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In an interview, the Ukrainian president makes a pragmatic case for continued American support.
As it happens, an opportunity to ask that hypothetical question recently availed itself. The chair of the board of directors of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs; The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg; and I interviewed President Volodymyr Zelensky several days ago in the presidential palace in Kyiv. In the course of an hour-long conversation, Goldberg asked Zelensky what he would say to someone, perhaps a governor of Florida, who wonders why Americans should help Ukraine.
Zelensky, answering in English, told us that he would respond pragmatically. He didn’t want to appeal to the hearts of Americans, in other words, but to their heads. Were Americans to cut off Ukraine from ammunition and weapons, after all, there would be clear consequences in the real world, first for Ukraine’s neighbors but then for others:
If we will not have enough weapons, that means we will be weak. If we will be weak, they will occupy us. If they occupy us, they will be on the borders of Moldova and they will occupy Moldova. When they have occupied Moldova, they will [travel through] Belarus and they will occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. That’s three Baltic countries which are members of NATO. They will occupy them. Of course [the Balts] are brave people, and they will fight. But they are small. And they don’t have nuclear weapons. So they will be attacked by Russians because that is the policy of Russia, to take back all the countries which have been previously part of the Soviet Union.
And after that, if there were still no further response? Then, he explained, the struggle would continue:
When they will occupy NATO countries, and also be on the borders of Poland and maybe fight with Poland, the question is: Will you send all your soldiers with weapons, all your pilots, all your ships? Will you send tanks and armored vehicles with your young people? Will you do it? Because if you will not do it, you will have no NATO.
At that point, he said, Americans will face a different choice: not politicians deciding whether “to give weapons or not to give weapons” to Ukrainians, but instead, “fathers and mothers” deciding whether to send their children to fight to keep a large part of the planet, filled with America’s allies and most important trading partners, from Russian occupation.
But there would be other consequences too. One of the most horrifying weapons that Russia has used against Ukraine is the Iranian-manufactured Shahed drone, which has no purpose other than to kill civilians. After these drones are used to subdue Ukraine, Zelensky asked, how long would it be before they are used against Israel? If Russia can attack a smaller neighbor with impunity, regimes such as Iran’s are sure to take note. So then the question arises again: “When they will try to occupy Israel, will the United States help Israel? That is the question. Very pragmatic.”
Finally, Zelensky posed a third question. During the war, Ukraine has been attacked by rockets, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles—“not hundreds, but thousands”:
So what will you do when Russia will use rockets to attack your allies, to [attack] civilian people? And what will you do when Russia, after that, if they do not see [opposition] from big countries like the United States? What will you do if they will use rockets on your territory?
And this was his answer: Help us fight them here, help us defeat them here, and you won’t have to fight them anywhere else. Help us preserve some kind of open, normal society, using our soldiers and not your soldiers. That will help you preserve your open, normal society, and that of others too. Help Ukraine fight Russia now so that no one else has to fight Russia later, and so that harder and more painful choices don’t have to be made down the line.
“It’s about nature. It’s about life,” he said. “That’s it.”
Our full report from Ukraine will appear in a forthcoming issue of The Atlantic.
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Stormy Daniels approaches the microphones set up outside federal court to address reporters, April 16, 2018, in New York. (photo: AP)
ALSO SEE: The Hush Money Case
That May Lead to Trump's Indictment, Explained
Donald Trump’s allies are already scrambling to defend him against charges that are expected to materialize in the coming days. An affidavit from 2000 won’t help them.
That was what Donald Trump said on Oct. 7, 2016, as part of his video apology for the now infamous Access Hollywood tape. That day, Republican leaders—including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Trump’s own running mate Mike Pence—had all rebuked his behavior on the tape. In a late-night Facebook Live video, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called on Trump to “step aside.”
The very next day—the first day of Trump’s new era as a “better man”—his attorney Michael Cohen began negotiating on Trump’s behalf to keep a porn star quiet about a sex romp that she and Trump had four months after his wife gave birth to his youngest son.
That’s the context for the events that unfolded over the next few months, and which are now widely expected to yield the first-ever criminal indictment against a former U.S. president.
Unlike in 2016, however, Trump’s allies aren’t turning on him. Instead, they’re trying to brush off the pending charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “fake,” “partisan,” “bullshit,” and “bizarre.”
