Middle East Experience

The attack comes just hours after an Al-Jazeera correspondent was shot and killed amid clashes in Jenin.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Attempted stabbing attack thwarted in Jerusalem's Old City

Very different Western reactions to the suffering in Ukraine and the Arab world show that there is a profound rift among cultures. Essay by Michael Young..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Liberal internationalism: Less 'clash of civilisations', more rift

The free event, taking place on Friday, May 13, between 12: 00–15: 30, at the Tel Aviv Port,  will open Israel Sports Week.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: New sporting event to promote awareness of accessibility launched

Even if Israel is in the wrong and Israeli troops killed a journalist that doesn’t mean that releasing details and admitting to faults isn’t worthwhile.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Death of journalist in raid raises questions about IDF use of hi-tech - analysis

Many voters hoped the newcomers would run “with a unified list and programme” but instead their competing electoral lists “will scatter the vote.”..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Despite public discontent, Lebanon vote could fail to yield desired change

Get to know the exotic sugar that you won’t know about if you haven’t been to India.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Sweet news from India: Is this sugar actually healthy?

There was no immediate comment from Egyptian authorities..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Five Egyptian soldiers killed in attack north of Sinai

Responding to the arrests under Hong Kong’s national security law of four trustees of the defunct 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Regional Director Erwin van der Borght said: “Even by Hong Kong’s recent standards of worsening repression, these arrests represent a shocking escalation. Some of the city’s most respected pro-democracy figures, whose activism ..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Hong Kong: Arrests of activists, including 90-year-old cardinal, a ‘shocking escalation’ of repression

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine is aimed at protecting the two self-proclaimed Russian-backed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Al Arabiya on Friday.“The goal of our operation, it was announced openly, is to protect these two republics and to make sure that no threat will ever emanate from the Ukrainian territory to the security of these people and to security of the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.He claimed that Russia has been aiming to protect the two republics because “they have been under attacks from the Ukrainian regime for a long, long eight years. When the coup happened in 2014, they said they don’t want to have anything to do with these people who came to power illegally and they said, ‘leave us alone, we want to understand what is going on,’ they never attacked the rest of Ukraine.”The far-right coup in Kyiv back in 2014 overthrew the then-pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and is critical to the understanding of the Ukraine war. The coup was openly supported by the US and European powers which resulted in an even bigger strain in Ukraine-Russia relations.“They were announced terrorists, an anti-terrorist operation was launched by the butcher leader who came to power by force through illegal means and for the long eight years they have been victims of Ukrainian aggression, killing like 13,000 or 14,000 civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure and many, many other crimes were committed by the Ukrainian regime against them,” he told Al Arabiya.Lavrov added that Russia’s “special operation” was a “response to what NATO was doing in Ukraine to prepare this country for a very aggressive posture against the Russian Federation.”“They were given offensive arms, including the arms which can reach the Russian territory, military bases were being built including on the Sea of Azov and many dozens of military exercises, including many of them on Ukrainian territory were conducted under NATO auspices and most of these exercises were designed against the interested of the Russian Federation, so the purpose of this operation is to make sure that those plans do not materialize.”‘NATO considers it is at war with Russia’The foreign minister said that Russia does not consider itself to be at war with NATO, but that NATO does.“Unfortunately, NATO, it seems, considers itself to be at war with Russia. NATO and European Union leaders, many of them, in England, in the United States, Poland, France, Germany and of course European Union chief diplomat Josep Borrell, they bluntly, publicly and consistently say, ‘Putin must fail, Russia must be defeated.’ When you use this terminology, I believe you think that you are at war with the person who you want to be defeated.”He added that Russia knows the routes being used to supply Ukraine with arms, stating that “as soon as these weapons are reaching Ukrainian territory, they are fair game for our special operation.”Russia, NATO disagreementsLavrov said that Russia had put forward many proposals to end the operation in Ukraine but was unable to reach an agreement with them.“During all these years we have been initiating draft treaties, draft agreements with NATO, with countries of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe and lately in December last year we proposed another initiative to the United States and to NATO to conclude treaties with both of them on security guarantees to all countries in the Euro-Atlantic space without joining any military alliance,” the foreign minister said.“Every time we initiated these steps, they were basically rejected with more or less polite behavior. In 2009, we proposed the European Security Treaty which NATO refused to consider and the treaty actually was about codifying something to which all OSCE countries subscribed at the top level.”Russia had suggested that the political commitments to give countries the right to choose its alliances and not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of another country, meaning that “no single organization in Europe can pretend to be a dominant player in this geo-political space.”Lavrov said that NATO responded to Russia by saying that there would be no legally binding security guarantees outside NATO, which he believes makes the OSCE, which was signed by several rulers across the continent, “just lip service.”He added that the last attempt by Russia took place in December 2021, before launching the operation in Ukraine, where they once again proposed to “stop building tension” as a response to the “increasing tension and confrontation” over the years.This was, according to Lavrov, rejected by NATO because it did not want to sacrifice its “open doors policy,” which “does not exist in the Washington Treaty,” and used as a “cover to promote NATO expansionist plans.”“NATO, despite its promises and promises of its leaders, was moving closer and closer to the Russian border and they were telling us, ‘don’t be afraid, we are a defensive alliance and we will pose no threat to your security.’”He noted that NATO was indeed a defensive alliance back when there was a Berlin Wall and a “geopolitical wall between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty” drafted in 1949 after the Second World War.“When the Warsaw Treaty disappeared, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, NATO decided that the line of defense should be moved to the east and they did move this line of defense five times,” Lavrov said.“Foreign Secretary of Britain Liz Truss one of these days stated that NATO must be a global player so we can listen for so many times about the defensive nature of this alliance but this is a lie.”Ukraine allegedly erasing RussiaLavrov accused Kyiv of “cancelling everything Russian,” including “the language, education, media and day-to-day use of the Russian language was made an administrative offense.”“So when the Ukrainian regime intensified at the end of last year and early this year shelling of the Eastern territories of the country in Donbas, in the worst violations of the Minsk Agreements which were signed in February 2015 and endorsed by the Security Council resolution, when they were targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, we didn’t have any other choice.”Read more:Britain says ‘Battle of Donbas’ remains Russia’s main strategic focusChechen commander says Kadyrov is a ‘traitor’ who ‘Putin bought’Russia strikes Kyiv rocket plant with missiles: Defense ministry
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Lavrov: ‘Special operation’ in Ukraine aimed to protect Donetsk, Luhansk republics

