World
Lawmakers hold moment of silence for slain Omer Neutra as thousands mourn in hometown synagogue
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night held a moment of silence for American-Israeli Omer Neutra who was determined this week to have been killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, after it was believed that he had been alive for more than a year.
Neutra, 21 years old, was a tank platoon commander in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and was among the first to respond to the Hamas attack that ultimately killed some 1,200 people and initially saw the abduction of more than 250 men, women and children.
His parents, Orna and Ronen, who spoke with Fox News Digital just days prior to the tragic development, believed their son was still alive after the IDF had long assessed that he, along with Nimrod Cohen, another soldier from his tank, were taken hostage into Gaza and remained alive.
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“For 420 days Omer’s parents and his brother Daniel have done everything they can with the love and support of hundreds of thousands of others to free their son from captivity,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., who represents the Neutra family’s district, said from the House floor. “Every day they soldiered on through alternating deep sorrow and brief bursts of hopefulness. They went from crushing anxiety to steely determination.
“Just a few days ago we learned that this courageous young man, this bright light, this courageous idealist, made the ultimate sacrifice,” Suozzi continued. “Omer had not been alive for the last 422 days, he was murdered on Oct. 7.”
Footage from the attack on Omer’s tank showed the commander, as well as three others, Shaked Dahan, Oz Daniel and Nimrod Cohen being pulled from the military vehicle by Hamas terrorists and being taken captive.
Daniel and Dahan had previously been assessed to have been killed following the attack, and according to the IDF, intelligence now suggests Omer, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, was also killed on Oct. 7. 2023.
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The Israeli military has not said how they came by this new information and the fate of Cohen remains unknown.
In a memorial service held for Omer on Tuesday in the Long Island synagogue where he reportedly celebrated his bar mitzvah years earlier, Omer’s father Ronen, said the news had left them “breathless and empty.”
“For over a year now, we’ve been breathing life into your being, my beautiful boy,” Orna said through tears, according to reports. “With the hope and love of so many, we kept going and going and going, keeping you alive, speaking your name from every outlet, pushing any hint of despair, not stopping to breathe or to take in the deep pain of your absence.”
“Now things are clear,” she said to the reported 1,500 attendees at the service. “But not as we’d hoped.”
Onra and Ronen have described their son as loving, a good friend and an athlete, but they also highlighted his ability to lead and how his actions on Oct. 7, 2023 saved lives.
Omer’s body is believed to still be held by Hamas along with the six other American hostages, only three of whom are still assessed by the IDF to be alive at this time, including Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body was recovered after he, along with five others, were discovered to have been murdered by Hamas in the tunnels in Gaza in August.
There are still 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza following the recovery of Itai Svirski’s body on Wednesday, an Israeli hostage taken during the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.
The IDF confirmed he “was murdered in captivity by his captors, and his body was held hostage in the Gaza Strip.”
World
Experts believe study of 700-year-old handwriting unveils leading Byzantine painter's true identity
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Crime-solving techniques applied to a medieval illuminated manuscript in Paris may have solved a centuries-old puzzle — the true identity of a leading Byzantine painter who injected humanity into the rigid sanctity of Orthodox religious art.
A contemporary of Giotto, considered the father of Western painting, the artist conventionally known as Manuel Panselinos was equally influential in a totally different tradition that’s largely overlooked in the West.
But nothing is known of his life, and scholars now believe Panselinos was just a nickname that eventually supplanted the real name of the man for whom it was coined — likely Ioannis Astrapas, from the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.
The art of Byzantium, that decorates churches across Greece, Serbia and other Orthodox countries, stands out for the stark formalism of its elongated, glowering saints, quasi-cubist mountains and doe-eyed Madonnas.
Work attributed to Panselinos, from the late 13th and early 14th centuries, is considered the finest produced in an empire that straddled Europe and Asia and endured from the fall of Rome until the capture of the imperial capital Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Art historians had long suspected that the name — Greek for “full moon” — could have originated as a nickname for some member of the so-called Macedonian School of painting, based in Thessaloniki.
Recent research by a Greek monk and linguistics scholar linked “Panselinos” with Macedonian School painter Astrapas. Now court handwriting expert Christina Sotirakoglou has matched lettering on a manuscript tentatively attributed to Astrapas with characters on a church painting in northern Greece, long seen as Panselinos’ best work.
Father Cosmas Simonopetritis, a former senior administrator in Mount Athos, the semiautonomous monastic community where the Protato church stands, says Sotirakoglou’s and his own research “clearly prove” Panselinos’ real identity.
“Panselinos was a real person, and (the name) was just the nickname by which Ioannis Astrapas became known,” he told The Associated Press.
Constantinos Vafiadis, a professor of Byzantine art in Athens who was not involved in the studies, said he found merit in the nickname theory and Astrapas link, even though it appeared more than one painter had undertaken the Protato project.
“I agree with attributing part of the paintings to Ioannis Astrapas,” he said. “But again there remains much ground for future research into that person, because other Mount Athos monuments from the same period have not yet been sufficiently published.”
“Panselinos” — a role model for generations of painters — and his contemporaries are associated with a renaissance of kinds in Orthodox art that revived forms and techniques inherited from antiquity. Facial expressions acquired a deeper humanity, and greater attention was paid to proportion and depth of field in composition.
Father Cosmas said Astrapas was an “extremely gifted painter … with vast knowledge who harmonically combined the ancient, classical world with Orthodox Byzantine spirituality.”
“And that … makes his work unique worldwide,” he added.
Artists’ signatures were not common at the time, although some survive from members of the Astrapas family. There are none by “Panselinos.”
The trail started with earlier research linking Astrapas with the artist and scholar who wrote and illustrated Marcian Codex GR 516, an early 14th century Greek handwritten text treating subjects from astronomy to music theory. Among the painted illustrations was a full moon.