Among the challenges, some of these defenders say, is proving Trump’s intent—a surreal dilemma that has flummoxed legal analysts for years.
“Bragg would have to prove that Trump not only understood the complex and convoluted campaign laws that few people comprehend, but that he intended to violate them,” Fox News commentator Greg Jarrett wrote on Monday.
But when it comes to charging Trump, that perennial fear might actually be the least of Bragg’s concerns.
That’s because, back in 2000, Trump submitted a sworn affidavit to the Federal Election Commission demonstrating a complex understanding of some of the same campaign finance laws that now appear central to Bragg’s case.
“I neither reimbursed, nor caused any other person to reimburse, any employee of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. or its subsidiaries for his or her contribution to Gormley for Senate,” Trump wrote at the time.
The affidavit, submitted as part of an FEC investigation into a Trump-hosted fundraising event for a Senate candidate, also contained sworn statements that Trump had acted “solely in my individual capacity”—not as a corporate official—and “took no action, of any nature, kind or description, to compel or pressure any employee” to make a donation.
That case was fairly complex for a layperson, and it forced Trump to develop and express a sophisticated understanding of specific federal campaign finance laws. By the end of the ordeal, Trump would have been intimately familiar with why corporations and third parties (“straw donors”) could not make contributions—including in-kind contributions—to candidates for federal office.
As campaign finance law expert Brett Kappel observed in the Wall Street Journal in 2018, the affidavit “indicates that Trump had a very thorough understanding of federal campaign finance law, especially regarding what he could and could not legally do when raising money for a federal candidate.”
Ultimately, that affidavit helped to convince the FEC to drop the case.
Those elements hew closely to the allegations Trump himself would face almost 20 years later. That’s when Cohen, allegedly at Trump’s direction, paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money to keep her story out of the press just ahead of the 2016 election.
The Trump Organization later allegedly reimbursed Cohen in a series of monthly payments, falsely recording them as “legal expenses,” according to federal prosecutors. (Some of the hush money checks were signed by Trump Organization officials, including his oldest adult child, Donald Trump Jr.)
Compare that affidavit, given under penalty of perjury, to Trump’s tweets after his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, admitted on Fox News that Trump had indeed reimbursed Cohen.
“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump tweeted, adding, “Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.”
Ironically, Trump—who could have given as much as he wanted to his own campaign—would very likely not be in legal hot water if he had disclosed his payments as campaign contributions. It’s just that doing so would have likely revealed the allegation to the public.
But Cohen’s payment constituted an excessive in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign, and the reimbursement was an illegal corporate contribution, according to prosecutors. Those off-the-books payments, coming on the heels of the Access Hollywood scandal, could have made a difference in the election, which was ultimately decided by fewer than 70,000 votes.
Cohen initially denied the reimbursement. But in 2018, he pleaded guilty to the excessive donation as well as causing a corporate in-kind contribution, alleging the whole scheme was carried out with Trump’s full knowledge and at his direction.
Today, Trump defenders are reheating arguments from 2018, arguing that these payments weren’t illegal. And even if they were, they say, the statute of limitations has expired. (It hasn’t.) And even if it hasn’t, Bragg only has a misdemeanor charge. And if he does bring a felony charge, it’s a trumped-up political prosecution.
As with the arguments about Trump’s knowledge of campaign finance law, legal experts say, those criticisms don’t hold up. That doesn’t mean Bragg’s case is a slam dunk, however. In fact, he could find himself out on a limb. (Bragg, an elected Democrat who reportedly had doubts about the case early on, initially tabled the “zombie” investigation while he pursued tax charges against the Trump Org, resulting in a $1.6 million fine and the imprisonment of Trump’s longtime CFO.)
But not necessarily.
Paul S. Ryan, an expert in campaign finance law who in 2018 filed an FEC complaint about the arrangement, told The Daily Beast the campaign finance violations were an open-and-shut case.
“A contribution is money or anything of value given to a candidate. These payments meet those definitions,” Ryan said.
“Initially Michael Cohen paid Daniels, then the Trump Org reimbursed him. At that point, the Trump Org became a contributor to the Trump campaign, which corporations are prohibited from doing,” he explained.
Ryan also responded to Trump defenders who argue that he may have made the Daniels payments regardless of the campaign, which would have qualified them as personal expenses.
