Israeli pacifists in devastated kibbutz lose faith

Israeli pacifists in devastated kibbutz lose faith
A picture shows a destroyed house in Kibbutz Beeri in southern Israel on November 5, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 09 November 2023
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Israeli pacifists in devastated kibbutz lose faith

Israeli pacifists in devastated kibbutz lose faith
  • Founded in 1946, the kibbutz is known for being a bastion of the Israeli left, an increasingly minority position in present-day Israel

JERUSALEM: “I believed in peace with Gaza, but I was mistaken,” said Avida Bachar, a resident of kibbutz Beeri near the Gaza Strip, speaking from his hospital bed.
Bachar lost his wife and son in the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas, the single deadliest event in Israel since the country’s creation in 1948.
“We must destroy the enemy because if we don’t we have no possible future,” Bachar, who is in his fifties, told AFP.
Once a long-time supporter of peace with Gaza, now he is willing only to consider radical solutions to “eradicate” the Islamist Palestinian group that has run the territory since 2007.
He rejected any possibility of negotiations, and said Israelis had been the victims of “absolute evil.”
At least 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side during the attack, according to Israeli authorities.
The agricultural community of Beeri, located less than five kilometers (three miles) from the border with the Gaza Strip, was the site of one of the worst massacres ever committed on Israeli soil, with 85 residents killed and 30 more missing or presumed taken hostage by Hamas.
Founded in 1946, the kibbutz is known for being a bastion of the Israeli left, an increasingly minority position in present-day Israel.
At the last legislative elections in 2022, the Labour party won more than 35 percent of the vote in Beeri, compared to just 3.6 percent nationwide, while the far-left Meretz won 16.4 percent.
Support for a peaceful approach to Gaza appears to have disappeared. Another survivor of last month’s massacre, Inbal Reich-Alon, 58, spoke of a “rupture.”
Reich-Alon is the daughter of founding members of the kibbutz, and calls herself a pacifist.
“It pains me to say this, because I have always thought that there were also (in Gaza) children, women and people who wanted to live in peace, and maybe there still are today — but there are more who don’t want us alive,” she said.
It was a view shared by Alon Pauker, 57, one of the kibbutz leaders.
“I suffer for every child killed in Gaza,” he said, but Hamas “murdered our children, our women, our elderly and our men for the pleasure of killing.”
Pauker said Hamas “will not rest until it has murdered every Israeli or destroyed the State of Israel.”
Nevertheless, some Israelis, such as Yonatan Zeigen, still want to believe in peace.
Zeigen is the son of Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old Israeli-Canadian peace activist who has been missing since the attack.
“She defends righteous ideas... I stand by my position: the only way of living in security is to have piece,” said Zeigen, who lives in Tel Aviv but grew up in Beeri.
On October 7, he was on the phone to his mother when the shooting began at 11 am.
She then messaged him that armed Hamas men were in her house, but since then, he has not heard from her.
Zeigen said his mother had set up aid programs for Gaza residents and helped them obtain medical treatment in Israel.
Silver has won numerous prizes for her peace work, and in 2014 was a founder of the Women Wage Peace group.
Like so many relatives of Israeli hostages, her son is asking his government to negotiate their release without delay, “whatever the price.”
According to the latest information from the Israeli authorities, 239 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza as hostages.
Inside the Palestinian territory, the Hamas-run health ministry says that more than 10,500 people have been killed, most of them civilians, in Israel’s retaliatory war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the objective of the war is to destroy Hamas.
Zeigen said he was “sad and angry,” but “confident in the future, because there are people from both sides who just want to live and thrive.”
“We can live alongside each other,” he insisted.


Israel’s PM aware of ‘very violent incident’ against Israelis in Amsterdam, his office says

Updated 8 sec ago
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Israel’s PM aware of ‘very violent incident’ against Israelis in Amsterdam, his office says

Israel’s PM aware of ‘very violent incident’ against Israelis in Amsterdam, his office says
TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been informed of the details of “a very violent incident” targeting Israeli citizens in Amsterdam, his office said on Friday.
He directed that two rescue planes be sent immediately to assist citizens there, it added in a statement.
Israel’s national security ministry has also urged its citizens in Amsterdam to stay in their hotel rooms following the attacks, the prime minister’s office said in a second statement.
“Fans who went to see a football game, encountered anti-Semitism and were attacked with unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness and Israeliness,” Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a post on X.
The nature of the attacks not immediately clear.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has asked the Dutch government to help Israeli citizens arrive safely at the airport, Saar told his Dutch counterpart Caspar Veldkamp in a phone call on Friday.

