From PressTV
US buildup in Eastern Euphrates aimed at partitioning Syria: Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says US military buildup in the eastern side of the Euphrates River threatens Syria’s unity as it is actually aimed at partitioning the country.
Lavrov said the US claims that it is seeking to rid Syria of terrorists, but in fact it is actively settling on the Eastern Euphrates in a bid to disintegrate Syria.
“This approach is also encouraged by a number of US allies,’’ he said in an interview with Italy’s Panorama magazine published on Thursday.
The top Russian diplomat also said that the suspected chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb town of Douma on April 7 was a “new dirty provocation made by those who do not want peace in Syria.”
One week after the incident, the US, Britain and France launched a coordinated missile attack against sites and research facilities near Damascus and Homs with the purported goal of paralyzing the Syrian government’s capability to produce chemicals.
Syria has rejected the accusations of possessing chemicals. It surrendered its chemical stockpile in 2013 to a mission led by the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the UN.
From PressTV
Russia jet crashes in Syria; 2 pilots killed
The Russian military says one of its fighter jets has crashed in Syria, killing two pilots on board.
The Su-30SM jet was not shot down and may have crashed because of a bird in the sky, Russian media cited the military as saying on Thursday.
“As it was climbing after taking off from the Hmeimim airbase, the Russian fighter Su-30SM crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Two pilots, who fought until the last minute to save the plane, died, according to reports from the scene,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Hmeimim is a western Syrian airbase currently operated by Russia.
It further said, “According to preliminary information, the reason for the crash could have been a bird falling into the engine.”
Moscow also runs a naval facility in the Syrian city of Tartus, which is similarly situated in the Arab country’s west.
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From PressTV
Saudi Arabia’s military expenditure surpasses Russia, world’s 3rd
Having trapped itself in a deadly war against the people of Yemen over the past years, Saudi Arabia has surpassed Russia to become the world’s third largest military spender.
The oil-rich kingdom increased its spending to $69.2 billion in 2017, up 9.2 percent from the previous year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a new report Wednesday. This is 10 percent of the country’s GDP.
This puts the Riyadh regime higher on the list than Russia ($66.3bn), France ($57.7bn), India ($63.9bn) and the UK ($47.1bn), according to the report.
As expected, the United States topped the list with $609.7 billion, followed by China at $228.2 billion.
SIPRI analysts warned that the increase in military expenditure by countries like Saudi Arabia was not a good sign.
“Despite low oil prices, armed conflict and rivalries throughout the Middle East are driving the rise in military spending in the region,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior SIPRI researcher.
From PressTV
Knesset allows Netanyahu, Lieberman to declare war in ‘extreme’ situations
Israel’s parliament (Knesset) has passed a controversial law that allows the prime minister to bypass the legislative chamber and declare war or order a major operation on his own after only consulting his minister for military affairs.
The legislation, which was approved by 62-41 votes on Monday, transfers responsibility for declaring war from the full Israeli cabinet to the smaller “security” cabinet.
It also states that in “extreme circumstances,” military operations could be authorized by the premier and the minister of military affairs alone without a vote by cabinet ministers.
Israeli opposition lawmakers argued that the law effectively gives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu free reign to go to war by removing all oversight.
Member of Knesset (MK) Eyal Ben-Reuven described the legislation as “severely harmful,” saying it eliminates the broad discretion necessary to decide on declaring war.
“I think this is another distraction from Netanyahu’s shaky legal situation,” he added, referring to the corruption cases facing Netanyahu.
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From PressTV
Washington ‘fully supportive’ of Israeli soldiers against Palestinians in Gaza: Pompeo
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claims that the Israeli regime has the “right to defend” itself against Palestinian protesters, as dozens of Palestinian demonstrators have so far lost their lives in the besieged Gaza Strip in recent weeks, stressing that Washington is “fully supportive” of what Tel Aviv does against the people of Palestine.