“These payments would not have been made but for the election, and were only made as the election drew near, right on the heels of the leaked Access Hollywood audio,” he pointed out. (Trump was initially so rattled that he feared the tape could cost him the election, according to Kellyanne Conway’s memoir.)
Prosecutors alleged that Cohen and the National Enquirer cooked up the possible hush-money contingency plan two months after Trump announced his bid, in a meeting Trump personally attended, according to The Wall Street Journal and numerous other outlets.
The FEC’s Office of General Counsel agreed with Ryan’s analysis, recommending that the commissioners find reason to believe that Trump and his company violated the law. The Republican commissioners, however, declined to investigate, citing a pending statute of limitations and the fact that Cohen—though not Trump—had already been punished for the crime.
Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert and deputy director of watchdog group Documented, told The Daily Beast that “nothing is particularly new” in the counterarguments today.
“The contrarians are trying to raise the same arguments they were back in 2018 when this came to light. The fact is that Cohen has already pled guilty to a campaign finance violation arising from the hush money payments. That has been established,” Fischer said.
Cohen’s credibility has been plagued by his history of lying, and will certainly figure into any possible trial—though there’s reason to trust him on Trump. On Monday, Trump claimed Cohen committed perjury, though he was not charged under Trump’s own Justice Department.
“This shows why transparency is such a key requirement in our election laws,” Fischer said. “The payments deprived voters of information about the affair, and the way they were structured further deprived voters of the information that Trump had paid to keep her quiet.”
Reached for comment, a Trump spokesperson provided a statement calling the looming indictment a “threat,” a “witch hunt,” and “simply insane,” while also calling it a “clear exoneration” of Trump “in all areas.”
“The Manhattan District Attorney’s threat to indict President Trump is simply insane. For the past five years, the DA’s office has been on a Witch Hunt, investigating every aspect of [former] President Trump‘s life, and they’ve come up empty at every turn—and now this. The fact that after their intensive investigation the DA is even considering a new political attack is a clear exoneration of [former] President Trump in all areas. [Former] President Trump was the victim of extortion then, just as he is now,” the statement said, without specifying the alleged extortionist.
“It’s an embarrassment to the Democrat prosecutors, and it’s an embarrassment to New York City,” the statement concluded.
Cohen declined to comment for this article.
Hyperbole aside, the Trump team isn’t alone in questioning the strength of Bragg’s case. As some details have dripped out in recent reports—albeit anonymously—a number of legal experts have expressed concern that the DA might be overplaying his hand.
While it seems clear that Bragg has Trump dead to rights on making false business statements—listing Cohen’s reimbursements as “legal expenses”—that’s a misdemeanor. To kick it up to a felony under New York law, Bragg would have to attach the false statements to “an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”
That’s where the case gets sticky. The campaign finance violation that sent Cohen to jail was a federal statute. But Bragg, as a local prosecutor, can only bring state and local charges. Because Trump was a candidate for federal office, most state statutes don’t apply—and the ones that might would likely be preempted by well-established federal doctrine.
There are, however, a few theories for how Bragg can get there.
Some are stronger than others, according to Emily Bradford, a former prosecutor who investigated fraud and corruption with both the New York Attorney General’s Office and the Manhattan DA.
“When you get to the felony level, you have the additional intent to commit or conceal another crime on top of that. So it’s a harder charge to prove, because it has so many elements to it,” Bradford told The Daily Beast. “In my experience, it’s almost always a charge you bring with an underlying crime.”
Bradford speculated that one way Bragg could get there would be not to attach Trump’s false statements to furthering another crime that he himself committed, but to furthering the crime Cohen was already convicted of.
“If they were going to trial on this, they would have to prove that the false business records were in furtherance of another crime. Nothing in the false business records statute suggests that you couldn’t do that with a federal crime,” Bradford said. “You would still have to present evidence of the crime, of course, and you would have to prove an intent to actually commit or conceal that crime.”
“A step in furtherance of Cohen’s payment,” she added, “could arguably be creating the false business record.”
This would sidestep some of the tricky statutory and jurisdictional questions. It would require Bragg to connect Trump’s actions knowingly to Cohen’s crimes, for which there are reams of readily available evidence, including the DOJ’s filings against Cohen, witnesses such as Daniels and the National Enquirer’s David Pecker, and the Trump Organization’s business and tax records.
