Israeli government orders officials to boycott left-leaning paper Haaretz

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 28 November 2024

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LONDON - Ministers also ban government advertising from critical newspaper that is widely respected internationally, writes the London-based Guardian.

Israel’s government is set to punish the country’s leading left-leaning newspaper, Haaretz, by ordering a boycott of the publication by government officials or anyone working for a government-funded body and halting all government advertising in its pages or website.

In a statement on Sunday, the office of Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister, said that his proposal against Haaretz had been unanimously approved by other ministers.

“We will not allow a reality in which the publisher of an official newspaper in the state of Israel will call for the imposition of sanctions against it and will support the enemies of the state in the midst of a war and will be financed by it,” the statement said.

“We advocate a free press and freedom of expression, but also the freedom of the government to decide not to fund incitement against the state of Israel.”

Haaretz, which is Israel’s oldest newspaper and widely respected internationally for its reporting and analysis, has been a fierce critic of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his current coalition government, the most rightwing in the history of the country.

The newspaper has published a series of investigations of wrongdoing or abuses by senior officials and the armed forces, and has long been in the crosshairs of the current government. It has also been a vocal supporter of the campaign for a ceasefire to free hostages seized by Hamas in October last year and still held in Gaza.

In a statement on Sunday, Haaretz accused Netanyahu of seeking to “dismantle Israeli democracy” and said the resolution to boycott the newspaper was “opportunist” and had been passed by ministers without any legal review.

“Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader,” the statement said.

To justify the boycott of Haaretz, Karhi’s office has highlighted comments made by Amos Schocken, its publisher, at a recent conference organised by the newspaper in London.

Schocken accused the Israeli government of “imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population” and said it was “fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters, that Israel calls terrorists”. He later clarified his remarks, saying that he had not meant to refer to Hamas.

Haaretz also published an editorial saying that “deliberately harming civilians is illegitimate. Using violence against civilians and sowing terror among them to achieve political or ideological goals is terrorism. Any organisation that advocates the murder of women, children and the elderly is a terrorist organisation, and its members are terrorists. They certainly aren’t “freedom fighters”.

Mairav Zonszein, senior Israel analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the boycott showed that Israel was led by an increasingly authoritarian government dedicated to crushing all kinds of dissent.

“The space for criticism has narrowed significantly, not just by Palestinians but by Jewish Israelis,” she said.

Karhi first proposed a government resolution to halt any state advertisement, subscriptions or other commercial connection with Haaretz last year, citing “defeatist and false propaganda during wartime”.

The move prompted the International Federation of Journalists to express its concern that the Israeli government was set on restricting press freedom and the public’s right to know.

In May, Israeli authorities shut down the local offices of Al Jazeera, hours after a government vote to use new laws to close the satellite news network’s operations in the country.

Officials said the move was justified because Al Jazeera was a threat to national security. “The incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel,” Netanyahu posted on social media. Critics called the move a “dark day for the media”.

Heavy rain and high waves wash away tents of Gaza's displaced

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Category: MENA

Published: 26 November 2024

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ISRAELI OCCUPIED GAZA - Heavy rainfall in Gaza has severely damaged tents and washed away the belongings of Palestinian families displaced several times in the past year due to Israeli attacks on their homes, with the UN warning that the weather has worsened conditions in the enclave.

Overnight rain flooded tents or damaged them beyond repair, leaving families to rely on scraps of material for shelter. The price of tents and the plastic sheets used to make them was already surging before the wet weather began.

"In Gaza, it is estimated that 1.9 million people [nine in 10] are displaced, the majority in improvised tents unable to withstand the stormy wind," Jonathan Crickx, chief of communication at the UN's agency for children, told The National on Monday.

Makeshift tents in refugee camps are typically made of materials that do not keep the rain or the cold out, raising concerns about how Gazans will endure another winter amid the war. "Strong winds, dropping temperatures and heavy rains have exacerbated people’s hardship as people’s improvised tents made of cloth, tarpaulin or plastic sheeting cannot withstand the hard winds," he added.

Elsewhere near coastal areas, tents were flooded by seawater while others were swept away by high waves. "The sea was dragging children, but we were able to rescue them," Khaled Idris, a displaced Gazan in Al Mawasi area, told The National. "What happened to us yesterday is a humanitarian catastrophe."