“We do believe the Israelis have the right to defend themselves, and we’re fully supportive of that,” said the newly-appointed American top diplomat in a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi in capital Amman on Monday, as he wrapped up his four-day, four-nation tour through the Middle East.
Pompeo, the former CIA director who headed overseas almost immediately after he was sworn in on Thursday, even declined to make a slight criticism against the Israeli military for its use of live fire against Palestinian protesters in the blockaded sliver in the past few weeks.
Protesting rallies along the Gaza border since March 30 have led to clashes with Israeli forces in which some 50 Palestinians have so far been killed by the Israeli gunfire and hundreds of others sustained injuries.
The Palestinian rally will last until May 15, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe) on which Israel was created.
Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold rallies to commemorate Nakba Day, which also marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by the occupying regime in 1948.
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From PressTV
Israel not capable of successful Iran attack: Ex-PM Olmert
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has played down Tel Aviv’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying the danger of such a move is much greater than any possible achievement.
Olmert, who ordered an airstrike back in 2007 on a Syrian position which Israel claims was a nuclear reactor, said at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday that the Tel Aviv regime is not capable of successfully attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
As Israel’s prime minister, Olmert said, he decided not to hit Iranian nuclear facilities because Israel could only set Iran’s nuclear program back two years.
The danger involved in striking Iran then was much greater than any possible achievement, and this remains true now, he said.
“What we could do with Syria, we cannot do with Iran”
“With Syria, we destroyed it and knew it would take them time to rebuild it. With Iran, the distance is farther, and it is spread in different sites, mostly underground. The ability of Israel to destroy the nuclear capabilities is much smaller, and it requires different capabilities.”
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From PressTV
Israel will continue to operate freely in Syria: Lieberman
Israel’s minister of military affairs Avigdor Lieberman says Tel Aviv will continue to operate freely in Syria after several Israeli attacks on the Arab country, seen as a bid to prop up anti-government Takfiri militants.
Lieberman’s statements come less than a month after Israeli warplanes attacked the T-4 air base in Homs through Lebanese airspace and his threat later to hit S-300 defense systems if Russia gave them to Syria.
“We have no intention to attack Russia or to interfere in domestic Syrian issues,” Lieberman said at the annual Jerusalem Post conference on Sunday. “But if somebody thinks that it is possible to launch missiles or to attack Israel or even our aircraft, no doubt we will respond and we will respond very forcefully.”
Lieberman has said Israel would not accept limitations from Russia or any other country on its “actions” in Syria.
“We will maintain total freedom of action. We will not accept any limitation when it comes to the defense of our … interests,” Lieberman told the Hebrew-language Walla news website.
The Israeli military has launched attacks against various targets inside Syria from time to time, which Damascus believes are aimed at boosting terrorist groups in the face of major gains by the Syrian army.
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From PressTV
Saudi crown prince says Palestinians should accept peace deal or ‘shut up’
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that Palestinians should either accept peace proposals or “shut up,” Israeli media reported.
According to Israel’s Channel 10 news on Sunday, Salman made the remarks while on a trip to New York last month where he met with several Jewish leaders.
“For the past 40 years, the Palestinian leadership has missed opportunities again and again, and rejected all the offers it was given,” the Crown Prince said. “It’s about time that the Palestinians accept the offers, and agree to come to the negotiating table — or they should shut up and stop complaining.”
He also said that the subject of Palestinian is not currently on top of the government in Riyadh’s agenda.
“There are much more urgent and more important issues to deal with — such as Iran,” he added.
In an interview with the TIME magazine published on April 5, the first in line to the Saudi throne spoke of the prospect of Riyadh-Tel Aviv relations, describing the regime’s conflict with the Palestinians as the only obstacle to the normalization of ties with Israel.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Abbas apologizes ‘if people were offended’ by his speech blaming Holocaust on the Jews
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressing the Palestinian National Council in the West Bank city of Ramallah, April 30, 2018. (Flash90)
(JTA) — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas apologized to Jewish people offended by his recent speech in which he blamed the Holocaust on Jews.
