around.

"But no one is going to want to turn this place, Gaza, into a terror base again." The Israeli Government is currently discussing many ideas about how a post-war order is going to look like. But it can be assumed that the USA and Israel's "neighbors in the region" are going to be involved in some way."

_

"Israel's military calls on people in the south of Gaza to flee as well. The israeli military has called on palestinian civilians in some regions of the southern Gaza strip to flee as well. To the east of the city Chan Junis fliers with the order to vacate the region have been spread. Everyone who lingers near militant palestinians or their bases "risks their life" so it says.

Observers consider the newest flier actions a hint for a possible expansion of the israeli military operations into the south of the territory, where hundreds of thousands of people already fled after the last evacuation order. Just on Wednesday israeli Minister of Defence Joav Galant noted, that the ground operations will ultimately "include both the North and the South.""

_

Additionally to this according to the UN Emergency Relief Office (OCHA) the last remaining functioning flour mill has been destroyed by an israeli attack now.

And the far right israeli Minister of Finance has been calling for a "voluntary emigration" of all specifivally "arab" palestinians, which according to him is "a humanitarian solution to end both arab and jewish suffering"

And yet the German Government still calls definitions of this as ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid or colonialist occupation "absurd accusations" and considers them antisemitic hate speech.