Latest news with #Israelis'
Gulf Insider
4 days ago
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
Greeks Grow Unfriendly To Israeli Tourists, Ships As Gaza War Grinds On
Though Greece is a highly popular international tourist destination for Israelis, the popularity of Israeli tourists is declining in Greece as Israel continues a war on Gaza marked by unusually high civilian casualties, imposed hunger, and the systematic and sweeping destruction of infrastructure. In addition to a string of incidents in which Greeks are verbally and physically clashing with Israeli tourists, protesters are targeting commercial ships seen as supplying Israel's war on Gaza. The most widespread indication of Greeks giving Israelis a cold shoulder comes via signs and posters cropping up in tourist destinations. In addition to being mounted on utility poles, they're also appearing in the front windows of some businesses. A few samples of the messaging: 'All Israeli soldiers are war criminals. Occupiers, rapists, murderers. We don't want you here!' 'Israeli soldiers, you went on vacation but you will not escape the guilt. The beaches of Greece will not wash the blood off your hands' 'Israeli soldiers, colonizers, you are not welcome.' Where personal confrontations are concerned, it's not always clear who's been initiating the hostilities. In the latest incident, a group of around 20 Israeli teenagers clashed with 10 to 30 Greeks on the popular island of Rhodes around 3 or 4 am on Tuesday. According to the Israelis' accounts published in Hebrew media and shared on social media, anti-Israel demonstrators gathered outside a club the Israelis were patronizing. When the Israelis decided to leave the club, a Greek pretending to support Israel asked if they were Israelis. When they confirmed they were, the Greek summoned dozens of comrades who chased them down, kicking one of them. 'I've never been so afraid in my life. We just wanted to go to a club to have fun, and suddenly people with knives were chasing us,' said a teen named Friedman. However, Greek newspaper Dimokratiki provides a far different account. Citing witness statements, video footage and other information, the paper reports that Hellenic Police say the fracas began when the Israelis started shouting pro-Israel slogans, which led to the Greeks calling them 'murderers' and countering with pro-Palestinian chants. Police identified nine Israelis who were involved, and all of them were said to have departed by plane later the same morning. Authorities gave no confirmation of any assaults taking place. Whatever exactly took place in Rhodes this week, there are ample indications that some Greeks are less than enthused to see Israelis vacationing among them as the death toll of Israeli's war in Gaza passes 59,000, with hunger, malnutrition and starvation becoming a rising menace. On Tuesday, a cruise ship loaded with Israeli tourists departed the Greek island of Syros after giving up on trying to disembark its 1,700 passengers. Operated by Israeli company Mano Cruise, the Crown Iris, had been met at its dock by protesters waving Palestinian flags and displaying a banner reading STOP THE GENOCIDE. 'The management of Mano Cruise has decided in light of the situation in the city of Syros to now sail to another tourist destination,' the company said in a statement. A Greek government spokesperson called the incident 'outrageous.' Με μια τεράστια παλαιστινιακή σημαία που την ξετύλιξαν κατά μήκος του λιμανιού στη Σύρο, κάτοικοι και συλλογικότητες του νησιού υποδέχθηκαν το κρουαζιερόπλοιο Crown Iris με τους Ισραηλινούς τουρίστες, εν μέσω της Γενοκτονίας που διαπράττει το Ισραήλ στη Γάζα. — Areti Athanasiou (@AretiAthanasiu) July 22, 2025 Last month, an Israeli tourist recorded himself being pursued and berated by pro-Palestine protesters. 'One of them asked if I was from Israel,' 35-year-old Meidah Hozeh told Ynet . 'I said 'yes' and kept walking, but he started yelling, 'Fuck Israel, fuck Zionists'. I responded, 'Fuck you, fuck Palestine,' and tried to walk away. Then they started chasing me.' He fled to a cafe restroom and later posted this video: Earlier this month, protesters were joined by port union workers in blocking the unloading of the Ever Golden , a cargo ship said to have been carrying India-produced steel destined for military use in Israel. 'We will not allow the port to become a logistics hub for the transfer of war equipment. Our goal is to physically prevent the unloading of this cargo,' said union boss Markos Bekris. A more precise targeting of vacationing Israelis — IDF soldiers in particular — has been taking place in various countries around the world. In an effort led by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), IDF soldiers accused of committing war crimes in Gaza are being reported to local authorities as suspected war criminals under international law. At the start of the year, a Brazilian judge ordered an investigation of a visiting IDF soldier who'd posted on social media about his unit's mass-demolition of Palestinian residences. He managed to flee the country. Earlier this week in Belgium, a soldier and a companion attending the Tomorrowland music festival in Antwerp were detained and questioned by police on the basis of the soldier's documented service in the Givati Brigade, a unit 'extensively documented for its role in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and for carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population,' HRF alleged.