“If people were offended by my statement in front of the [Palestinian National Council], especially people of the Jewish faith, I apologize to them,” Abbas said in a statement sent Friday by his office.
“I would like to assure everyone that it was not my intention to do so, and to reiterate my full respect for the Jewish faith, as well as other monotheistic faiths,” he said.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Iran will not ‘renegotiate or add onto’ nuclear deal, its foreign minister says
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif speaking in Berlin, June 27, 2017. (Sean Gallup/Images)
(JTA) — In a message aimed at President Donald Trump and the United States, Iran’s foreign minister released a video statement saying that Iran will not “renegotiate or add onto” the nuclear deal it signed with the world powers in 2015.
On Thursday, Mohammad Javad Zarif published the five-minute video, in which he speaks in perfect English, on YouTube and Twitter.
Zarif accused the United States of violating the deal, particularly by “bullying” others to prevent them from doing business with Iran.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New law allows Israel’s prime minister and defense minister to declare war
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s parliament passed a law that would allow the prime minister and defense minister to declare war.
The amendment to the country’s Basic Law transfers authority from the government to the smaller Security Cabinet to launch military operations and declare war. It passed Monday evening in a 62-41 vote.
Military operations can be authorized by the prime minister and defense minister alone in “extreme conditions,” though it does not define what they are. The law says it can be invoked “if the issue is necessary due to urgency.”
Prime ministers of Israel previously had to ask the approval of the full Cabinet to go to war.
From PressTV
Militants give up arms under Homs evacuation deal
Militants around Syria’s third city of Homs have begun surrendering their weapons to the government and Russian forces as part of an evacuation deal with Damascus.
Friday marked the second day the militants were handing over their arms as part of the deal. Around 1,650 people, including militants and civilians, were bussed out on Thursday and reached northern Syria the following morning.
“The fighters are handing over their heavy and intermediate weapons to Russian and regime forces for the second consecutive day,” the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It included artillery and machine guns, said Rami Abdel-Rahman, the head of the London-based observatory.
Militants and civilians will be granted safe passage to the town of Jarabulus in Aleppo Province, and the neighboring province of Idlib.
The Moscow-brokered deal came about on Wednesday, when militants agreed to disarm and return the towns of Houla, Rastan, and Talbiseh and the villages around them to government control.
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From PressTV
UK admits killing civilian in airstrike on Syria
The United Kingdom has admitted that its airstrikes, which purportedly targeted the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Syria, killed a civilian, the first time to acknowledge civilian casualties after media revelations of several deaths.
British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said in a statement on Wednesday that the Royal Air Force strike on three Daesh terrorists in eastern Syria on March 26 also killed a motorcyclist who crossed into the area at the last minute.
The statement comes a day after the BBC quoted a source inside the so-called US-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh as saying that he believed civilians had been killed in “several” RAF air raids.
“During a strike to engage three Daesh fighters, a civilian motorbike crossed into the strike area at the last moment and it is assessed that one civilian was unintentionally killed,” Williamson said.
“We reached this conclusion after undertaking routine and detailed post-strike analysis of all available evidence,” he added.
Back on March 26, the ministry said of the attack that a Reaper remotely-controlled aircraft had tracked “a group of terrorists in a vehicle” in the Syrian Euphrates valley and “successfully destroyed it and its occupants with a precision Hellfire missile attack”.
From PressTV
Saudis examining Israel’s Iron Dome for purchase: Report
Saudi Arabia is mulling buying a missile system owned and operated by the Israeli regime, a new report suggests, amid increasing hints of the normalization of relations between the kingdom and the regime.
Basler Zeitung, a Swiss paper, reported this week that military experts from Saudi Arabia had examined Iron Dome during a military weapons show in the United Arab Emirates and that a potential purchase might be possible in future.