While the DA would still have to convince the jury of Trump’s involvement and intent, and of the fact that Cohen violated the law, Bradford said, the documents in Cohen’s case “made it clear that Cohen committed a crime, and they also made a strong case that Trump was directly involved.”
A person familiar with the DA’s investigation agreed that this move was possible.
“There’s nothing on the face of the statute that would preclude that,” the person said. “If Person 1 falsifies business records with the intent to conceal a crime by Person 2, that would qualify. Trump’s argument would have to be a very narrow statutory or interpretational argument that ‘crime’ is a defined term.”
Under New York Penal Law, a “crime” isn’t explicitly related to state violations. And New York has previously cited federal crimes to kick the false business records violation up to a felony.
There’s also the possibility that Trump’s falsification of business records helped him further a tax crime—taking a business cost deduction for what should have been a personal expense.
Bradford said that crime could be as minor as filing a false return that claims a false deduction—a misdemeanor—or making an underpayment based on the amount of the deduction, which in this case could have run as high as $420,000. (Trump paid only $750 in taxes for 2016.)
“Tax law crimes are hard to prove against Trump, largely because it would be hard to connect any particular statement in his voluminous tax returns to him personally and because, for a false deduction to be material in the context of his tax returns, it would likely have to be very large,” she said.
There’s also a possibility that, despite the federal preemption doctrine, prosecutors will invoke a state campaign finance law—New York Election Law § 17-152, “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”
“Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” that statute reads.
As a group of legal experts wrote at Just Security on Monday, the question here is whether Trump and Cohen used “unlawful means,” and whether that broadly defined term—while not enumerating a crime per se—would also be preempted by federal law.
David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, dismissed the idea.
“If there is any relevant provision of state law, it wouldn’t matter as the Federal Election Campaign Act would preempt it. See for example, 52 USC 30143, which says in part that ‘the provisions of this Act, and of rules prescribed under this Act, supersede and preempt any provision of State law with respect to election to Federal office,’” Keating told The Daily Beast.
Jerry Goldfeder, a New York campaign finance expert at Stroock LLP, didn’t dismiss the approach on its face, but warned against overeager speculation.
“Federal election law has exceptions to the federal preemption doctrine. DA Bragg will first have to determine whether there’s a state law violation or intent to violate the state law and then determine whether it fits within one of the exceptions,” Goldfeder told The Daily Beast. “But first let’s see what the indictment actually alleges.”
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An Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his 4-year-old son at a regroupment center for POWs of the 101st Airborne Division near An Najaf, March 31, 2003. (photo: Jean-Marc Bouju/AP)
Twenty years after the invasion, veterans struggle to reconcile their sacrifices with the unhappy outcome and the false narratives that started the war.
“I just wanted to be able to go to a country that had experienced mass trauma and to see how people dealt with it,” McLaughlin said. “What I learnt is that for people who experience it, trauma never goes away.”
Twenty years since U.S. troops first invaded, the U.S. war in Iraq has become a faded memory to many Americans. For Iraqis themselves, the consequences of the war are still an unavoidable part of their daily lives. But trauma also lingers for a group of Americans unlikely to forget the war as long as they live: former U.S. service members. More than a million Americans are estimated to have served in Iraq over the course of more than a decade, mostly in noncombat roles. Alongside millions of Iraqis who were killed or displaced by the conflict, thousands of Americans died or were wounded in Iraq.
For many veterans, the war has been the defining event of their lives. Yet it has been difficult to reconcile the terrible sacrifices they made during the conflict with the unhappy outcome or the false narratives that initiated it.
“The idea of going to war is horrible. When people are talking about it on TV, they are talking about something that is not real to them. When it becomes real to you, it stays real to you your whole life,” said McLaughlin. “For me, the experience was violent, stressful, and sad. I truly believe that we were the best in the world at our job and what we did. Unfortunately, the job of the Marine Corps was killing people and destroying stuff.”
In the years after the conflict, McLaughlin struggled with what he had experienced in Iraq. He later published his diaries, documenting the violence and terror of the early days of the invasion. He has also grappled with the tragic nature of the war for Iraqis, who, due to the decision to invade by the Bush administration, were forced to suffer for the September 11 attacks despite having no connection to them.
