Prime minister invites party leaders to discuss alternative deal but sticks to red lines
Theresa May survives no-confidence motion by 19 votes – video
Theresa May survives no-confidence motion by 19 votes – video
Heather Stewart, Jessica Elgot and Peter Walker- Theresa May has survived as prime minister after weathering a dramatic no-confidence vote in her government, but was left scrambling to strike a Brexit compromise that could secure the backing of parliament.
In a statement in Downing Street on Wednesday night, the prime minister exhorted politicians from all parties to “put aside self-interest”, and promised to consult with MPs with “the widest possible range of views” in the coming days.
She had earlier announced that she would invite Jeremy Corbyn and other party leaders for immediate talks on how to secure a Brexit deal, although Labour later said Corbyn would decline the invitation unless no-deal was taken off the table.
The prime minister immediately extended her invitation to opposition leaders, having pointedly declined to do so earlier in the day.
“I would like to ask the leaders of the parliamentary parties to meet with me individually, and I would like to start those meetings tonight,” she said. Corbyn responded by urging May to rule out no-deal.
In her late-night statement, the prime minister said: “I am disappointed that the leader of the Labour party has not so far chosen to take part – but our door remains open … It will not be an easy task, but MPs know they have a duty to act in the national interest, reach a consensus and get this done.”
The Scottish National party’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, met May on Wednesday night, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Vince Cable, also accepted her invitation.
Blackford later wrote to May, urging her to make a “gesture of faith” to show that she was serious. He said the SNP would take part in cross-party talks if she was able to confirm “that the extension of article 50, a ruling out of a no-deal Brexit and the option of a second EU referendum would form the basis of those discussions”.
With just five days to go before May must make a statement to parliament setting out her Brexit plan B, Downing Street continued to indicate that she was not ready to budge on her red lines, including membership of a customs union.
Protesters in Kassala chanted for 'freedom, justice and peace' before they were swiftly confronted by riot police, witnesses say
Anti-government protests on outskirts of Khartoum on 15 January (Reuters)
Wednesday 16 January 2019
Sudanese security forces fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in the eastern town of Kassala, the first demonstrations in the city since anti-government protests spread across the country last month.
The protest erupted in the city's largest market on Wednesday and vendors scrambled to shut their stalls and get out of the way, Reuters news agency reported, citing witnesses.
Protesters chanted for "freedom, justice and peace", before they were swiftly confronted by riot police, AFP said.
The Sudanese government has faced a wave of demonstrations against the rule of President Omar al-Bashir since 19 December.
According to Sudanese officials, 24 people have been killed during near-daily demonstrations across Sudan, which were first triggered by a worsening economic crisis and an increase in the price of bread.
Activists and human rights groups say at least 40 people have been killed, while more than 1,000 others have been detained as the state seeks to stem the spread of the anti-government rallies.
Protests were held for the first time in Sudan's Darfur region over the weekend, while several rallies in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman were met with a harsh crackdown from state security forces.
Last week, Sudan's National Human Rights Commission, the top governmental human rights body, condemned the killing "by bullets" of protesters in Omdurman, calling on the authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
"We condemn using bullets against citizens," said the commission, whose members are appointed by Bashir.
For his part, Bashir has refused to step down, accusing Western forces of fomenting dissent and telling his supporters that only he can guarantee stability in Sudan.
The president, who has been in power for nearly three decades, has promised free elections and told protesters to seek change that way.
"The only way to come to power in this country is through the ballot box and we promise to guarantee free and fair elections," he said in a speech on Monday.
"We said we have an economic problem and it is not solved via vandalism."
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a group of trade unionists that has been leading the protests, called for demonstrations to be held in 12 cities on Thursday.
For the residents of Issawiyeh, a Palestinian village of some 20,000, surveillance, military raids and building demolitions are a daily reality.
Nestled in the hills of East Jerusalem, the village is plagued by poor infrastructure, residents are constantly harassed by the Israeli Border Police and anyone, including children, run the risk of arbitrary arrest.
The village has seen its lands gradually disappear. Before Israel occupied the area in 1967, the village included some 12,500 dunams (1 dunam = 1,000 square meters) of land.
Since then, and due to a combination of Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, the nearby Hebrew University and, more recently, Israel’s West Bank wall, village land has been reduced to around 9,400 dunams, according to Muhammad Abu al-Hummus, a local council member.
Stagnation
Abu al-Hummus cited Israel’s occupation as the key reason for Issawiyeh’s underdevelopment and said the village council had tried to work with the Jerusalem municipality to improve infrastructure and secure building permits.
“Twenty years ago we worked with the Jerusalem municipality to organize building permits for sewer systems, streets and houses. Now there is almost no infrastructure and the occupation is the reason. The village infrastructure fits the population from 20 years ago but today it doesn’t.”
Despite constant promises from the municipality to alleviate the economic deprivation, Abu al-Hummus said, redevelopment has been stagnant.
“We pay taxes but we get no services.”
With the municipality denying requests for building permits, home demolitions have become a commonplace consequence. Residents still need to cater to growing numbers and are forced to build without permits.
“Demolitions happen when the Israeli courts decide. Sometimes it’s twice a month, sometimes it’s once a year,” said Abu al-Hummus. With the village growing in population local residents continue to build knowing that demolition of the structure may be imminent.
“Back to zero”
“It took five years to build the apartment and we lived there for five years,” said Jamal Elayan, who with his wife Fatma were residents of an apartment building that was demolished last year. The demolition started with no warning and from six in the morning, they said.
“They stormed in like monsters, and kicked us out in our pajamas. In one day we went back to zero.”
