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Hezbollah Rejects US Diplomacy While Wary of Expanded Conflict

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs’ Day, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher

Iran-backed Hezbollah has rebuffed Washington’s initial ideas for cooling tit-for-tat fighting with neighbouring Israel, such as pulling its fighters further from the border, but remains open to US diplomacy to avoid a ruinous war, Lebanese officials said.

US envoy Amos Hochstein has been leading a diplomatic outreach to restore security at the Israel-Lebanon frontier as the wider region teeters dangerously towards a major escalation of the conflict ignited by the Gaza war.

Attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on shipping in the Red Sea, US strikes in response and fighting elsewhere in the Middle East have added urgency to the efforts.

Hezbollah is ready to listen,” a senior Lebanese official familiar with the group’s thinking said, while emphasising that the group saw the ideas presented by veteran negotiator Hochstein on a visit to Beirut last week as unrealistic.

Hezbollah‘s position is that it will fire rockets at Israel until there is a full ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah‘s rejection of the proposals presented by Hochstein has not been previously reported.

Despite the rejection and Hezbollah‘s volleys of rockets in support of Gaza, the group’s openness to diplomatic contacts signals an aversion to a wider war, one of the Lebanese officials and a security source said, even after an Israeli strike reached Beirut on Jan. 2, killing a Hamas leader.

Israel has also said it wants to avoid war, but both sides say they are ready to fight if necessary. Israel warns it will respond more aggressively if a deal to make the border area safe is not reached.

Such an escalation would open a major new phase in the regional conflict.

Branded a terrorist organisation by Washington, Hezbollah has not been directly involved in talks, three Lebanese officials and a European diplomat said. Instead, Hochstein’s ideas were passed on by Lebanese mediators, they said. Reuters consulted eleven Lebanese, US, Israeli and European officials for this story.

One suggestion floated last week was that border hostilities be scaled back in tandem with Israeli moves towards lower intensity operations in Gaza, the three Lebanese sources and a US official said.

Another suggestion is that Hezbollah keep its fighters at least 7 km (4 miles) from the border, two of the three Lebanese officials and an Israeli official said. The proposal was communicated to Hezbollah, the Lebanese officials said.

That could leave fighters much closer than Israel’s public demand of a 30 km (19 mile) withdrawal to Lebanon’s Litani River, as stipulated in a 2006 UN resolution.

However, Israel believes most anti-tank missiles fired from further than 7 km would not land on northern Israeli communities, according to the Israeli official, who was briefed on war cabinet discussions, but requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the conversations.

Hezbollah has dismissed both ideas as unrealistic, the Lebanese officials and the diplomat said. The group has long ruled out giving up weapons or withdrawing fighters, many of whom hail from the border region and melt into society at times of peace.

Israel would also want to see Hezbollah‘s elite Radwan force kept north of the Litani and a United Nations peacekeeper force “beefed up,” the Israeli official said.

Israel’s Prime Minister’s office declined to comment on “reports of diplomatic discussions” in response to questions from Reuters for this story.

Spokespeople for Hezbollah and the Lebanon government did not immediately respond to detailed requests for comment. The White House declined to comment on Reuters’ reporting.

Hezbollah has, however, signalled that once the Gaza war is over it could be open to Lebanon negotiating a mediated deal over disputed areas at the border, the three Lebanese officials said, a possibility alluded to by Hezbollah‘s leader in a speech this month.

“After the war in Gaza, we are ready to support Lebanese negotiators to turn the threat into opportunity,” one senior Hezbollah official told Reuters, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He did not address specific proposals.

Hezbollah previously held fire during a 7-day Gaza truce in late November.

Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy, in response to a Reuters question at a media briefing on Wednesday, said there was “still a diplomatic window of opportunity,” to push Hezbollah away from the border.

Hochstein has a track record of successful mediation between Lebanon and Israel. In 2022, he brokered a deal delineating the countries’ disputed maritime boundary – an agreement sealed with Hezbollah‘s behind-the-scenes approval.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, in whose cabinet Hezbollah has ministers, has said Beirut was ready for talks on long-term border stability.