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the West has always been “Russia phobic” and that the country never lived a day without being under sanctions imposed by the West, in an interview with Al Arabiya.“Sanctions is not something which we saw out of the blue,” Lavrov said in reference to the sanctions imposed by Western powers on Russia, making it the world’s most sanctioned country overtaking Iran.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.“Sanctions have been with us for decades, we never lived a day in the history of the Soviet Union or the history of the Russian Federation when there were no sanctions,” the foreign minister said.“So to believe that this latest outrage and the wave of sanctions which eventually showed the real face of West which, as far as I now understand, has always been Russian-phobic, to believe that this latest wave of sanctions is going to make Russia cry Uncle and to beg for being pardoned, those planners are lousy and of course they don’t know anything about foreign policy of Russia and they don’t know anything about how to deal with Russia.”Since Russia launched its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, several countries imposed sanctions on the country in solidarity with Ukraine and to cripple the Russian economy.Rising tensions between the West and Russia“Well, they [the West] are not very smart and they certainly don’t know history. After the Soviet Union disappeared, the profession of Sovietologists or Russologists disappeared as well,” he said, adding that the West and the US thought that Russia “disappeared” after the fall of the Soviet Union and that it was in the US’s “pocket.”The Russian official said, “it was not the case.”Lavrov claimed that the West “blindly” supported Kyiv’s regime which is against Russia, claiming that “this was and still is the purpose of our Western friends.”“We cannot rely on the West in anything especially in the areas of life, economy, technology, food as day-to-day requirements, with our strategic nation,” he said, clarifying that if the West admits to being “mistaken” and “wrong” about their actions towards Russia, then there is a chance of “some resumption of relations down the road.”He added that for now, Russia has been working on remaining “self-sufficient” in key sectors to protect the country and its economy.“I can assure you the fact that the Americans and the others are running all over the world, all over the world threatening people, telling them to join sanctions, to vote against Russia… I think it is not dignified for any self-respectful country,” the foreign minister said.“What kind of democracies are they if they don’t give a damn about democracy and international relations? Just so that you must obey to us. They are not even autocrats, they are dictators and they threaten punishment to the people, to the countries who would not join their policies. It is a shame, it is a shame and it is a shame for the Western civilization if it takes the shape of such action.”Western speakers need ‘discipline,’ media policy ‘indecent’Lavrov claimed that in January this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was pushing “his Russia-phobic policies” when he said that “nobody is going to change the policy on the Russian language and media” and that “nobody will be prosecuting the Neo-Nazi battalions who were supported by the state and openly wearing Swastika and the symbols of Waffen SS division.”The foreign minister added that Zelenskyy said, “Ukraine made a mistake when it refused to be a nuclear power” and said that the country might “think about having nuclear weapons again.”He also added that the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Poland “would welcome” the US’ nuclear weapons being moved from Germany to Polish territory.“We were never playing with such dangerous things. We all should insist on the statements made by the P5 [Permanent five countries in the security council], never ever there could be a nuclear war. But to make sure that this is the case, the West must discipline speakers like our Ukrainian and Polish colleagues, who see no danger in playing with such very, very risky words.”The foreign minister was asked about an interview he did on Russian TV earlier this week, which stated: “If the US and its allies continue to arm the Ukraine, the risk of war escalating into a nuclear conflict should not be under-estimated.”Lavrov said that his statement had been taken out of context and that he meant to say that Russia have been “champions of making aegis by all nuclear countries near to start a nuclear war,” when asked about the risk of such a conflict arising.“It did not come across. We know how indecent those who set the tone for the western media policy, how indecent they are. So we are used to it.”Read more:‘Postcard from Moscow’: Russia strikes Kyiv during UN chief visit, Ukraine saysRussian central bank slashes key interest rate againLavrov: ‘Special operation’ in Ukraine aimed to protect Donetsk, Luhansk republics
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Russia FM Lavrov reacts to sanctions: West has always been ‘Russia phobic’