Yahoo
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Dispute Behind the Violence in Syria
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Once again, images of horrifying violence are pouring out of Syria: dead bodies piled up in a hospital corridor. Gunmen calling out insults as they drive their cars over the corpses of murdered civilians. These are not the first sectarian massacres in the seven turbulent months since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. But they represent something different, and not just because they led to a dramatic Israeli bombardment of Syria's Defense Ministry on Wednesday that sent huge clouds of smoke billowing over central Damascus. The latest intercommunal violence, which has left some 600 people dead in Syria's southern province of Sweida, illustrates a fundamental disagreement between the United States and Israel over the nature of the Syrian state. Washington has been pushing for a strong central government in Damascus, but its closest ally in the region fears Syria's new leaders, and has bolstered their domestic rivals. The killings began just days after Thomas Barrack, President Donald Trump's special envoy to Syria (and the U.S. ambassador to Turkey) laid out a muscular vision for a centralized Syria. 'What we've learned is federalism doesn't work,' Barrack said after meeting with Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. This was a startling rebuke to those who have argued for years that Syria should avert another dictatorship by conferring greater power on local authorities. Barrack made clear that he wants the Kurdish-led enclave in northeastern Syria—which has been holding out for more autonomy, like the Druze in the country's south—to make larger concessions to Sharaa. 'There is only one road, and it leads to Damascus,' Barrack said. [Read: Can one man hold Syria together?] That is not the Israelis' view. Although they were happy to be rid of Assad, a sworn enemy, the Israelis do not trust Sharaa, a former jihadist whose forces swept to power in December, and who was once the leader of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. The Israelis have often seemed to believe that they are safer when their Arab neighbors are too weak and divided to pose a threat. That perspective may have motivated recent Israeli demands that southern Syria remain a demilitarized zone. The Israelis also have a special relationship with the Druze, historically a warrior community that lives both in Israel and across the border in Sweida, their stronghold. Barrack's comments, on July 9, may have suggested a kind of carte blanche to Sharaa: Do what you have to do to get the country's troublesome minorities in line. Sharaa knew that the Israelis did not want him to send troops into Sweida. But for weeks, he had engaged in back-channel talks with Israel, in an American-sponsored effort to resolve decades of tensions over a host of issues. Perhaps Sharaa assumed that the Israelis and the Americans had worked out the differences in their positions toward him. If so, he was wrong. On July 13, when small-scale fighting broke out in Sweida between local Bedouin and Druze men, Sharaa sent a large contingent of fighters southward from Damascus in aging tanks and pickup trucks. Their ostensible mission was to restore order, but Druze militia leaders mobilized, convinced that Sharaa's real goal was to crush them and assert full control over Sweida. Things turned ugly very quickly, just as they had in two previous outbreaks of sectarian murder, in March and May, and for the same reasons. Sharaa was able to defeat the Assad regime in December with the help of a loose coalition of undisciplined Islamist militias, many of them veterans of the long struggle against Damascus. Among these men are many violent extremists who consider Syria's minorities—including Alawites and Christians, as well as Druze and Kurds—to be heretics. As in the previous violent episodes this spring, the militias were joined by rifle-toting young men from across Syria, who could be seen in handheld videos, calling for the murder of heretics as they jumped into pickups and headed south. Government-aligned channels on Telegram and other platforms were full of rhetoric so viciously sectarian that it could make anyone despair about Syria's future. Sharaa's cleanup operation in Sweida soon turned into a bloody clash between Sunni and Druze gunmen. One local Druze man told me on Tuesday that artillery was raining down on the provincial capital, and that kidnappings and gun battles were taking place across the area. One of the most prominent Druze spiritual leaders, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, recorded a dramatic video in which he declared, 'We are being subjected to a comprehensive war of extermination.' Hijri also broke an old taboo by calling for help from Israel and any other power willing to rescue the Druze. Making matters worse, some Druze men in Israel began flooding the border to aid their co-religionists in Syria. That prompted Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, to record a video telling the Israeli Druze not to cross into Syria, saying that Israeli forces were 'acting to save our Druze brothers and to eliminate the gangs of the regime.' The Israeli military soon made good on that threat, carrying out dozens of air strikes in Sweida and—more shocking—in central Damascus, where it struck near the presidential palace and hit the compound of the Defense Ministry. The Israeli strikes got everyone's attention. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in the Oval Office with President Trump and a visiting Bahraini royal, told reporters that the bombing arose from 'a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side.' But if there was a misunderstanding, it originated at least partly with the U.S. president. Although Trump didn't pay much attention to Syria in the first months of the year, he seems to have taken notice after meeting Sharaa in Riyadh in May. The leaders of Turkey and the Gulf States had already urged him to embrace Sharaa and drop the sanctions that have long strangled Syria's economy. Trump quickly complied, and added a personal touch: Sharaa, he said, is an 'attractive, tough guy' with a 'strong past.' [Read: The honeymoon is ending in Syria] In other words, Sharaa looks to be Trump's favorite kind of leader: a strongman. Barrack has been repeating Trump's message and amplifying it ever since. He has compared Sharaa to George Washington, and even dropped hints that if Lebanon doesn't clean up its own act soon, it could end up getting absorbed into a greater Syria. That is an odd way to talk about a country that remains shattered after many years of civil war, and where the government—desperately short on money and qualified people—is struggling to rebuild a national army. Trump's decision to give Sharaa his full support isn't necessarily wrong. A unified Syrian state is what the country's Sunni Muslim majority wants, and it is what the most influential regional powers—Turkey and Saudi Arabia—prefer. Some sort of compromise could possibly be worked out on the question of federal and local authority over the coming months and years, if Sharaa and the leaders of Syria's minority communities are willing to be flexible. But that would require Israel to be flexible too. If Israel keeps lobbing bombs at Syria, the prospects for peace along their border could evaporate, and with it the quiet diplomacy the Trump administration has pursued between the two countries. Sharaa's attitude seemed already to be shifting in a televised speech he gave yesterday, in which he lashed out at Israel for the first time since he assumed power. More than diplomacy is at stake. After three terrible waves of sectarian bloodletting in recent months, many in Syria's minority communities have started to conclude that the state Sharaa envisions will—despite his regular protestations about pluralism and tolerance—be a place where they are not welcome. Thousands of them have already fled the country. Trump and Barrack can say what they like about Sharaa being Syria's George Washington. But if they do not press him harder to restrain the sectarian thugs in his own ranks, he may turn out to be a lot more like Saddam Hussein. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Why Trump and Israel Are at Odds Over Syria
Once again, images of horrifying violence are pouring out of Syria: dead bodies piled up in a hospital corridor. Gunmen calling out insults as they drive their cars over the corpses of murdered civilians. These are not the first sectarian massacres in the seven turbulent months since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. But they represent something different, and not just because they led to a dramatic Israeli bombardment of Syria's Defense Ministry on Wednesday that sent huge clouds of smoke billowing over central Damascus. The latest intercommunal violence, which has left some 600 people dead in Syria's southern province of Sweida, illustrates a fundamental disagreement between the United States and Israel over the nature of the Syrian state. Washington has been pushing for a strong central government in Damascus, but its closest ally in the region fears Syria's new leaders, and has bolstered their domestic rivals. The killings began just days after Thomas Barrack, President Donald Trump's special envoy to Syria (and the U.S. ambassador to Turkey) laid out a muscular vision for a centralized Syria. 'What we've learned is federalism doesn't work,' Barrack said after meeting with Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. This was a startling rebuke to those who have argued for years that Syria should avert another dictatorship by conferring greater power on local authorities. Barrack made clear that he wants the Kurdish-led enclave in northeastern Syria—which has been holding out for more autonomy, like the Druze in the country's south—to make larger concessions to Sharaa. 'There is only one road, and it leads to Damascus,' Barrack said. That is not the Israelis' view. Although they were happy to be rid of Assad, a sworn enemy, the Israelis do not trust Sharaa, a former jihadist whose forces swept to power in December, and who was once the leader of the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. The Israelis have often seemed to believe that they are safer when their Arab neighbors are too weak and divided to pose a threat. That perspective may have motivated recent Israeli demands that southern Syria remain a demilitarized zone. The Israelis also have a special relationship with the Druze, historically a warrior community that lives both in Israel and across the border in Sweida, their stronghold. Barrack's comments, on July 9, may have suggested a kind of carte blanche to Sharaa: Do what you have to do to get the country's troublesome minorities in line. Sharaa knew that the Israelis did not want him to send