Israeli supreme court says ultra-Orthodox must serve in military

Israeli supreme court says ultra-Orthodox must serve in military
Israeli police officers remove an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man from the street during a protest against army recruitment in Jerusalem on June 2, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 25 June 2024
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Israeli supreme court says ultra-Orthodox must serve in military

Israeli supreme court says ultra-Orthodox must serve in military
  • Israel supreme court rules religious seminary students must be drafted to military

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for military service, a decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza.
The court ruled that in the absence of a law that distinguishes between Jewish seminary students and other draftees, Israel’s compulsory military service system applies to the ultra-Orthodox like any other citizens.
Under longstanding arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men have been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women. These exemptions have long been a source of anger among the secular public, a divide that has widened during the eight-month-old war.


With strong ties to Lebanon, Latin Americans suffer in the wake of Israeli attacks

Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
Updated 16 sec ago
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With strong ties to Lebanon, Latin Americans suffer in the wake of Israeli attacks

Brazilians deplane after the Air Force evacuated them from Lebanon amid Israeli airstrikes, at the Air Force base in Guarulhos.
  • Brazil’s government estimates 21,000 Brazilian nationals living in Lebanon

BRASILIA: With millions of people of Lebanese descent living in Latin America — certain analysts think there are more people of Lebanese ancestry in Brazil alone than in Lebanon itself — the number of Latin Americans in Lebanon is equally high.

Since the Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon and on Beirut intensified, countries like Colombia and Brazil have sent planes to rescue groups of their citizens.

A massive evacuation from cities near the border with Israel has been ordered by the invading forces over the past few days. At least 70 towns have been included in the evacuation list by Israel. The strikes on Beirut led hundreds of thousands of people to move as well.

In many such locations, there are groups of Latin American families, many the sons and daughters of Lebanese immigrants to the New World who decided to go back to their parents’ homeland.

Cases of Latin American women, with or without Lebanese ancestry, who married Lebanese men in Latin America and decided to move with them to Lebanon are also pretty common.

That is the case with Leni Souza, a 48-year-old Brazilian woman from Parana state, which has one of the largest Lebanese communities in Brazil.

Souza spent her childhood in Foz do Iguacu, on the border with Ciudad del Este in Paraguay, and Puerto Iguazu, in Argentina, an area with hundreds of thousands of Lebanese nationals. She met her husband, a Lebanese-born man with dual (Lebanese and Brazilian) citizenship, in the city. Some 11 years ago, already with three daughters, the couple decided to move to a city in the south of Lebanon. The eldest is 20 and a university student; the other two are 13-year-old twins.

“Our region has been hardly hit. We finally managed to escape on Oct. 1, after a long time trying to put fuel in our cars. We spent nine hours stuck on the road. Everybody was trying to run away,” she told Arab News.

Souza said her daughters are traumatized by the sound of the bombs. The night before they escaped, there was a terrible strike on the area. They spent the night at their grandparents’ house, thinking it would be safer. Souza, who was also there, said it was a nightmare.

She added: “The bomb’s noise was so loud that we thought they were exploding the house. We had to touch ourselves to confirm we were alive.”

Her eldest daughter lost a college colleague that night. The building where she lived was destroyed and the young lady died.

The family left the city without a definite destination. Shelters were all full of displaced people. They eventually found a second-floor free space to rent, in a mountainous region. It has no furniture or any home appliances, but they feel better now that they have a place to stay.

Brazil’s government estimates at 21,000 the number of Brazilian nationals living in Lebanon. After sending questionnaires to the whole community, the Brazilian Embassy in Beirut learned that about 3,000 of them wished to be evacuated to the South American country.

Souza said: “I confirmed that we want to be taken to Sao Paulo. But it will not be easy for us. Our whole life is in Beirut. We’ll begin our lives from scratch in Brazil.”

The region’s Brazilian women keep a group on social media and stand by each other in difficult situations. Souza said many people are facing serious health problems now and need to be immediately taken from Lebanon.