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned that about 500,000 people in Gaza were in areas prone to flooding. "Harsh winter weather is compounded by heavy rain and rising sea levels, which cause sewage pile-ups and disease," UNRWA said on X.

Rainwater flooded several areas across Gaza, including central and southern districts, said Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Gaza's civil defence. He urged the international community to intervene and provide stronger tents to protect displaced families from the harsh winter conditions.

Mr Crickx said Unicef provided "dewatering pumps for installation in Gaza city, benefitting around 250,000 people. Cleaning and maintenance of sewerage and storm water networks in Deir Al Balah, Nuseirat and Khan Younis were implemented, benefiting around 400,000 people" to mitigate the risk of flooding.

“We didn’t sleep, trying to keep the tent standing,” said Muhannad Awad, who is sheltering on Al Yarmouk field – once a football pitch in Gaza city. “The situation is catastrophic, with no organisation offering oversight or assistance."

Desperate to protect their belongings, many families used whatever resources they had to prevent their tents from collapsing. “My family and I set up our tent along the Khan Younis shore,” explained Sobhi Shaheen, a displaced Gazan. “But it flooded twice this year – first 10 days ago and again today. We moved to a tent with my sister’s family in Al Mawasi, but the situation there is also dire. The water has turned the sand into mud, making it impossible to move, and the freezing cold is unbearable.”

Mohammed Mushtaha, who was displaced from the Shujaiya suburb of Gaza city, has also faced hardship. After being displaced once again from Rafah in May, his family had nowhere to go. Eventually, they set up their tent on the beach between Khan Younis and Deir Al Balah, enduring humidity and the threat of rising water. “We kept telling ourselves it would be better than facing the winter,” Mr Mushtaha said

"Our tents flooded, and the waves swept everything away. Many people lost their tents. We fled in fear of drowning. The situation was tragic, especially for children, women, and the elderly.”

For him, the hardest part is the helplessness of not being able to provide for his family. "Our lives are so hard, and thinking about it is devastating," he added. "It’s unbearable when your child tells you, ‘Dad, I’m cold,’ and you can’t do anything, or when he says, ‘I’m hungry,’ and you can’t feed him."

Saudi NEOM gigaproject a 'generational investment,' minister

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 26 November 2024

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By Yousef Saba

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia's NEOM gigaproject, a futuristic region being built in the desert, is a "generational investment" with a long timeline, the country's investment minister told Reuters on Monday, adding that foreign investment will pick up pace.

"NEOM was not meant to be a two-year investable opportunity. If anybody expected NEOM to be foreign investment in two, three or five years, then they have gotten (it) wrong - it's a generational investment," Minister Khalid al-Falih said on the sidelines of the World Investment Conference in Riyadh.

"The flywheel is starting and it will gain speed as we go forward, as some of the foundational assets come to the market," he said.

The world's top oil exporter has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into development projects through the kingdom's $925 billion sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), as it undergoes an economic agenda dubbed Vision 2030 to cut dependence on fossil fuels.

NEOM, a Red Sea urban and industrial development nearly the size of Belgium that is meant to eventually house 9 million people, is central to Vision 2030.

Saudi Arabia has scaled back some lofty ambitions to prioritize completing elements essential to hosting global sporting events over the next decade as rising costs weigh, sources told Reuters earlier this month.

NEOM announced this month its long-time chief executive, Nadhmi al-Nasr, had stepped down, without giving further details.

Asked what effect the departure would have on investors, the minister said the executive had done "a respectable job" but that "there is a time for everybody to pass on the baton."

Asked if PIF will continue to do much of the spending on NEOM until more foreign funds come in, al-Falih said it was not binary.

"I think foreign investors are starting to come to NEOM, they're starting to channel capital. Some of the projects that the PIF will be doing will be financed through global capital pools, through some alternative and private capital. That's taking place as we speak," he said.

"So I urge you not to look at NEOM as being 100% PIF and then suddenly there will be a cliff and it will go private."

Saudi Arabia, which is racing to attract $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by the turn of the decade - reaching about a quarter of that in 2023 - has recently seen more co-investment deals between state entities and foreign investors.

"It's always been the intent," al-Falih said of foreign inflows alongside state funds.

He noted that foreign investors were at times "still looking, still examining, still sometimes questioning," but that now there was confidence in the profitability of investment opportunities and that "the risk-return trade-offs are very, very fair and positive to them."