During his Jan. 11 visit to Beirut, Hochstein met Mikati, the parliament speaker and army commander. He said publicly at the time that the United States, Israel and Lebanon all preferred a diplomatic solution.

Hochstein was hopeful “all of us on both sides of the border” could reach a solution to allow Lebanon and Israel to live with guaranteed security, he told reporters.

The spearhead of the Iran-aligned “Axis of Resistance”, Hezbollah was drawn into a battle it has said it did not expect when Palestinian ally Hamas stormed Israel on Oct. 7, triggering a conflict that has also spilled into the Red Sea, where US strikes have targeted Yemen’s Houthis over their attacks on shipping.

Hezbollah has said its campaign has aided Palestinians by stretching Israeli forces and driving tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes.

It has come at a cost, with around 140 Hezbollah fighters and at least 25 Lebanese civilians killed, as well as at least nine Israeli soldiers and a civilian. The intensity has been growing in recent weeks.

Hezbollah, founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, is the most powerful and influential of the groups Iran backs. It has played a big part in Tehran’s wider foreign policies.

Sources familiar with Hezbollah thinking have said it knows all-out war would be ruinous for Lebanon, a country already destabilised by years of financial and political crises, and where Hezbollah‘s vast arsenal has long been a point of contention. Experts say the cache includes more than 100,000 rockets.

Even as Iran-aligned fighters draw U.S. fire elsewhere in the region and Iran launches strikes in Syria and Iraq, Tehran would be loathe to see Hezbollah and Lebanon subjected to massive destruction, not least because it has previously had to foot the bill of reconstruction, said Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, a think-tank based in Beirut.

Iran’s foreign minister on Wednesday said attacks against Israel and its interests by the “Axis of Resistance” will stop if the Gaza war ends.

Hage Ali said Hezbollah clearly wanted to avoid full-scale conflict. It did not want to be left in a situation where Israeli strikes continue or intensify in Lebanon after the Gaza war ends or is significantly scaled back, he said.

“A process in which it can engage, or support, the Lebanese state as it negotiates would provide the benefits of de-escalation,” he said.

The diplomacy faces significant complications, and many observers see a serious risk of an escalation in fighting. Israel has said its army will act if diplomacy cannot restore security to northern Israel.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the group had heard “threats and inducements”.

The threat, Nasrallah said in a Jan. 15 speech, was the warning that Israel would move forces to its northern border as it shifts to the next phase of the Gaza war. Hezbollah was ready for war and would fight without “any limits, rules or boundaries”, he said.

But he has also alluded to diplomatic possibilities, saying in a Jan. 5 speech that once the Gaza war was over Lebanon had “a historic opportunity” to liberate land.

Those comments were widely interpreted as reflecting the possibility of a negotiated deal settling the status of disputed border areas.

Four Lebanese officials briefed on the matter said Hochstein has discussed ideas aimed at advancing such a deal, but he had not presented any draft proposals. The officials did not provide details of the ideas.

An Israeli official told Reuters Israel’s government has “relayed lots of demands,” without giving details. “One way or another, our 80,000 northern residents will be returning home,” the official said.

France has also been involved in de-escalation efforts. A source familiar with French thinking said Nasrallah’s public comments alluding to a possible border deal were “direct messages to the Americans and to the French”.

“He’s telling us: ‘the door is open’”.

The post Hezbollah Rejects US Diplomacy While Wary of Expanded Conflict first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report

Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot

A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.

Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page. 

Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.

According to The Chronicles website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.

One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.

Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.

Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”

That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.

Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.

So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.

And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.

Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024

This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.

Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.

The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.

“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.

The post Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding

Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto

As I sat in an anthropology lecture at the University of British Columbia, we debated the question: What is a unifying national identity for Canadians? In response, I said, “Our national identity is that we aren’t Americans; our identity is contrasted against American identities, for good or for bad.”

Some students laughed, and my professor nodded approvingly. How I wish we could laugh about our lack of Canadian identity today, as we watch university student encampments support the repressive tyrannical terrorist regime Hamas, the antithesis of democracy.