US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms
Updated 6 min 53 sec ago
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US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms
  • US has given Israel until Nov. 13 to improve humanitarian situation in Gaza
  • The letter calls for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza

WASHINGTON: Israel has informed the United States that it will open an additional crossing for aid into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday, as a US-imposed deadline looms next week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in the war-besieged Gaza Strip or risk the withholding of some military assistance from the United States, Israel’s biggest supporter.
They made the demands in a letter before Tuesday’s election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to give freer rein to Israel.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Israel, after recently reopening the Erez crossing, has informed the United States that they “hope to open an additional new crossing at Kissufim” in “the next few days.”
“We have continued to press them, and we have seen them, including in the past few days since the election, take additional steps,” Miller told reporters.
He stopped short of saying how the United States would assess Israel’s compliance with the aid demands.
In the letter, Blinken and Austin had urged Israel to “consistently” let aid through four major crossings and to open a fifth crossing.
Kissufim, near a kibbutz across from southern Gaza that was attacked in the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault that sparked the war, has mostly been in disuse except by the military since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The letter called for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza. Miller said 229 trucks entered on Tuesday.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has repeatedly pressed Israel to improve humanitarian aid and protect civilians, while mostly stopping short of using leverage such as cutting off weapons.
Miller said Blinken hoped to keep using the rest of his term to press for an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.


US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November
Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November
Updated 6 min 28 sec ago
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US says Israel to open new Gaza crossing as aid deadline looms

Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November
  • The US has given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza
  • Letter calls for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza

WASHINGTON: Israel has informed the United States that it will open an additional crossing for aid into Gaza, the State Department said Thursday, as a US-imposed deadline looms next week.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have given Israel until November 13 to improve the humanitarian situation in the war-besieged Gaza Strip or risk the withholding of some military assistance from the United States, Israel’s biggest supporter.
They made the demands in a letter before Tuesday’s election of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to give freer rein to Israel.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that Israel, after recently reopening the Erez crossing, has informed the United States that they “hope to open an additional new crossing at Kissufim” in “the next few days.”
“We have continued to press them, and we have seen them, including in the past few days since the election, take additional steps,” Miller told reporters.
He stopped short of saying how the United States would assess Israel’s compliance with the aid demands.
In the letter, Blinken and Austin had urged Israel to “consistently” let aid through four major crossings and to open a fifth crossing.
Kissufim, near a kibbutz across from southern Gaza that was attacked in the October 7, 2023 Hamas assault that sparked the war, has mostly been in disuse except by the military since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
The letter called for a minimum of 350 trucks per day to be allowed into Gaza. Miller said 229 trucks entered on Tuesday.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has repeatedly pressed Israel to improve humanitarian aid and protect civilians, while mostly stopping short of using leverage such as cutting off weapons.
Miller said Blinken hoped to keep using the rest of his term to press for an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.


France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank

France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank
Updated 07 November 2024
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France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank

France mulling new sanctions on Israeli settlers, minister says in West Bank
  • “France has been a driving force to establish the first sanction regime at the European level,” Barrot said
  • Barrot renewed France’s commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

RAMALLAH: France is mulling new sanctions on those enabling the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, regarded as illegal under international law, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on a visit to the territory on Thursday.
“France has been a driving force to establish the first sanction regime at the European level targeting individuals or entities, either actors or accomplices of settlement activities,” Barrot said after talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah.
“This regime has been activated two times already and we’re working on a third batch of sanctions targeting these activities that again are illegal with respect to international law.”
Barrot renewed France’s commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned settlement activities “threaten the political perspective that can ensure durable peace for Israel and Palestine.”
Before meeting Abbas, Barrot visited the adjacent town of Al-Bireh, where Israeli settlers set fire to 20 cars on Monday, damaging a nearby building.
After speaking with residents and local officials at the scene, Barrot noted that the attack took place in a part of the West Bank where the Palestinians were supposed to enjoy both civil and security control under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s.
“These attacks from extremist and violent settlers are not only completely inexcusable, not only contrary to international law, but they weaken the perspective of a two-state solution,” Barrot said.
Ramallah and Al-Bireh governor Laila Ghannam expressed outrage that settler attacks were “taking place in full view and hearing of the entire silent international community.”
“Perhaps today, with the visit of the French foreign minister, there will be a spotlight here,” she told AFP.
Speaking in Jerusalem earlier Thursday, Barrot said he saw prospects for ending Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon after Donald Trump’s re-election, citing the Republican’s “wish to see the end of the Middle East’s endless wars” as well as recent “tactical successes” for Israel.


Moroccan population grows to 36.8 million in 2024

The Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million since the last census in 2014. (AFP)
The Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million since the last census in 2014. (AFP)
Updated 07 November 2024
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Moroccan population grows to 36.8 million in 2024

The Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million since the last census in 2014. (AFP)

RABAT: The Moroccan population grew to 36.82 million by September 2024, according to the preliminary results of a national census, the spokesman for the government said on Thursday.
Compared with the most recent census in 2014, the Moroccan population grew by 2.98 million or 8.8 percent, spokesman Mustapha Baitas told reporters.
The number of households grew to 9.27 million by September 2024, up 26.8 percent compared to 2014, while the number of foreigners living in the country increased to 148,152, up 71.8 percent, he said.