“I didn’t decide to invade Iraq. I have no negative feelings towards Iraqis at all. The people I served with who are alive, I love and adore. The people who are dead and gone, I love and adore,” said McLaughlin. “Where I do get frustrated is with the people who chose to do this. I just had a job. The people in Iraq were just living their lives. I do get frustrated with the people who made this decision. I mean, you sent us to invade the wrong country.”Hell for Life
The initial claim that launched the war, which was that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction and posed an imminent threat to the United States and its allies, was disproved early on in the conflict. What Americans and Iraqis were then left to experience was a slow, grinding military occupation and insurgency, fought without a clear purpose, which gradually devolved into a civil war that left millions dead, wounded, or displaced.
At the end of all the bloodshed, Saddam Hussein and his family were gone, but life in Iraq today remains difficult for many who have had to deal with the aftermath of the war (and there are still approximately 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq as trainers and advisers to the Iraqi military). Many Americans who had joined the military out of a sense of national duty following September 11 found themselves killing and dying in a war against people who had had nothing to do with the attacks.
“For people who had enlisted in the aftermath of 9/11 with the intention of avenging the attacks, to then end up in Iraq — which had very little or nothing to do with it — it is very difficult to reconcile,” said Gregory Daddis, a former U.S. Army colonel and veteran of both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom who later served as a military historian. “You have veterans now dealing with their experiences and trying to answer the question of whether their sacrifices were worth it. With wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, it is very difficult to answer that in a positive way.”
In addition to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed in the war, it is estimated that roughly 4,500 U.S. service members died in Iraq. Many thousands more were wounded, often with debilitating injuries that have required long-term care and made a return to normal life impossible. Despite whatever support they may receive from the federal government, the catastrophic wartime injuries that many Americans in Iraq suffered has been beyond what even attentive medical service can heal. Some are still dying today as a result of wounds suffered during combat. While the war may be disappearing from the memory of Americans, these injuries and traumas are a daily reminder of the legacy of the Iraq War to those who experienced it firsthand.
Dennis Fritz served as an U.S. Air Force officer for 28 years before resigning in the early days of the war and spending over a decade working at the Warrior Clinic at Walter Reed Military Hospital, helping with the recovery of service members wounded in Iraq and other conflicts. The experience of dealing with a constant stream of grievously wounded service members has fed a sense of anger on behalf of soldiers manipulated by political leaders who made the decision to invade Iraq.
“Most Americans don’t even understand that war is real when they are watching it on television. It is only when they come to Walter Reed to see a family member who lost a limb or had PTSD that they realize,” said Fritz, who retired from the Air Force at the rank of master sergeant and now does writing and public advocacy on behalf of veterans in favor of military restraint. “We have people who suffer wounds that mean it’s going to be hell for them for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, as we now know, Iraq was no threat to us. I’m upset about it to this day because our service members were used as pawns.”
Many of those responsible for the Iraq War have gone on to enjoy rewarding careers as senior policymakers in Washington or have cashed in on their time in government by taking well-paid roles in the private sector. Meanwhile, the trail of suffering left behind by the conflict continues to claim victims, both in the Middle East, where the consequences of the war are still felt by millions, and in the towns and cities of the United States, where the physical and psychological wounds of the war are still quietly carried by many veterans.
“I know two people who were officers during the war and are going through a hard time with PTSD right now and the guilt that they feel because their soldiers lost their lives,” Fritz said. “But it’s not because of them that they died; it’s because of the political leaders who sent them to war on a lie. They’re ones who should have PTSD — but they don’t. They just go off to write books and get themselves lucrative jobs.”
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California governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday announced a partnership with drugmaker Civica Rx, to offer insulin at a dramatically lower cost, during a visit to a Kaiser Permanente warehouse storing thousands of insulin drug doses in Downey, California. (photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP)
Once the medicines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Newsom said at a press conference on Saturday, Civica — under the 10-year agreement with the state worth $50 million — will start making the new CalRx insulins later this year.
The contract covers three forms of insulin — glargine, lispro and aspart. Civica expects them to be interchangeable with popular brand-name insulins: Sanofi's Lantus, Eli Lilly's Humalog and Novo Nordisk's Novolog, respectively.
The state-label insulins will cost no more than $30 per 10 milliliter vial, and no more than $55 for a box of five pre-filled pen cartridges — for both insured and uninsured patients. The medicines will be available nationwide, the governor's office said.
"This is a big deal, folks," the governor said. "This is not happening anywhere else in the United States."
