Uproar in India over fears of Hyderabad-made killer drones use in Gaza

An employee checks an Elbit Systems Ltd. Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the company’s drone factory in Rehovot, Israel. (File/Reuters)
An employee checks an Elbit Systems Ltd. Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the company’s drone factory in Rehovot, Israel. (File/Reuters)
Short Url
Updated 11 March 2024
Follow

Uproar in India over fears of Hyderabad-made killer drones use in Gaza

An employee checks an Elbit Systems Ltd. Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the company’s drone factory in Rehovot.
  • Palestine a ‘laboratory for war technologies,’ India’s Human Rights Forum said
  • Activists also called attention to India’s historic support for Palestinians

NEW DELHI: Indian activists are calling on their government to cease military ties with Israel amid fears India-made combat drones are set to be used in attacks on Gaza.

The Hyderabad-based Adani Elbit, a joint venture between one of India’s largest conglomerates Adani Group and Israel’s defense electronics company, supplied the Israeli military with 20 Hermes 900 drones last month, according to reports.

The facility in southern India is the first outside of Israel to manufacture the Hermes 900, a type of drone which has been actively used in the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and displaced an estimated 1.7 million people.

“The Human Rights Forum (HRF) strongly condemns Adani’s recent agreements with Israel that include the sending of advanced drones with the clear potential to be deployed in aid of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” the HRF said in a statement issued over the weekend.

“We demand that the Indian government cancel, with immediate effect, all such deals with Israel.”

India has strong defense ties with Israel, as New Delhi is also one of the largest buyers of Israeli military equipment, and reportedly purchased about $2 billion worth of weapons from Tel Aviv over the last decade.




Indian PM Narendra Modi hugs Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as they deliver statements in Jerusalem. (File/Reuters)

Palestine has been a “laboratory for war technologies,” the HRF said, adding that Israel has been marketing its “genocidal ‘success’” globally.

Many parts of Gaza, including residential areas and previously busy shopping streets, have been left ruined and reduced to rubble. Israeli air raids have relentlessly targeted crucial public facilities over the last five months, including universities, hospitals, and refugee shelters.

“We want the Indian government (to issue) an outright rejection of what is being done by Zionist Israel towards Palestinians, particularly in Gaza,” V.S. Krishna, who signed the HRF letter, told Arab News on Monday.

“We are already at a historic low, morally, not having actively opposed what Israel is doing … I think India should have a drastic change of course in policy that we historically (already had), but over the years it has changed,” he added, referring to India’s historic support for Palestine.

Pamela Philipose, a journalist and senior fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, also called attention to India’s historic closeness to Palestine.

“It is time that the people of India woke up to what is happening … Whether it was from Gandhi to Nehru to Mrs. Gandhi, all of them have stood out and said that the rights of the Palestinians need to be protected and India stands by Palestine,” Philipose told Arab News.

She said the Adani Group’s drone export to Israel is “very disturbing,” especially when India is not adequately supporting Palestine but actually contributing to the attacks on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice has characterized as a plausible genocide.

“Given this, it is important for people of the country to speak out and it is good that civil society organizations also begin to speak out because we need people to be engaged with this issue.”

Aban Raza, an artist and activist, said India is “also complicit” and “very responsible” for Israel’s onslaught on Gaza.

“If you are supplying weapons to a country that is committing genocide, then nothing can be more shameful,” Raza told Arab News.

“As a citizen I would like to demand that it cease all ties with Israel, especially the military. It should completely declare the deal between Adani and Elbit as void and in fact, it should take action to help with the humanitarian aid.”


‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list
Updated 06 December 2024
Follow

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list

‘We love our food’: Malaysians cheer as breakfast culture joins UNESCO list
  • Malaysia’s breakfast traditions recognized on Intangible Cultural Heritage list
  • This is the first time Malaysia has received UN recognition related to gastronomy

KUALA LUMPUR: For many Malaysians, breakfast has always been the highlight of the day — and now, it is also a source of pride after gaining a place on UNESCO’s cultural heritage list.