troops into Sweida. But for weeks, he had engaged in back-channel talks with Israel, in an American-sponsored effort to resolve decades of tensions over a host of issues. Perhaps Sharaa assumed that the Israelis and the Americans had worked out the differences in their positions toward him. If so, he was wrong. On July 13, when small-scale fighting broke out in Sweida between local Bedouin and Druze men, Sharaa sent a large contingent of fighters southward from Damascus in aging tanks and pickup trucks. Their ostensible mission was to restore order, but Druze militia leaders mobilized, convinced that Sharaa's real goal was to crush them and assert full control over Sweida. Things turned ugly very quickly, just as they had in two previous outbreaks of sectarian murder, in March and May, and for the same reasons. Sharaa was able to defeat the Assad regime in December with the help of a loose coalition of undisciplined Islamist militias, many of them veterans of the long struggle against Damascus. Among these men are many violent extremists who consider Syria's minorities—including Alawites and Christians, as well as Druze and Kurds—to be heretics. As in the previous violent episodes this spring, the militias were joined by rifle-toting young men from across Syria, who could be seen in handheld videos, calling for the murder of heretics as they jumped into pickups and headed south. Government-aligned channels on Telegram and other platforms were full of rhetoric so viciously sectarian that it could make anyone despair about Syria's future. Sharaa's cleanup operation in Sweida soon turned into a bloody clash between Sunni and Druze gunmen. One local Druze man told me on Tuesday that artillery was raining down on the provincial capital, and that kidnappings and gun battles were taking place across the area. One of the most prominent Druze spiritual leaders, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, recorded a dramatic video in which he declared, 'We are being subjected to a comprehensive war of extermination.' Hijri also broke an old taboo by calling for help from Israel and any other power willing to rescue the Druze. Making matters worse, some Druze men in Israel began flooding the border to aid their co-religionists in Syria. That prompted Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, to record a video telling the Israeli Druze not to cross into Syria, saying that Israeli forces were 'acting to save our Druze brothers and to eliminate the gangs of the regime.' The Israeli military soon made good on that threat, carrying out dozens of air strikes in Sweida and—more shocking—in central Damascus, where it struck near the presidential palace and hit the compound of the Defense Ministry. The Israeli strikes got everyone's attention. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in the Oval Office with President Trump and a visiting Bahraini royal, told reporters that the bombing arose from 'a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side.' But if there was a misunderstanding, it originated at least partly with the U.S. president. Although Trump didn't pay much attention to Syria in the first months of the year, he seems to have taken notice after meeting Sharaa in Riyadh in May. The leaders of Turkey and the Gulf States had already urged him to embrace Sharaa and drop the sanctions that have long strangled Syria's economy. Trump quickly complied, and added a personal touch: Sharaa, he said, is an 'attractive, tough guy' with a 'strong past.' In other words, Sharaa looks to be Trump's favorite kind of leader: a strongman. Barrack has been repeating Trump's message and amplifying it ever since. He has compared Sharaa to George Washington, and even dropped hints that if Lebanon doesn't clean up its own act soon, it could end up getting absorbed into a greater Syria. That is an odd way to talk about a country that remains shattered after many years of civil war, and where the government—desperately short on money and qualified people—is struggling to rebuild a national army. Trump's decision to give Sharaa his full support isn't necessarily wrong. A unified Syrian state is what the country's Sunni Muslim majority wants, and it is what the most influential regional powers—Turkey and Saudi Arabia—prefer. Some sort of compromise could possibly be worked out on the question of federal and local authority over the coming months and years, if Sharaa and the leaders of Syria's minority communities are willing to be flexible. But that would require Israel to be flexible too. If Israel keeps lobbing bombs at Syria, the prospects for peace along their border could evaporate, and with it the quiet diplomacy the Trump administration has pursued between the two countries. Sharaa's attitude seemed already to be shifting in a televised speech he gave yesterday, in which he lashed out at Israel for the first time since he assumed power. More than diplomacy is at stake. After three terrible waves of sectarian bloodletting in recent months, many in Syria's minority communities have started to conclude that the state Sharaa envisions will—despite his regular protestations about pluralism and tolerance—be a place where they are not welcome. Thousands of them have already fled the country. Trump and Barrack can say what they like about Sharaa being Syria's George Washington. But if they do not press him harder to restrain the sectarian thugs in his own ranks, he may turn out to be a lot more like Saddam Hussein.
