World

In Some Parts of the World, the War in Ukraine Seems Justified

Published

3 years ago

March 17, 2022

In Some Parts of the World, the War in Ukraine Seems Justified

“Once I began to look fastidiously at battle, I noticed that the primary to die is the reality,” Mr. Caetano mentioned, citing unfounded claims circulating on-line, resembling that Ukraine has employed actors to fake they have been injured and that it maintains organic weapons laboratories funded by the USA.

In China, state media has achieved a lot to bolster false tales about what’s unfolding in Ukraine.

Shops have republished official Russian propaganda with out verification, together with false studies that Ukraine had been utilizing civilians as human shields and that President Volodymyr Zelensky had left Kyiv.

Whereas Chinese language officers haven’t explicitly endorsed the Kremlin’s actions, they’ve framed the invasion as a rational choice by Russia to withstand aggression from the West, and particularly from the USA.

Zhang Han, 37, has been an avid shopper of that messaging. Mr. Zhang, a programmer at a know-how firm within the southern Chinese language metropolis of Shenzhen, mentioned he was initially shocked by Mr. Putin’s actions. However he mentioned he additionally empathized with the Russian chief’s want to soak up Ukraine and pointed to China’s ambition to unify with Taiwan, the self-governed island that Beijing has lengthy claimed as its personal.

“After all, I pity the state of affairs of Ukrainians and hope that the battle can finish quickly,” he mentioned. “However that’s the mind-set of a giant nation.”

In Vietnam, state authorities have additionally tried to regulate the narrative in regards to the battle. Two editors for a Vietnamese on-line journal and a state broadcaster mentioned they have been issued directives on reporting on the battle that included decreasing the extent and frequency of protection, and banning the phrase “invasion.” Each requested to stay nameless for worry of presidency reprisals.

Vuong Quoc Hung, a 36-year-old stockbroker from Hanoi, mentioned he grew up watching documentaries and movies on nationwide tv in regards to the Soviet Crimson Military heroes who battled Nazi Germany throughout World Warfare II. That made him fall in love with Russia, he mentioned.

World

Trump’s Vision for Gaza Shifts Away From a Cease-Fire Deal

Published

11 hours ago

February 6, 2025

Press Room

Trump’s Vision for Gaza Shifts Away From a Cease-Fire Deal

Barely a week ago, Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, waving placards thanking President Trump and his Middle East envoy for their role in helping secure an initial cease-fire deal in Gaza and getting some hostages freed.

Many of them were hoping that Mr. Trump would strong-arm Israel’s long-hesitant prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, into agreeing to negotiate an end to the war with Hamas and get the rest of the hostages released when the two leaders met in Washington on Tuesday.

Instead, they woke up to news of Mr. Trump’s fantastical idea of removing the population of roughly two million Gazans from the devastated enclave to make way for a glittering, American-owned Middle Eastern Riviera.

Far-fetched as Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza may be — the Arab world has roundly rejected it and any forcible removal of a population violates international law — it abruptly shifted attention away from the future of the cease-fire deal, whose initial, six-week phase is due to end in early March.

As Mr. Trump sketched out his grandiose plans for Gaza, he placed little public pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to proceed with talks via Qatari and Egyptian mediators to turn the temporary cease-fire into a permanent cessation of hostilities. That left Israel with a wide berth on how it might deal with Gaza next.

The talks, which were meant to start this week, are now up in the air. And Mr. Netanyahu will leave Washington with Mr. Trump’s endorsement of what far-right members of the Israeli government have effectively been calling for: the mass migration of Palestinians from Gaza.

That leaves the fate of the hostages still held by Hamas in question as the militant group assesses how to move forward and many Palestinians worrying about whether the war might resume again.

“On the one hand, we are very grateful for what Trump has been doing,” said Idit Ohel, whose son, Alon Ohel, 23, was kidnapped from a bomb shelter as he tried to flee a music festival during the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7, 2023, which started the war.

“Now,” Ms. Ohel said of Mr. Trump, “I don’t understand the implications of what he is saying or how this is going to bring my son home.”

Mr. Netanyahu, in an interview with Fox News late Wednesday, hailed Mr. Trump’s idea as “remarkable,” saying it should be “pursued,” drowning out any talk of the details of how to move cease-fire negotiations forward.

And on Thursday morning, Mr. Netanyahu’s loyal defense minister, Israel Katz, issued a statement saying he had instructed the Israeli military to prepare a plan to facilitate the exit of “any resident of Gaza who is interested to leave to any place in the world that agrees to accept them.”

The initial phase of the cease-fire deal took effect on Jan. 19 and provides for Hamas to release 33 hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. About 79 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 35 of whom are presumed to be dead.

Talks were due to start on Monday — Day 16 of the deal — on a second phase, which is supposed to result in the rest of the living hostages being released and to usher in a permanent cessation of hostilities. That would mean a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

Wording about the transition to the second phase had been left intentionally vague, since Israel and Hamas are holding out for mutually exclusive demands.

Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas no longer holds sway in Gaza and to resume fighting, if necessary. Hamas refuses to give up control or disarm.

In repeated statements in Washington, Mr. Netanyahu laid out his three priorities for Gaza, with the hostages only coming in second.

“In Gaza, Israel has three goals: Destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, secure the release of all our hostages and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu could stand to lose his own grip on power, with the far-right flank of his governing coalition having threatened to quit if he ends the war in Gaza with Hamas still in control there.

As of Thursday, no Israeli delegation had yet set out to Doha, Qatar, for negotiations, according to two Israeli officials who were not authorized to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.

Mr. Trump also sounded less committal than he has in the past about the fate of the hostages and ending the war, saying it was unclear if the cease-fire would hold. But he spoke of “going to a Phase II” of the cease-fire and said he would like to get all the hostages out. “If we don’t, it will just make us somewhat more violent,” he said, possibly indicating U.S. backing for a resumption of the fighting.

In the Middle East, analysts were parsing what Mr. Trump’s tectonic diversion on the future of Gaza might mean in the more immediate term.

“I think what he did was throw the old checkers board off the table and replaced it with Monopoly,” said Kobi Michael, an expert in the Israel-Palestinian conflict at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “He didn’t just change the rules of the game but the game itself,” he said.

Both Israel and Hamas are likely to want to buy time — Hamas to rehabilitate itself and its forces after 15 grueling months of war and Mr. Netanyahu to keep his right-wing coalition together — and may try to extend the first phase of the deal, allowing for more hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.

Mr. Michael said Mr. Trump’s vision for a Gaza without Gazans could work as a threat and put significant pressure on Hamas to release more hostages. Conversely, he said, it could cause Hamas to walk away from the deal altogether.

“Mr. Trump is a businessman,” Mr. Michael said. “He takes risks.”

Zakaria al-Qaq, a Palestinian expert in national security, said that even the mere suggestion of relocating two million Gazans was likely to complicate the cease-fire negotiations by making Hamas more cautious, and to destabilize the entire Arab world.

Mr. Trump’s declaration, he said, was “The perfect recipe for recruiting more people to Hamas,” adding that Mr. Trump’s “new colonialism” had given Hamas “easy marketing tools.”

Many people believe Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza is not feasible, but regardless of the reality, Mr. Netanyahu has come out with no sign of being pressured by Mr. Trump, or of any daylight between them. His government is intact, for now.

An Israeli official who briefed Israeli political reporters in Washington after the Netanyahu-Trump meeting said it was now clear to Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition partners that bringing down his right-wing government with Mr. Trump as president would be irresponsible and foil “historic” opportunities in the coming years.

Relatives of the hostages warn that they do not have time.

“I live in daily fear,” said Alon Nimrodi, the father of Tamir Nimrodi, an Israeli soldier who is slated to be released only under a second phase of the deal.

Mr. Trump’s vision for Gaza was not a bad one, Mr. Nimrodi said. “But this is not the time to talk about it,” he said. Plans for Gaza should wait till “after the hostages are out,” he said.

World

Netanyahu gifts Trump controversial item that helped turned tide in war against Hezbollah

Published

12 hours ago

February 6, 2025

Press Room

Netanyahu gifts Trump controversial item that helped turned tide in war against Hezbollah

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump an unusual gift during his most recent trip to Washington, D.C., this week — a gold-plated pager.

The present was a nod to the controversial mass attack believed to have been carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency against Hezbollah Sept. 17, 2024, in which thousands of pagers, walkie-talkie-like devices and radios simultaneously exploded across Lebanon and Syria around 3:30 p.m.

A statement from Netanyahu’s office to Fox News Digital said, “The pager symbolizes the prime minister’s decision that led to a turning point in the war and marked the beginning of Hezbollah’s strategic collapse.

ISRAELI DEFENSE MINISTER ORDERS IDF TO PLAN FOR GAZANS TO LEAVE IN LINE WITH TRUMP’S CONTROVERSIAL PROPOSAL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Donald Trump a gold-plated pager during a visit to the White House Feb. 6, 2024. (Israeli Government Press Office)

“This strategic operation reflects Israel’s strength, technological superiority and tactical ingenuity in confronting its adversaries.”

An image obtained by Fox News Digital showed the pager mounted to a wooden plaque with a message on the device that said, “Press with both hands,” accompanied by a double downward arrow sign, the same message that reportedly showed moments before the devices detonated.

The plaque also came with a message to Trump calling him Israel’s “greatest friend and ally.”

The statement appears to be the first time Netanyahu’s office has publicly commented on the strike against the terrorist network in the summer.

Though the attacks were intended to target Hezbollah terrorists, the explosions also injured, maimed and killed civilians, including at least two children. In total, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that 32 people were killed and 3,250 others were injured.