She said: “I would be happy to give my place to those people, if my name appears on the next list. I feel safer now on the mountains and don’t care if we have to wait a little longer in order to go to Brazil.”

Brazil’s first plane had to wait longer than had been planned in Portugal due to security reasons, but it finally landed in Beirut on Oct. 5, rescuing 229 Brazilians and three pets. Operation Cedar Roots, as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s administration called it, may take several weeks until it is finally concluded.

Up until now, two Brazilians have died as a result of Israeli aggression, 15-year-old Kamal Abdallah and 16-year-old Mirna Raef Nasser.

Another significant Latin American community in Lebanon is the one formed by Argentines. There are no reliable estimates of their number and President Javier Milei’s administration still has not announced an evacuation plan.

“I called the Argentine Embassy and I was told that the government is not taking anyone out of Lebanon,” an Argentine woman, who preferred to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, told Arab News. The embassy directed her to leave Lebanon through Syria.

On Oct. 5, however, Said Chaya, the secretary-general of the Lebanese-Argentine Culture Union, known as the UCAL, told Arab News that the government had begun to ask Lebanon’s residents if they wanted to be rescued and taken to Argentina.

Chaya told Arab News: “People who can’t leave endangered areas are being consulted. But, as far as I know, most of them don’t want to escape from Lebanon. They prefer to remain there on the mountains and wait to see what will happen.”

The Argentine woman who talked to Arab News has been feeling those contradictory sentiments. On the one hand, she has thought about fleeing the region after the strikes on Beirut, where she lives, had led her and her family to leave the capital, but, on the other, she said her husband’s extended family cannot be left behind.

“We can’t flee the country and leave them here. Either we all go or no one goes,” she said, adding they are a group of 20 people who are all together now in a small house with only one bathroom.

An Argentine woman with no Arab ancestry, she has been living in Lebanon since 2003 and has three children: two of them, aged 20 and 25, are with her now.

She said: “We came in order to live a safer life with our kids, for their education, for religion. Except for the 2006 attacks, it used to be a safe country.”

Her two children now get extremely anxious when they hear the sound of bombs exploding.

She added: “Israel wants to create a second Gaza here. I’m terribly sad, because most of the world pretends that nothing is happening. They don’t care about us.”

She said that her family is tired and that she fears for her relatives’ safety.

She said: “The truth is that I don’t want to go anywhere else. I just want this to end tomorrow and to go back to my house.”

Lebanese families in Latin America follow the events in the Middle East and their country’s rescue plans with anguish. Lawyer Hanna Mtaneos Hanna Jr., an honorary consul of Lebanon in Goiania, Brazil, told Arab News the atmosphere among Lebanese Brazilians is tense.

“The Lebanese community is saddened and disgusted with the situation. Things have been escalating and the world keeps watching without doing anything,” he told Arab News.

Hanna Jr. himself has relatives in the northern part of Lebanon. Despite the fact that his four cousins are relatively safe now, he has been worried like everybody else.

He said: “A friend of mine has two sons living in Beirut. He has been extremely concerned. They’ve been trying to come back, but all commercial flights are constantly canceled.”

He thinks that the Brazilian government has been acting with the necessary haste since the crisis began, despite the difficulties involved in an operation during war.

That is not the case with Argentina, where Milei’s own particular views concerning Israel — he is very interested in Judaism and even promised, during the campaign, that he would move the Argentine Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — have reportedly been affecting his work with the Lebanese community.

Chaya said: “He keeps, for instance, a distant relationship with Muslims, who are part of the Lebanese community. Maybe that’s why it took so long for the government to organize the rescue.”

The UCAL and dozens of other Lebanese organizations published a letter last week in which they repudiated Israeli aggression. Protests against the attacks have been promoted in cities like Rosario and Cordoba.

The Islamic Center of the Argentine Republic, known as CIRA and founded mainly by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants decades ago, has been directly impacted by the attacks, said Hassan El-Bacha, its secretary-general.

“Israel is destroying the cities from which our ancestors came,” he told Arab News.