This as there is a low expert opinion in general of the missile system. In 2014, Theodore A. Postol, a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studied a variety of publicly available data on the missile system, arguing that the Iron Dome’s intercept rate, defined as destruction of a rocket’s warhead, was “perhaps as low as five percent but could well be lower.”
The Swiss daily report said experts were examining other Israeli-made weapons for such purchases, including Trophy Active Protection System, which is installed on tanks to detect and neutralize rockets and other projectiles.
Saudi Arabia is in the third year of its devastating campaign against its southern neighbor Yemen. More than 14,000 people have been killed in relentless bombardment of residential areas across Yemen since the campaign started in March 2015.
The Saudis have bought billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and military equipment over the past years, many of them being used in the war on Yemen. Riyadh has also boosted its defenses against retaliatory missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which mostly targets military positions south of the kingdom and other key areas.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Amid anti-Semitism row, British Labour loses heavily-Jewish London borough
(JTA) — Following unprecedented protests by British Jews against a major political movement, the country’s Labour party lost in local elections a heavily-Jewish area of London that it had held for decades.
Labour, whose leadership many British Jews believe is ignoring or encouraging the proliferation of anti-Semitism in its ranks, failed in Thursday’s elections to win from the Conservatives control of the council of Barnet, which is a northern borough of London where 14 percent of the population is Jewish.
Labour has never won control over Barnet Council since the borough’s creation as a municipal unit in 1964.
But in West Hendon, which is an area of Barnet, all three Labour candidates lost to Conservative rivals even though Labour had held West Hendon for nearly 40 years, according to The Independent.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
German rappers who mocked Auschwitz prisoners agree to visit Nazi camp
Farid Bang, left, and Kollegah at the Echo Awards ceremony in Berlin, April 12, 2018. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
(JTA) — The German rappers who brought down a prestigious German music prize over songs containing anti-Semitic lyrics will visit Auschwitz.
Kollegah and Farid Bang accepted an invitation from the International Auschwitz Committee to visit the former Nazi death camp next month, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported.
On April 12, they won an Echo Award in the hip-hop category for an album with lyrics that boasted of physiques “more defined that those of Auschwitz inmates” and called for “another Holocaust; let’s grab the Molotov” cocktails. The album’s title in English is “Young, Brutal, Good Looking 3.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Alan Dershowitz is helping Harvey Weinstein’s legal team
Alan Dershowitz at NEP Studios in New York, Feb. 3, 2016. (John Lamparski/Getty Images for Hulu)
(JTA) — Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz is helping Harvey Weinstein’s legal team, according to court documents.
Weinstein, a Jewish movie mogul who is currently being investigated by law enforcement authorities over allegations of sexual misconduct, is fighting with Dershowitz’s help to obtain emails that Weinstein says would “exonerate” him, according to an article Friday in the Hollywood Reporter, which the magazine says are based on court documents.
On Thursday, Weinstein continued his bid in Delaware Bankruptcy Court to obtain personal and business records kept by The Weinstein Co. – a firm which he helped set up but which dismissed him in October following multiple complaints about his alleged sexual exploitation of women. The company has declared bankruptcy and its assets have been put on sale.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Film academy expels Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby over sex crimes
(JTA) — The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has expelled director Roman Polanski and actor Bill Cosby over their convictions for sexual crimes.
The prestigious organization made the announcement on Thursday, two days after its board members voted on the issue, the BBC reported. In a statement, the academy said its board “has voted to expel actor Bill Cosby and director Roman Polanski from its membership in accordance with the organization’s Standards of Conduct.”
Polanski, an Oscar-winning director who is Jewish, fled the United States some four decades ago after being convicted of sexually assaulting an underage girl. Cosby was convicted of sexual assault last month.
Producer Harvey Weinstein was kicked out last year following numerous allegations of sexual assault.
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