ALLIES AND FOES REJECT TRUMP’S ‘RIVIERA’ PLANS FOR GAZA: ‘NEW SUFFERING AND NEW HATRED’

Girl in Lebanon killed in Israeli pager attack

A symbolic portrait of a young Lebanese girl who was killed in a deadly pager attack is pictured next to flowers placed in front of the Lebanese embassy in northern Tehran, Iran, Sept. 18, 2024. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

U.N. Human Rights experts condemned the operation and said the indiscriminate nature of the attacks amounted to “war crimes.”

“These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time,” one expert told the OHCHR. “Such attacks require prompt, independent investigation to establish the truth and enable accountability for the crime of murder.”

Despite the limited number of terrorists killed in the widespread attacks, Israeli officials have championed the operation as a successful psychological blow to Hezbollah.

TRUMP’S GAZA ‘TAKEOVER’ RANKLES AMERICA FIRST CONSERVATIVES, ALLIES SUGGEST NEGOTIATOR-IN-CHIEF IS AT WORK

Though Israel was immediately suspected of being involved in the reported years-in-the-making operation, Jerusalem had not officially confirmed its role publicly before.

However, by November 2024, Israeli reports revealed comments leaked from a Cabinet meeting in which Netanyahu was quoted as saying, “The pager operation and the elimination of [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah were carried out despite the opposition of senior officials in the defense establishment and those responsible for them in the political echelon.”

President Donald Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 2025. (Avi Ohayon (GPO)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The prime minister’s comments were an apparent dig at former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who he fired just weeks prior to the comments over disagreements regarding the war effort against Hamas and Hezbollah.

Neither the White House nor the U.N. immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.

Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.

World

Georgia’s EU membership by 2030 is achievable, PM Kobakhidze says

Published

13 hours ago

February 6, 2025

Press Room

Georgia’s EU membership by 2030 is achievable, PM Kobakhidze says

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews, in an exclusive interview, that Brussels needs to be more flexible in EU membership talks.

In his first interview after the South Caucasus country hit pause on its EU accession talks, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told Euronews that the ball was in Brussels’ court, and that the bloc needed to be more flexible in its approach to new members.

Kobakhidze said Georgia was facing “some significant challenges with the European bureaucracy” but emphasised that he was still “very optimistic” that his country would obtain EU membership by 2030.

“(We) will be consistent in following this goal and then hopeful that the approach to Georgia will be more fair in the next coming years,” he told Euronews.

In November, Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would pause discussions on its bid to join the EU until 2028 due to what the prime minister described then as “blackmail and manipulation” from some of the bloc’s politicians.

The EU gave Georgia candidate status in December 2023, but halted its membership application process indefinitely and cut financial support last June after the passage of a “foreign influence” law that the bloc considers to be Russian-inspired and authoritarian.

Kobakhidze told Euronews that Tbilisi’s policies were not to blame for the fact that there are currently not “healthy relations” between Georgia and the EU.

“It’s because of the European bureaucracy and the policies towards Georgia,” he said. “So, if that policy changes, everything will be in a better shape.”

Kobakhidze was reappointed in November as prime minister by the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose disputed victory in October’s parliamentary election has sparked massive demonstrations and led to an opposition boycott of parliament.

Opposition forces — including Georgia’s former president Salome Zourabichvili — have condemned the results as a “total falsification” of the vote. The European Parliament in November adopted a resolution condemning the vote and calling for new elections to be held under international supervision.

The ruling party, which has been in power since 2012, has denied any wrongdoing.

Realism with Russia relations

Meanwhile, protesters and critics have accused Georgian Dream — established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and is widely considered to be the country’s de facto leader — of turning away from the West and towards Moscow.

Kobakhidze told Euronews that Georgia had “no space for restoring diplomatic relations (with Russia) because of the occupation of our two historic regions”.

Moscow recognised the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states in 2008 after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a brief war. The two breakaway territories make up 20% of Georgia’s territory.

“This territorial integrity is recognised by the international community and of course we have to defend our national interests in this respect, but our vision is peaceful,” Kobakhidze said, adding that a “non-peaceful solution is absolutely impossible”.

“We would like to restore our territorial integrity — there’s no alternative — and we are hopeful at some point this will be realistic. Let’s see,” he said.

“But we run with a pragmatic policy and that’s the key content of our policy towards Russia,” Kobakhidze added. “We are keeping trade and economic relations with Russia and that’s how we are going to run it for now.”

When asked about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the prospect of a peace agreement, Kobakhidze said there was “no alternative” to a ceasefire.

Ukraine is “suffering a lot”, the prime minister said, citing the loss of life, damage to infrastructure and Russia’s occupation of large swathes of Ukrainian territory.

“The international community should be fully concentrated on promoting this ceasefire agreement and peace,” Kobakhidze said. “That’s the key for improving the overall situation in the region and the world.”

Watch the entire interview on Euronews’ The Europe Conversation this week.