He said the community is appalled by the strikes, adding: “The Zionist occupation will not be detained unless the international community takes the matters in its hands.”

Other countries in Latin America are also involved in the crisis. A flight carrying 116 Colombian nationals and a few foreigners arrived in Bogota last week. New flights have already been scheduled and Peru’s government has also been helping a group of Peruvian nationals sheltering in the north.


Syria air defense intercepts ‘hostile targets’: state media

A Syrian man crosses on foot into Syria through a crater caused by an Israeli airstrike.
A Syrian man crosses on foot into Syria through a crater caused by an Israeli airstrike.
Updated 44 min 36 sec ago
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Syria air defense intercepts ‘hostile targets’: state media

A Syrian man crosses on foot into Syria through a crater caused by an Israeli airstrike.
  • “Our air defense systems are intercepting hostile targets in the airspace of the central region” of Syria, official SANA news agency said

DAMASCUS: Syrian air defense was intercepting ‘hostile targets’ in the country’s central region on Sunday evening, state media said, a phrase usually used to refer to Israeli strikes on the war-torn country.
“Our air defense systems are intercepting hostile targets in the airspace of the central region” of the country, the official SANA news agency said.
“Israeli strikes” targeted a “weapons depot south of Homs and a rockets depot in the eastern Hama countryside,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP, adding that the sites belonged to the Syrian army.
Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli strike in Syria targeted trucks transporting aid for Lebanese people, wounding three aid workers, the Observatory said.
On Friday, Lebanon said an Israeli air strike on the Syrian border cut off the main international road linking the two countries.
Since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
The strikes have increased in recent days, including on areas near the border with Lebanon.
Tens of thousands of people have crossed into Syria over the past week, fleeing heavy Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.


Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel

Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel
Updated 06 October 2024
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Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel

Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel
  • Yemeni information minister says militia abducted content creator Abdul Rahman Al-Baydani from his home in province of Ibb

AL-MUKALLA: The leader of Yemen’s Houthi militia, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, pledged on Sunday to defend Iran if it was attacked by Israel and to continue firing missiles and drones at Israel in support of the Palestinians and Lebanese. 

Speaking on the eve of the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Al-Houthi vowed to escalate attacks on international ships while continuing to fire missiles and drones at Israel, claiming that his forces had fired 1000 ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at 193 ships and Israel since the start of their campaign in November.

“On the Yemeni front, we maintain our principled, humanitarian, moral, religious and faithful position in support of the Palestinian people, their mujahideen, our brothers in Lebanon, the Hezbollah mujahideen, the Islamic Republic of Iran, our brothers in Iraq and the nation’s free people,” he said, adding that 774 US and UK strikes on Yemeni areas under the militia’s control had killed 82 people and injured 340 others. He also urged his supporters to demonstrate on Monday in the streets of Sanaa and other Yemeni cities under their control in support of Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. 

Al-Houthi’s speech came two days after the US Central Command launched a series of strikes on “Houthi offensive military capabilities” in Sanaa, Thamar, Hodeidah and Bayda, the latest round of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen for their ship attacks.

Since November, the Houthis have captured a commercial ship and its crew, sunk two more and set fire to several others while firing hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at more than 100 commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. 

The Houthis claim that they only target Israel-linked ships or ships visiting Israeli ports to pressure Israel to end its war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

This comes as Yemeni government officials said on Sunday that the Yemeni government’s efforts to evacuate stranded Yemeni nationals from Lebanon have been suspended after an Israeli airstrike hit Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria, cutting off a vital artery for thousands of people fleeing Israel’s devastating air bombardment of Lebanon.

The Yemeni Embassy in Lebanon recently requested that Yemenis living in Lebanon apply for a transit visit from Syria before proceeding to Lebanon’s border crossing with Syria and that it would arrange transportation to transfer them from Lebanon to Syria and then to Jordan before taking Yemenia Airways flights from Amman to Yemeni airports.

Stranded Yemenis in Lebanon rejected the Yemeni embassy’s proposal to evacuate them by land.