The UN body voted on Thursday to include Malaysia’s breakfast culture, “a living heritage related to the traditional dietary practices,” on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The recognition was immediately welcomed by the Ministry of Culture as a “historic milestone” as it was Malaysia’s first UNESCO entry related to food and gastronomy. It also drew delighted responses from all those from whom breakfast is an integral part of family and social life.

Heng Wei Boon, a 47-year-old engineer, still remembers the food his mother used to prepare when he was growing up in Penang. The usual menu was half-boiled eggs with toast, porridge, or noodle soup. All three dishes until now remain his breakfast favorites until now.

“It did not matter if it was a school day. If it is, breakfast is at 6.30 a.m. If not, it’s around 7:45 or 8 a.m,” he said.

“It is a meal to start the day and here in Malaysia, we take it very seriously.”

From home kitchens to kopitiams — traditional coffee houses — to roadside stalls and office cafeterias, the first meal of the day is like a ritual in all of Malaysia’s multi-ethnic communities.

“I grew up in a kampung (village) neighborhood, in the city, and back then, sometimes, some of the moms took turns making breakfast for the kids ... It was such a fun time, and it is a memory so many of us cherish and still talk about,” Nur Natasha Siraj, a 35-year old pharmacist in the Klang Valley told Arab News.

“Now, as a working adult, taking that time for breakfast — to sit and share a meal to start my day — is an important part of my routine, as it is for many Malaysians. The boomers in my hospital would never not go for breakfast and even give us a scolding for missing breakfast. Not so much because they care about our health, but because it is our time to check in with one another and bond before the rush of the day begins.”

A screengrab from a 2023 clip by Malaysia's Department of National Heritage shows a food vendor serving nasi lemak. (UNESCO)

Her favorite breakfast item was nasi lemak — fragrant rice cooked in coconut milk and with pandan leaves, accompanied by sambal chili sauce and various garnishes like fresh cucumber slices, fried anchovies, roasted peanuts, and boiled or fried eggs.

Traditionally served in banana leaves, it is one of the most popular staples.

Mahalakshmi Sundarasekaran, a Kuala Lumpur vendor who sells nasi lemak and idli — savory Indian rice cakes — runs out of her menu items within two hours from opening her stall in the morning.

“People are always in a good mood when having breakfast. I enjoy seeing that. I am glad Malaysia got recognized for this,” she said.

“We, Malaysians, love our food, give it to us three times a day, five times a day, we will eat. But there’s something about breakfast. A good breakfast to start your day ... This recognition is so appropriate.”

Other iconic breakfast items include roti canai — a flaky, crispy South Indian flatbread served with lentil or meat curry — and mi soto, a soup dish that combines broth spiced with turmeric, ginger and lemongrass, and thick yellow noodles.

Sulaiman Ramly, who owns a mi soto stall in Kota Bharu in the northern state of Kelantan, told Arab News that breakfast was a “reset time” for Malaysians.

“It is when they set their bearings for the day. For someone like me who sells breakfast for a living, I know that a good meal to start your day sets the tone for the whole day,” he said.

“In Malaysia, there is no shortage of good food and especially not of good breakfast.”


Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza
Updated 06 December 2024
Follow

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza

Israeli troops force Indonesian medical team to leave north Gaza
  • Indonesians were the only surgeons left at Kamal Adwan Hospital
  • Heavy casualties reported as Israeli forces stormed the hospital

DUBAI: Indonesian medics volunteering at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza said they were forced by Israeli troops to leave the area on Friday, days after arriving with emergency assistance.

Like the rest of Gaza’s north, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has been cut from any supplies since early October, enduring multiple Israeli strikes and a siege and running out of fuel, among other essentials.

Five volunteers from the Indonesian nongovernmental organization Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, or MER-C, arrived in the facility on Dec. 1 and were the first emergency medical team to reach it in 60 days.