A 10 milliliter vial of insulin can cost as much as $300, Newsom said. Under the new contract, patients who pay out of pocket for insulin could save up to $4,000 per year. The federal government this year put a $35 monthly cap on out-of-pocket costs on insulin for certain Medicare enrollees, including senior citizens.
Advocates have pushed for years to make insulin more affordable. According to a report published last year in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, 1 in 6 Americans with diabetes who use insulin said the cost of the drug forces them to ration their supply.
"This is an extraordinary move in the pharmaceutical industry, not just for insulin but potentially for all kinds of drugs," Robin Feldman, a professor at the University of California San Francisco's College of the Law, told Kaiser Health News. "It's a very difficult industry to disrupt, but California is poised to do just that."
The news comes after a handful of drugmakers that dominate the insulin market recently said they would cut the list prices of their insulin. (List prices, set by the drugmaker, are often what uninsured patients — or those with high deductibles — must pay for the drug out-of-pocket.)
After rival Eli Lilly announced a plan to slash the prices of some of its insulin by 70%, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi followed suit this past week, saying they would lower some list prices for some of their insulin products by as much 75% next year. Together, the three companies control some 90% of the U.S. insulin supply.
Newsom said the state's effort addresses the underlying issue of unaffordable insulin without making taxpayers subsidize drugmakers' gouged prices.
"What this does," he said of California's plan, "is a game changer. This fundamentally lowers the cost. Period. Full stop."
Insulin is a critical drug for people with Type 1 diabetes, whose body doesn't produce enough insulin. People with Type 1 need insulin daily in order to survive.
The insulin contract is part of California's broader CalRx initiative to produce generic drugs under the state's own label. Newsom says the state is pushing to manufacture generic naloxone next.
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Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in Jerusalem on March 5. (photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AP)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition said it was pushing a key part of the overhaul — which would give the coalition control over who becomes a justice or a judge — before the parliament takes a monthlong holiday break next week.
The development came a day after an Israeli and Palestinian delegation at a meeting in Egypt, mediated by Egyptian, Jordanian and U.S. officials, pledged to take steps to lower tensions roiling the region ahead of a sensitive holiday season.
It reflected the limited influence the Biden administration appears to have over Israel’s new far-right government and raised questions about attempts to lower tensions, both inside Israel and with the Palestinians, ahead of a sensitive holiday season.
As the negotiators were issuing a joint communique, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech in Paris saying the notion of a Palestinian people was artificial.
“There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language,” he said in France late Sunday. He spoke at a memorial event for a French-Israeli right-wing activist who denied the existence of a Palestinian nation and advocated annexation of the West Bank. The lectern was adorned with what appeared to be an image showing the map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said that Smotrich’s appearance with the icon was a “reckless inflammatory act and a violation of international norms and the peace treaty” between the two countries.
It later summoned Israel’s ambassador over Smotrich’s remarks.
Ahmed Abu Zaid, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said the Israeli minister’s remarks “deny the facts of history and geography … (and) undermine the efforts aimed at achieving calm between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday evening released a statement affirming that it is committed to the countries’ 1994 peace agreement.
“There has been no change in the position of the State of Israel, which recognizes the territorial integrity of the Hashemite Kingdom,” the statement said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said Smotrich’s remarks were “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology that governs the parties of the current Israeli government.”
In Brussels, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the minister’s remarks “certainly cannot be tolerated.”
“I have to deplore this unacceptable comment. It is wrong, it is disrespectful, it is dangerous, it is counter-productive to say these kinds of things in a situation that is already very tense,” Borrell told reporters after chairing a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers. “Could you imagine if a Palestinian leader would have said the state of Israel does not exist. What would have been the reaction?”
Borrell called on the Israeli government “to disavow those comments and to start working with all parties to defuse tensions.”
A far-right settler leader who opposes Palestinian statehood, Smotrich has a history of offensive statements against the Palestinians. Last month, he called for the Palestinian town of Hawara in the West Bank to be “erased” after radical Jewish settlers rampaged through the town in response to a shooting attack that killed two Israelis. Smotrich later apologized after an international uproar.
His remarks on Palestinians were reminiscent of those made by late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir that caused an uproar in 1969. She later told The New York Times that she meant there had never been a Palestinian nation. But critics say the comments continue to tarnish her legacy.
During Sunday’s talks in Egypt, a Palestinian gunman carried out another shooting attack in Hawara, seriously wounding an Israeli man.