They demanded that their government evacuate them by air from Beirut on Yemenia Airways or by sea.

Mushtaq Anaam, a Yemeni national living in Beirut’s Cola, told Arab News on Sunday that the Yemeni government should evacuate them by air, just as the Tunisian government did by sending a flight to evacuate stranded Tunisians and their families, and providing them with lodging. Anaam added that their lives in Lebanon had deteriorated as apartment rentals had risen dramatically in recent days.

“The financial situation of those stranded has deteriorated significantly, with people unable to afford transportation and rent,” he said. 

“Rents have risen by 200 percent, and landlords ask for three months’ rent in advance. Except for Yemen, all countries are nearing the end of their citizens’ evacuations,” Anaam said.

Yemeni media reported that a Yemeni national, Ali A-Hajj, from Yemen’s Ibb province, and his Lebanese mother, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Lebanon’s West Bekaa on Friday.    

Meanwhile, Yemeni Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani said on Saturday that the Houthis abducted a Yemeni content creator and media activist, Abdul Rahman Al-Baydani, from his home in the province of Ibb, due to online criticism of the Houthis, as the Yemeni militia intensifies their crackdown on Yemenis who criticize them or celebrate the 1962 revolution.

“These abductions are just a new episode in the series of systematic violations carried out by the Houthi militia against every free voice in the areas under its control, who exercise their right to report the facts and expose the militia’s oppressive practices,” Al-Eryani said in a post on X.


Flights from all Iran’s airports canceled from late on Sunday

Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
Updated 06 October 2024
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Flights from all Iran’s airports canceled from late on Sunday

Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
  • The flights have been canceled due to operational restrictions, state media cited the spokesperson as saying without providing further details

DUBAI: Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday, Iran’s state media said, citing a spokesperson for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization.
The flights have been canceled due to operational restrictions, state media cited the spokesperson as saying without providing further details.
Iran implemented restrictions on flights on Tuesday when it launched missiles at Israel, in an attack to which Israel vowed to respond.


Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far
Updated 06 October 2024
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Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far
  • On Sunday, a grey haze hung over city and rubble was strewn across streets in southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over area
  • Israel said its air force had ‘conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities belonging to the Hezbollah’

BEIRUT: Israeli air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday, the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month.
During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away.
It was the single biggest attack of Israel’s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.
On Sunday a grey haze hung over the city and rubble was strewn across streets in the southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over the area.
“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes — we couldn’t count them all — and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj Al-Barajneh area in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Videos posted on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed fresh damage to the highway that runs from Beirut airport through its southern suburbs into downtown.
Israel said its air force had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities and terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Beirut.”
Lebanese authorities did not immediately say what the missiles had hit or what damage they caused.
This weekend’s intense bombardment came just ahead of the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures.
The target of Israel’s airstrikes across Lebanon and its ground invasion in the south of the country is the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Iran’s chief ally in the region. The assault has killed hundreds of people including civilians and has displaced 1.2 million, Lebanese officials say.
For days Israel has bombed the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh — considered a stronghold for Hezbollah but also home to thousands of ordinary Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian refugees — killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike on Thursday near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
Israel continues to bomb the area of the strike, preventing rescue workers from reaching it, Lebanese security sources said.
Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in recent weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Gaza war
Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the Oct. 7 attacks and aimed at eliminating Hamas, another Iran-backed group, has killed nearly 42,000 people, Palestinian authorities say. The coastal enclave lies in ruins.
At least 26 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel a day after the Oct. 7 attacks and after Israel had begun bombing Gaza, saying it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinian group.
Cross-border fire continued between Israel and Hezbollah for months, but were mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area before the recent upsurge.
Israel says it stepped up its assault on Hezbollah last month to enable the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to homes in northern Israel, bombarded by the group since last Oct. 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sounded on Sunday and the Israeli military said it had intercepted rockets fired from Lebanese territory.
Iran has signalled it does not want a direct war with Israel but has launched responses on occasion to Israeli attacks. It fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday that did little damage.
Israel has been weighing options for its response.