“For me … that was the main proof,” Father Cosmas said.
With a name found for the hand that produced the manuscript, the next step was to check its style against writing on the Protato painting, traditionally linked with “Panselinos.”
“Mrs Sotirakoglou, who is a handwriting expert, filled in that blank,” Father Cosmas said.
There was one problem: Women have for more than 1,000 years been banned from entering Mount Athos.
“I was forced to study the Protato paintings based on photographs,” Sotirakoglou, who works as a court consultant on identifying or authenticating handwriting in criminal cases, told the AP.
“(The work) was very difficult, because the writing on the wall paintings is in capital letters, and the painters subdued their personal handwriting to conform” with the traditional format, she said — rather like anonymous letter-writers’ attempts to disguise their true style. “The Marcian codex is written in very small lower-case letters.”
The first clue came from the Greek letter Phi, the English F.
“It’s a Phi that stands out, and is similar” in both the manuscript and the Protato painting, she said. “Matches also followed with other letters, T, with its proportions, which is bigger, covering the other letters and is topped with a curve, the proportions of the K.”
“But when the Phi was revealed, the code of the writing was broken and the job became much easier,” she added.
Father Cosmas said that during his administrative duties on Mount Athos he attended services at the Protato church on a daily basis.
“That’s where my desire was born … to explore the mystery around the name and the identity of Panselinos,” he said, adding that he thinks the artist “has now acquired his true identity.”
___
Paphitis reported from Athens, Greece.
World
South Korean president's martial law declaration a 'blunder,' could embolden North Korea, expert says
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s surprising short-lived move to declare martial law, which drew condemnation from opposition lawmakers, to root out “anti-state” forces was a “blunder” and possibly an attempt to “reassert himself,” an expert says.
Opposition parties moved Wednesday to impeach the president, which would require the support of two-thirds of the 300-seat parliament and at least six justices of the nine-member constitutional court. A motion to impeach was submitted by the liberal opposition Democratic Party and five smaller opposition parties and could be put to a vote as early as Friday.
“I think he was trying, even desperately, to reassert himself to tell his domestic foes that he’s the man in charge and there will be consequences for the efforts by the opposition parties to stifle Yoon’s many reform programs,” Sung-Yoon Lee, a global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., and author of “The Sister: North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World,” told Fox News Digital.
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“But I think it was a blunder, possibly a legal breach, and certainly, something akin to an own goal politically,” he added, referring to the notion of something that one does thinking it will help him or her but actually causes one harm.
The martial declaration lasted only six hours but sent shockwaves through the country, as it hearkened back to South Korea’s past military-backed governments when authorities occasionally proclaimed martial law and other decrees that allowed them to station soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles on streets or at public places such as schools to prevent anti-government demonstrations.
The country achieved democracy in the late 1980s. No major violence was reported, and martial law was lifted after lawmakers rejected the move in a 190-0 vote.
In a speech announcing the declaration, Yoon vowed to eliminate anti-state forces while accusing the opposition of sympathizing with North Korea. The North, a totalitarian-run state, will use what happened in the South to its benefit, Lee said.
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“I’m sure the North Korean leadership is sharpening its knives right now,” he said. “It would be very atypical, unusual for North Korea just to sit around and allow this kind of sensational, breathtaking crisis in South Korea to go to waste.”
Lee expects the North to issue provacative statements, resort to hostile acts and blame Yoon for its own “belligerence” and argue that the backlash against him is a reaction to his hostility toward his northern neighbor.
If Yoon is impeached, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who holds the No. 2 position in the South Korean government, would take over presidential responsibilities. Presently, the constitutional court has only six justices following three retirements, meaning all six would have to vote in favor of impeachment to oust Yoon from office.
Four of the six justices are Yoon appointees.
“It remains to be seen whether the constitutional court, if we come to that point, will actually endorse, authorize impeachment and the ouster of President Yoon, but it’s a possibility,” Lee said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Zelenskyy prepared to sanction Georgian government
It comes as demonstrators took to the streets for the seventh consecutive night to protest the government’s decision to halt EU accession talks.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Georgian Dream (GD) of pushing the country towards dependence on Russia, and said he is working with European and other partners to prepare sanctions against the Georgian government.
“This situation in Georgia, of course, is not just the problem of one nation and not just the problem of our region – how the current government in Georgia is pushing the country into clear dependence on Russia. It is truly shameful what actions they are taking against their own people,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address.
It comes as thousands took to the streets again in what marked the seventh night of protests against the government’s decision to suspend negotiations on Georgia joining the European Union (EU).
The Georgian people that gathered in the capital are adament to protest as long as it takes until their demands are met and Georgia is back on track towards EU accession.
Demonstrators, wrapped in Georgian and European flags holding lasers and whistles, gathered in front of the parliament. Unlike previous nights, riot police did not try to disperse the protesters.
In the past six days, riot police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse demonstrators, who threw fireworks at police officers and built barricades on the central boulevard of Georgia’s capital Tbilisi.
Since Thursday last week, at least 300 protesters have been detained and 100 treated for injuries.
Amid the ongoing demonstrations, police also detained one of the country’s opposition leaders in the capital, in an apparent attempt to suppress the wave of protests.
The Coalition for Change opposition party said that police raided its offices and detained its leader, Nika Gvaramia.
The party shared a video in which several officers are seen dragging Gvaramia into a car, while someone in the background is yelling “How are you dragging him? What are you doing, what are you doing? He is feeling bad. Call the ambulance. He is unconscious.”
Local media reported that the police also raided offices of several other opposition groups, as well as non-governmental organisations.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party previously accused the opposition of attempting a revolution, and said the raids targeted those who encouraged violence during protests in an attempt to topple his government.
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