The new violence, along with Smotrich’s comments, illustrated the tough challenges that lie ahead in soothing tensions after a year of deadly violence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and more than 40 Israelis or foreigners have been killed in Palestinian attacks during that time.
Sunday’s summit was held ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week. The Jewish festival of Passover is set to take place in April, coinciding with Ramadan.
The upcoming period is sensitive because large numbers of Jewish and Muslim faithful pour into Jerusalem’s Old City, the emotional heart of the conflict and a flashpoint for violence, increasing friction points.
Large numbers of Jews are also expected to visit a key Jerusalem holy site, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount — an act the Palestinians view as a provocation.
Clashes at the site in 2021 helped trigger an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, Israeli police closed the offices of a Palestinian radio station in east Jerusalem, saying it worked for official Palestinian Authority media in violation of the 1994 interim agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. The PA condemned the closure.
The heightened tensions with the Palestinians coincide with mass demonstrations inside Israel against Netanyahu’s plans to overhaul the judicial system. Opponents of the measure have carried out disruptive protests, and the debate has embroiled the country’s military, where some reservists are refusing to show up for service. Netanyahu has rejected a compromise by Israel’s figurehead president.
During a call with Netanyahu, President Joe Biden appealed for caution, the White House said, “as a friend of Israel in the hopes that there can be a compromise formula found.”
The president “underscored his belief that democratic values have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” the White House said, and added that “fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”
Netanyahu’s government says the plan is meant to correct an imbalance that has given the courts too much power over the legislative process. Critics say the overhaul would upend the country’s delicate system of checks and balances and push Israel toward authoritarianism. They also say Netanyahu could find an escape route from his corruption trial through the overhaul.
The protests, along with the rising violence with the Palestinians, have posed a major challenge for the new government. So far this year, 85 Palestinians have been killed, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
The number of Israelis killed during the same period rose to 15 on Monday after Or Eshkar, 33, died. He was shot in the head at point-blank range by a Palestinian in Tel Aviv on March 9.
Israel says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their future independent state.
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A group of people cross a river during their journey through the Darien Gap from Colombia into Panama hoping to reach the U.S., October 15, 2022. (photo: Fernando Vergara/AP)
Disturbing reports of sexual assault in the Darién Gap reveal yet another horrifying aspect of border warfare.
I was the only detainee who hailed from the United States – the very country responsible for Mexico’s migration crackdown in the first place – and I had ended up in migrant jail purely on account of my own stupidity and laziness in renewing my tourist visa. My fellow inmates were facing rather more existential predicaments, and many of them – from Haiti, Cuba, Bangladesh, and beyond – had been forced to traverse the Darién Gap as they fled political and economic calamity in the hopes of eventually finding refuge in the US.
Within the walls of Siglo XXI, where dreams of refuge had been indefinitely put on hold, the Darién was a recurring topic of conversation – a sort of spontaneous exercise in group therapy, it seemed. Women recounted the numerous cadavers they had encountered during their journeys. Rape, it was clear, was rampant in the jungle – to the extent that even those who were not personally assaulted, were vicariously traumatised.
Indeed, in this densest and most impenetrable of forests, sexual violence against refuge seekers has become institutionalised. This violence may be perpetrated by local inhabitants, paramilitaries, or an array of criminal actors whose activities are permitted to proceed with impunity in the general context of criminalised migration.
In February of this year, I travelled to Panama’s Darién region. I did not, of course, have to risk my life or physical integrity to do so – such being the obscene and arbitrary privilege conferred by the passport of the US, a country known for stirring up trouble worldwide and then militarising its borders against anyone wishing to flee the mess.
In the town of Metetí in Darién province, I spoke with Tamara Guillermo, field coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF), who expressed horror at the “level of brutality” and extreme “viciousness” currently on display in the jungle – where sexual aggression, including against men, remained par for the course.
According to Guillermo, there had been a recent uptick in reports from people who had been held up by armed assailants in the Darién and forced to remove all of their clothing for a manual inspection of bodily orifices, to ensure that nothing of value had been tucked away. Often, the women were then separated from the group and raped.
In Metetí, I also spoke with a young Venezuelan woman – we’ll call her Alicia – whose two-year-old son threw a foam ball at me and pinched my nose throughout our conversation, in between being distracted by a cartoon about velociraptors.