I am not Jewish, but I have watched in awe as the Israel Defense Forces fights to defend the Jewish nation from Hamas, and free the remaining hostages. The parliamentary democracy that governs Israel acts as a beacon of light in the Middle East. The strong national identity that interlocks the state and the people propels the continued hostage rescue operations.

It is my greatest hope that Canada, my country, would feel as strongly in their national responsibility to rescue me, my family, or fellow Canadians if we were ever taken hostage, or if Canada was invaded by a terrorist group. However, I fear that the national Canadian identity would not be strong enough to withstand the international pressure that Israel has withstood to continue the hostage rescue missions.

Across Canada, university students are assuming pro-Hamas identities — many after reading ill-informed or false Instagram posts. In the name of social justice, they are aligning with a cause that approves the intentional targeting of Jewish civilians, calls for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, and ignores the fact that Israel is waging one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty wars in the history of armed conflict.

Here in Canada we, as the Gen Z’ers, don’t have a strong national identity. We haven’t grown up with a strong appreciation for our democracy, military, or a high respect for our veterans. Many of us under the age of 30 do not know the words to “O’Canada.” We have taken for granted the freedom that is our democratic right in Canada. I hypothesize that so many of our younger generations have fallen for terrorist propaganda because we lack rootedness in a national backbone.

There is nothing wrong with advocating for civilians in war zones. It’s exactly because of our democratic freedoms that we can have differing dialogues around war. But what is taking place on campuses is not pro-peace, pro-innocent civilians, pro-hostage release, or pro-democratic values.

These university encampments are anti-peace and they promote hate, propaganda, and terrorism. Before our eyes, since the Oct. 7th massacre carried out by Hamas, many university students have sided with the terrorist organization.

I am nearly infuriated to the point of tears most days, in what feels like a never-ending battle of terrorist propaganda being shared by my leftist friends. I have always been a politically center-left person, but as the left moves further to the extremist side, I feel the need to call this extremism out.

As a non-Jewish Canadian university student, I have had enough of this childish behavior. If we want to be treated like adults, we need to act like them. As silly as that sounds, my peers are using their democratic rights to advocate for a terrorist group. A terrorist group who would kill us if given the chance.

Without a strong national backbone, we have lost ourselves to incompetent “social justice” causes that cease to make rational or logical sense. Canadian democratic values are about peace, respect, and diversity. Hamas is a radical Islamist military movement that does not believe in equal rights for men and women, let alone LGBTQ+ individuals. It does not make democratic sense to advocate for a terrorist group who are fanatical Islamic extremists.

Intense false realities have been created by the extreme left that fantasize and romanticize terrorists as resistance fighters — a desperate attempt to create a false narrative that implicates Israel as the terrorist organization. Instead of calling for accountability and disbandment of Hamas, the blame has been unfairly placed on Israel. These dangerous terrorist-sympathizing ideologies need to be met with harsh repercussions, as the democratic values of future adult Canadians rest in the balance.

Many of us on the left have lived in fear of falling victim to cancel culture, and have instead allowed the extremism on the left to grow. The hypocrisy and privilege of these protestors have stripped them of their credibility for a social justice movement.

Putting up signs stating “F*** KKKANANDA” at the University of British Columbia, painting “F*** Quebec” in Montreal on the face of a new Holocaust museum poster, and chanting “Death to America” on campuses, is life or death for Western democratic values.

The (false) colonial narrative about Israel has become dizzyingly amplified on campuses, commonly stating that Israel is a colonizer of the land and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Instead, the ancestral and Indigenous right of Jewish return is the ultimate act of decolonization.

The intense leftist approach to teaching makes race the center of every issue, causing students to view indigeneity and colonization in simplified forms without historical context. I am an Arts student who has always been politically and socially left, and an active feminist.

However, I have been inundated with intense frameworks of colonialism, racism, and intersectionality since beginning my undergraduate studies — and these claims are not always based in historical reality.

I never thought I would write these words, but I am dismayed by how my leftist peers are acting, and it is becoming more extreme every day. They are acting like puppets for terrorism, amplifying propaganda and disinformation about what occurred on Oct 7th.