They were forced to leave on Friday morning following two warnings, Dr. Faradina Sulistiyani, a surgeon from the MER-C, said in a video clip upon arrival in Gaza City.

“We walked from Kamal Adwan until Salah Al-Din Street,” she said. “They are bombing the hospital now.”

Most of the hospital’s doctors have been detained by Israeli soldiers in raids since late October.

The Indonesian team, comprising Sulistiyani, another surgeon, an obstetrician, and two nurses, were the only ones able to perform surgeries in the past days, the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said in a statement after their departure.

“No surgeons are left,” he said, as he reported scores of casualties from Friday’s attacks.

“Medical supplies are running out, and there are hundreds of victims.”

From the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Indonesian team walked to the nearby Indonesia Hospital — a facility that was funded and opened by MER-C in 2016. Heavily damaged by Israeli strikes last year, the hospital partly reopened in June. It has been targeted again since October.

Video footage shared by MER-C shows the Indonesian medics sheltering in the facility, amid strikes hitting the building.

“We have evacuated from the Kamal Adwan Hospital, now at Indonesia Hospital. God willing, we’ll walk to Salah Al-Din,” one of the volunteers said in the clip. “Dr. Hussam and other local medical staff remained in Kamal Adwan.”

When they reached Salah Al-Din Road, the main highway of the Gaza Strip, they were picked up by a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance.

“There were still people walking some 300 meters behind us,” Kamal Putra Pratama, a nurse from the team, said in a video from the car. “Hopefully the people who were in Kamal Adwan, the sick people, can be evacuated.”

One of the last functioning health centers in north Gaza, the Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times since the start of Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave in October last year.

The hospital’s intensive care unit director Ahmad Al-Kahlut was killed in an air strike late last month.

The Israeli military has killed at least 44,600 people and injured more than 105,000. The real death toll is believed to be much higher, with estimates published by medical journal The Lancet indicating that, as of July, it could be more than 186,000.


EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say
Updated 06 December 2024
Follow

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say

EU envoys fail to agree 15th package of sanctions on Russia, diplomats say
  • Two member states blocked the passage over a disagreement about extending the time given to European companies disinvesting from Russia, diplomats said
  • EU members will come back to the package later

BRUSSELS: Representatives of European Union countries failed on Friday to approve a 15th package of sanctions on Russia, which included an extension for the Czech Republic to import Russian oil-based products coming mainly through Slovakia, diplomats said.
Two member states blocked the passage over a disagreement about extending the time given to European companies disinvesting from Russia, diplomats said. EU members will come back to the package later.
The package also includes sanctions on tankers carrying Russian oil.
Within the package was a debate on extending an EU exemption allowing the Czechs to continue importing diesel and other products derived from Russian oil and made in a Slovak refinery.
While the Czechs have said they were not looking for an extension allowing the import of Russian oil-based fuels, Slovakia has sought to keep the arrangement, which expired on Thursday, in place.
Slovak refiner Slovnaft, owned by Hungary’s MOL , is a significant exporter of diesel made from Russian oil to the Czech Republic. Czech officials have said an extension for six months could be accepted.
The 27-nation EU banned most oil imports from Russia after the country’s full-scale
invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary gained exemptions to sanctions because of a lack of other supply.
However, the Czech Republic has been upgrading a pipeline from Italy to Germany to transport more oil that way and wean itself completely off Russian crude by the second half of 2025.


EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Argentina's President Javier Milei, Uruguay's President Luis Lacalle Pou, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Br
Argentina's President Javier Milei, Uruguay's President Luis Lacalle Pou, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Br
Updated 17 min 17 sec ago
Follow

EU and South America countries conclude Mercosur trade deal

Argentina's President Javier Milei, Uruguay's President Luis Lacalle Pou, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Br
  • Agreement will create a sprawling free-trade zone of more than 700 million people
  • France, which opposes the deal, says the agreement would bring unfair competition for agriculture

MONTEVIDEO: The EU and four South American countries have concluded a huge, but controversial trade deal that is opposed by France and many European farmers, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday.
“This is a win-win agreement,” von der Leyen said in Uruguay, where she was attending a summit of the Mercosur bloc involved in the deal, which also includes Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
The agreement would create a sprawling free-trade zone of more than 700 million people.
She called the agreement — nearly a quarter of a century in the making — “a truly historic milestone” that builds trade bridges at a time when “strong winds are blowing in the opposite direction, toward isolation and fragmentation.”
But the European farmers’ group COPA-COGECA immediately reiterated its opposition to the agreement and called for a “flash” protest in Brussels on Monday.
EU countries and the European Parliament “must now firmly challenge the terms of this agreement,” the umbrella organization said.
While negotiations have concluded, the EU-Mercosur deal still needs to be greenlit by at least 15 of the European Union’s 27 member nations representing 65 percent of the EU population, as well as the European Parliament.
France, which has been rocked by successive protests by farmers saying the agreement would bring unfair competition, has tried to forge a blocking minority of EU countries.
Poland has rallied to France’s side, and Italian government sources say Rome believes “the conditions are not met” to back the deal. The Netherlands and Austria have also expressed reservations.
France’s minister for trade, Sophie Primas, said that von der Leyen’s announcement “regards only her.”
“Today is not the end of the story.... This only commits the commission, not the (EU) member states,” she said in a statement to AFP.
But Germany, desperate to open more trade opportunities amid gloom for its manufacturing sector, had strongly come out in favor of the EU-Mercosur deal, as had Spain.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reacted to the announcement from von der Leyen — a former German defense minister — by saying on X that “an important hurdle” had been overcome.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hailed a “historic agreement with Mercosur to establish an unprecedented economic bridge between Europe and Latin America.”
The broad outlines of a deal were agreed back in 2019 but it was never ratified amid concerns over the impact of Brazilian farming on climate change, among other factors.
Von der Leyen nodded to that preoccupation, saying: “The EU-Mercosur agreement reflects our steadfast commitment to the Paris Agreement (on fighting climate change) and to the fight against deforestation.”
She said efforts being made by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to protect the Amazon “are welcome, and they are necessary — but preserving the Amazon is a shared responsibility of all humanity.”
She also singled out European farmers, telling them: “We have heard you, listened to your concerns, and we are acting on them. This agreement includes robust safeguards to protect your livelihoods.”
The deal, once ratified, would allow the EU to export cars, machinery and pharmaceutical products more easily to South America.
In return, Brazil and its neighbors would be able to sell meat, sugar, rice, honey, soybeans and other products to Europe with fewer restrictions.
The treaty aims to eliminate most import taxes between the EU and Mercosur to create a vast free-trade area of more than 700 million consumers.
Sources familiar with the negotiations told AFP the deal would include changes to “several chapters,” including government contracts, services, intellectual property and the environment.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday had repeated a warning to von der Leyen that the agreement was “unacceptable in its current state.”


UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh
Updated 06 December 2024
Follow

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh

UK warns of possible terror attacks in Bangladesh
  • Foreign Office warns against ‘all but essential travel’ to South Asian country amid political turmoil
  • Large public gatherings, religious sites, political rallies cited as areas of concern

LONDON: The UK has warned travelers to Bangladesh that “terrorists are likely to try to carry out attacks” in the South Asian country.

In an update to its official travel guidance, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office cautioned against “all but essential travel” to Bangladesh, highlighting large public gatherings, religious sites and political rallies as areas of concern.

“Some groups have targeted people who they consider to have views and lifestyles contrary to Islam,” the FCDO said.

The warnings come as Bangladesh continues to experience violence and political turmoil following the collapse of the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Aug. 5 amid nationwide protests.

The country has subsequently seen attacks, including with improvised explosive devices, against minority groups and the police. 

The FCDO warned that authorities may use security threats to justify imposing extreme restrictions on movement without warning.