Alicia had spent 10 days crossing the Darién, she told me, and every night she had cried. She had not been raped, but she had heard about many rapes, and she had seen plenty of death – like the hunched-over body of an old man under a tree who “looked like he was cold”. She had met a Haitian woman whose six-month-old baby had just drowned. She had been robbed of her puppy and then of all valuables that were not hidden in her son’s diapers when a group of 10 hooded men descended upon her group.
In Spanish, the verb “violar” can mean either “to violate” – as in human rights – or “to rape”. And while Alicia may not have been physically violated in the latter sense, the DariénGap pretty much qualifies as one continuous violation.
But the Darién Gap is not the only trajectory where refuge seekers must endure the brutal and often sexual violation of their dignity. Worldwide, we humans have demonstrated a sadistic knack for exploiting vulnerable people on the move – people whose status as “migrants” usually has much to do with the fact that they have already suffered tremendously in life.
Take Libya, a primary point of departure for Europe-bound refugees fleeing war and economic misery, which has played host to all manner of rape, slavery, and torture -including of refuge-seeking children. Try as the West might to pin responsibility for the whole sinister arrangement on the ever-handy fantasy of African savagery, the reality is that the blame lies right at the foot of Fortress Europe.
Meanwhile, in northern Mexico, bipartisan xenophobic US policy has placed countless asylum seekers directly into the hands of rapists and kidnappers. And on the island of Nauru, the site of Australia’s preferred offshore asylum “processing” centre, a 2020 report jointly published by the Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre noted: “For years, there have been tragic accounts of rape and sexual abuse of females in Nauru, including by those paid to protect them”.
Speaking of supposed “protection”, Panamanian authorities have now come under fire regarding allegations of sexual and other abuse at migrant reception centres in Darién province. Forgive me my pessimism at the prospects for justice.
During my stay in the Darién region, I also spoke with Marilen Osinalde, the mental health manager for MSF in Metetí, who regularly attends to patients who have suffered sexual and other violence. She remarked to me that, while there is a persistent Western stereotype of rapists as “psychopaths who grab you in the street in the night”, the phenomenon is rather more complex.
In the case of the Darién Gap and other migrant trajectories, she explained, the landscape of sexual aggression against people crossing it has to do with asserting power, status, and impunity – as well as with marking territory. The use of rape as a “weapon” in the Darién also objectifies and dehumanises the migrant “Other”, she said, further solidifying power structures.
Zoom out from the Darién, and we find ourselves in a world of borders that dehumanise and criminalise refuge seekers and other have-nots, all in the interest of marking territory and reinforcing power structures. The US penetrates international borders at will while fortifying its own – and converts spaces like the Darién Gap into physical and psychological weapons.
From Panama to Libya to Nauru, a war is being waged against people who are deprived not only of the right to cross borders but also of the right to control the very boundaries of their bodies. And that is a violation of humanity indeed.
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Elsa the koala at the Australian Zoo, June 10, 2020. (photo: Reuters)
Land clearing for agriculture, urban development, mining and forestry had been the biggest factor in the fragmentation and loss of habitat for the animals.
Land clearing for agriculture, urban development, mining and forestry had been the biggest factor in the fragmentation and loss of habitat for the animals in NSW, the country’s most populous state, over several decades.
A prolonged, drought-fuelled bushfire season that ended early this year was also devastating for the animals, destroying about a quarter of their habitat across the state, and in some parts up to 81%.
“The evidence could not be more stark,” the inquiry’s 311-page final report said on Tuesday.
“The only way our children’s grandchildren will see a koala in the wild in NSW will be if the government acts upon the committee’s recommendations.”
The report, commissioned by a multi-party parliamentary committee, makes 42 recommendations, including an urgent census, prioritizing the protection of the animal in the planning of urban development, and increasing conservation funding.
But it stopped short of unanimously recommending a moratorium on logging in public native forests, it said.
Stuart Blanch, manager of land clearing and restoration at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Australia, called on the government to heed the recommendations and strengthen protections for the animals’ habitat.
“WWF calls on the NSW Premier to rewrite weak land clearing laws to protect koala habitat, greatly increase funding for farmers who actively conserve trees where koalas live, and a transition out of logging koala forests and into plantations.” Blanch said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Gladys Berejiklian, the state premier, said the government would consider the report and respond “in due course”, adding it had already committed A$44 million ($30.14 million) on a strategy to protect the animals.
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