I do not want to live in a society that denies rape, denies accountability, and denies basic human rights to Israelis and Jewish people. I love that my friends in the LGBTQIA2S+ community get to live freely here in Canada and that my friends who choose to receive an abortion for personal or life-saving reasons, can do so. Also, as a woman, I can live equally in a society that promotes my human rights. None of these rights are awarded by Hamas in the society they govern. With the privileged position of having access to basic human rights, I am thankful to call myself a Canadian citizen.

If we don’t fight for our Canadian democratic values, we will be flattened by external forces. It is time to build and cultivate a strong national backbone that holds us accountable for upholding our country. Maybe we will one day be able to look back with humor on this dark period in academic spaces that have allowed this ideology to foster. Until then, we must fight for our country to remain the “True North, strong and free.” If we stand for nothing, we will fall for everything.

As a Gen-Z Canadian, I refuse to allow my peers to degrade our freedoms by romanticizing terrorism.

Zara Nybo is a student at the University of British Columbia, and a Campus Media Fellow with HonestReporting Canada and Allied Voices for Israel.

The post Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says

Pro-Hamas encampment at University of Pennsylvania on May 5, 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody via Reuters Connect

The University of Pennsylvania has suspended four pro-Hamas protesters who participated in illegally occupying the campus, according to an activist group that helped organize the demonstration.

“The [university’s] administration has continued to endorse Zionist ideology and bent to the will of their donors in order to prioritize their profit and image. In their most recent attempt to stifle pro-Palestinian speech, they have suspended four of their own students,” a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) splinter group — Freedom School for Palestine — wrote on Instagram.

“It is clear that Penn is not an institution of education but a corporate power which serves to oil the gears of the global war machine (and then beat, jail, and suspend those who protest this) [sic],” the post continued, adding that the students were “placed on semester-long or year-long suspensions.”

Freedom School for Palestine — which helped organize a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in which pro-Hamas students lived for weeks and refused to leave unless administrators agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — also implored the public to flood the administration’s office with messages demanding revocations of the suspensions, claiming that the students have been “robbed of their income, health insurance, and access to education.”

The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) commented on the report on Wednesday.

“Penn continues to review student conduct cases in connection with campus demonstrations this spring,” it said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “The university affords due process to all students in accordance with our policies and recommends sanctions as appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”

Penn’s handing down disciplinary sanctions came nearly two months after it finally cleared protesters from school property with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department. The university had attempted to negotiate with the protesters, but its patience wore thin amid their escalating conduct. After hours of discussions failed to yield a settlement acceptable to both sides, interim president Larry Jameson publicly called the protesters a safety hazard while noting that they had committed acts of vandalism, including defacing a statute of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.

In addition to divestment from Israel, the demonstration’s leaders demanded that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. Frustrated with the university’s refusing to grant them any concessions, masses of new people joined the encampment, expanding it over a larger area of school property and forcing the university to request additional security on campus.

“The protesters refused repeatedly to disband the encampment, to produce identification, to stop threatening, loud, and discriminatory speech and behavior, and to comply with instructions from Penn administrators and Public Safety,” Jameson said after the tents were dismantled. “Instead, they called for others to join them in escalating their disruptions and expanding their encampment, necessitating that we take action to protect the safety and rights of everyone in our community.”

Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which was precipitated by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.

One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

Former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who refused to stop the university from hosting the festival, resigned from her post in December, ending a 17-month tenure marked by controversy over what critics described as an insufficient response to surging antisemitism on campus.

The University of Pennsylvania will continue to deal with the events of this academic year for some time. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging a US congressional investigation of antisemitism there, which the House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched after Magill failed to provide acceptable answers about her handling of the problem during a hearing in December. The ruling cleared the way for Congress to continue an inquiry that could complicate Penn’s attempts to repair a perception that it coddled antisemites because they claimed to be partisans of the progressive left.

As part of its inquiry, the committee, led by US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), subpoenaed the university for a trove of documents, including reports and correspondence, which would provide a window into how administrators discussed antisemitism on campus.

Such documents have already proved injurious to Columbia University, which according to reports by The Washington Free Beacon, derided Jewish students’ concerns about rising antisemitism, calling them “privileged” and “wealthy.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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