The National
15-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
The key points not being talked about in BBC Gaza documentary review
Ofcom is now due to investigate the programme, which was removed from iPlayer in February. This breach has been covered extensively by the wider mainstream media, but is it really the whole story? The Johnston Review may have indeed found that audiences should have been informed about the narrator's background, but there were several other points it made which are not being spoken about. So, what does the report really say? Narrator contribution did not breach standards While on page one the review does state that the failure to disclose the narrator's father's position as deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government breached guidelines, it quickly makes another crucial point. In the fourth paragraph, the review says 'I do not consider anything in the narrator's scripted contribution to the programme breached the BBC's standards on due impartiality'. It adds: 'I have also not seen or heard any evidence to support a suggestion that the narrator's father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way'. Despite these findings, director-general Tim Davie still deemed the oversight by the BBC to be a 'significant failing'. No issues with reporting in programme Further into the lengthy review, readers will find it says the narration 'is factual and carries balance where required'. On page 27, it goes on to say that while there was a single accuracy guideline breached (3.3.17), there wasn't actually any issues with accuracy and fairness in the programme's reporting. READ MORE: Everything to know about the BBC's Gaza, Glastonbury and Gregg Wallace crises 'I do not find there to have been any issues with the accuracy, fairness, or due impartiality of the reporting in the programme in the context of the Israel-Gaza war. The production took place in an extremely difficult context, an active warzone, and I find that this was addressed with appropriate care and sensitivity,' the review said. No breaches with translation Critics of the programme took issue with the translation of 'Yahud' as 'Israelis' and not 'Jews'. But the review found no significant problems in this area. Narrator Abdullah criticised the BBC for removing the documentary from iPlayer (Image: BBC/Amjad Al Fayoumi/Hoyo Films) It said on page 24: 'Some argue this served to mislead audiences and to 'whitewash' the antisemitism of the people speaking, and in Gaza more generally. 'I do not find there to have been any editorial breaches in respect of the programme's translation.' It goes on: 'Translation seldom offers a perfect reflection of the associations and connotations of the words used in the original, and the test of accuracy is whether audiences would be materially misled. The translations in this programme did not risk misleading audiences on what the people speaking meant.' No problems with programme funds Some critics claimed licence-fee money made its way to Hamas through payments to the narrator's family, but the review did not find any evidence of this. 'I have not seen any evidence to suggest that the programme funds were spent other than for reasonable, production-related purposes,' it states on page two. It adds: 'The BBC has no reasonable basis to conclude that anyone engaged or paid in connection with the programme was subject to financial sanctions.'
The National
15-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
What does review into BBC's How to Survive a Warzone really say?
Ofcom is now due to investigate the programme, which was removed from iPlayer in February. This breach has been covered extensively by the wider mainstream media, but is it really the whole story? The Johnston Review may have indeed found that audiences should have been informed about the narrator's background, but there were several other points it made which are not being spoken about. So, what does the report really say? Narrator contribution did not breach standards While on page one the review does state that the failure to disclose the narrator's father's position as deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government breached guidelines, it quickly makes another crucial point. In the fourth paragraph, the review says 'I do not consider anything in the narrator's scripted contribution to the programme breached the BBC's standards on due impartiality'. It adds: 'I have also not seen or heard any evidence to support a suggestion that the narrator's father or family influenced the content of the programme in any way'. Despite these findings, director-general Tim Davie still deemed the oversight by the BBC to be a 'significant failing'. No issues with reporting in programme Further into the lengthy review, readers will find it says the narration 'is factual and carries balance where required'. On page 27, it goes on to say that while there was a single accuracy guideline breached (3.3.17), there wasn't actually any issues with accuracy and fairness in the programme's reporting. READ MORE: Everything to know about the BBC's Gaza, Glastonbury and Gregg Wallace crises 'I do not find there to have been any issues with the accuracy, fairness, or due impartiality of the reporting in the programme in the context of the Israel-Gaza war. The production took place in an extremely difficult context, an active warzone, and I find that this was addressed with appropriate care and sensitivity,' the review said. No breaches with translation Critics of the programme took issue with the translation of 'Yahud' as 'Israelis' and not 'Jews'. But the review found no significant problems in this area. Narrator Abdullah criticised the BBC for removing the documentary from iPlayer (Image: BBC/Amjad Al Fayoumi/Hoyo Films) It said on page 24: 'Some argue this served to mislead audiences and to 'whitewash' the antisemitism of the people speaking, and in Gaza more generally. 'I do not find there to have been any editorial breaches in respect of the programme's translation.' It goes on: 'Translation seldom offers a perfect reflection of the associations and connotations of the words used in the original, and the test of accuracy is whether audiences would be materially misled. The translations in this programme did not risk misleading audiences on what the people speaking meant.' No problems with programme funds Some critics claimed licence-fee money made its way to Hamas through payments to the narrator's family, but the review did not find any evidence of this. 'I have not seen any evidence to suggest that the programme funds were spent other than for reasonable, production-related purposes,' it states on page two. It adds: 'The BBC has no reasonable basis to conclude that anyone engaged or paid in connection with the programme was subject to financial sanctions.'