Ali Aleyeh – who carries a Jerusalem ID and therefore is not subject to the military court system that a West Bank ID holder would face – was arrested in April 2016 for throwing stones at a nearby settlement. He was 15. After being held for seven months without charge or trial under administrative detention orders, he was imprisoned for 10 months.
After serving his sentence, Ali was placed under house arrest for six months, during which time Israeli Border Police would check on him every two days, according to his parents.
“It was unreal suffering inside [jail] and for my family,” Ali told The Electronic Intifada.
Israel arrests between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in the West Bank, some as young as 12, per year and processes them through a military court system. Israel is the only country in the worldthat systematically prosecutes so many children every year in military courts.
However children in occupied East Jerusalem – which Israel has annexed in violation of international law – including Ali in Issawiyeh are processed through municipal courts. But like the military court system, in this apparatus the rights of Palestinian children are still systematically denied.
Seth Herald is a photojournalist. Shop owners are in charge of keeping the street in front of their stores clean. With little proper infrastructure, Issawiyeh’s residents do what they can for the upkeep of their village.
The village of Issawiyeh is under constant watch by Israeli Border Police and surveillance equipment.
Youths clean supplies salvaged from a pizzeria where they used to work. The building was demolished on 1 May 2018.
Issawiyeh lacks proper infrastructure but a plan drawn up by the village committee to improve the situation there was turned down by the Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality, which promised to draw up its own plans for the village.
Almost 10 years later, nothing has materialized. As a result, the village suffers in different ways. There is no proper garbage collection, for instance, so rubbish is often disposed of simply by being burned in dumpsters.
Ali Aleyeh was 15 when he was arrested for throwing stones at settlements. After seven months in administrative detention, he was eventually sentenced to 10 months in prison.
The home of Jamal and Fatma Elayan a week after it was demolished in May 2018. “They didn’t give me any warning, they kicked the main door in during a sudden raid at six in the morning,” Jamal told The Electronic Intifada. Fatma and Jamal Elayan in their temporary housing. Jamal said: “I don’t know what’s next. Maybe I’ll build there again?”
Theresa May’s future is on the line tonight, with MPs voting as we speak, although within the last hour the Democratic Unionists have confirmed they will be supporting the government, along with one former Labour MP and one independent unionist. But the real issue at stake, the Brexit deadlock, is no nearer any kind of solution.
Seeing Baku as a strategic partner, the United States and Europe overlook rights violations.
From left, Rafik Bakhishov, Zafar Ahmadov, and Tofig Yagublu take part in a hunger strike at the headquarters of the opposition party Musavat in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Jan. 15. (Khadija Ismayilova)
BY AMY MACKINNON | JANUARY 16, 2019, 12:54 PM
More than a dozen political prisoners, activists, and members of the opposition in Azerbaijan have joined a solidarity hunger strike to call attention to the plight of the imprisoned anti-corruption blogger Mehman Huseynov, who has refused food for three weeks.
Huseynov, 29, launched his own hunger strike on Dec. 26 after new charges were brought against him that could keep him detained for another seven years.
His supporters include the prominent Azerbaijani investigative reporter Khadija Ismayilova, who announced on her Facebook page Monday that she would stop eating and called on the international community to intervene on Heseynov’s behalf. Ismayilova’s own imprisonment between 2015 and 2016 sparked an international outcry.
“I can only sacrifice my time, health and stamina. Please, respond, world,” she wrote.
Daniel Balson, the Europe and Central Asia advocacy director for Amnesty International USA, said the solidarity hunger strike was unprecedented in Azerbaijan.
Corruption and human rights abuses are rife in the southern Caucasus country. President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father in 2003, has abolished term limits and appointed his wife as vice president, drawing accusations that he has effectively established a monarchy in Azerbaijan.
It is estimated that there are currently more than 100 political prisoners in the country, according to Amnesty International USA, and the media is tightly controlled. Last year, the Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was abducted in the capital of neighboring Georgia and brought to Azerbaijan, where he was sentenced to six years for smuggling and illegally crossing the border.
“All well-known human rights defenders and journalists spend at least one or two years in prison,” said Huseynov’s brother, Emin Huseynov.
He told Foreign Policy that while his brother began his hunger strike by refusing to eat or drink water, he has since begun to drink milk, enabling him to prolong his protest.
Mehman Huseynov ran SANCAQ (“Pin” in Azerbaijani), a popular online magazine across Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. His video reports, which explored government corruption and social problems, frequently garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
In January 2017, plainclothes police officers dragged Huseynov into a van, placed a hood over his head, and took him to a police station, where he was electrocuted and beaten. After he spoke out about the abuse, Huseynov was charged with slander and sentenced to two years in prison for defaming an entire police station.
The blogger was due to be released in March, but new charges that were brought against him, which are widely thought to be politically motivated, could add years to his sentence.
The European Parliament is set to debate a resolution on Thursday calling on Azerbaijan to release all political prisoners unconditionally and to respect the freedom of the press.
The Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
Ismayilova, the investigative journalist, said in the past year that authorities in Azerbaijan have increasingly used this method to tack on extra time to the sentences of political prisoners.
“They’re just giving the message that there is no escape,” she said.
She added that Huseynov’s popularity accounts for the outcry that these new charges have prompted, including among Azerbaijanis not necessarily active in politics.
Azerbaijan has a poor human rights record, but it has not faced the kind of censure or sanctions from the United States that has been imposed on its larger neighbor Russia.
Richard Kauzlarich, who served as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan in the 1990s, has called for sanctions to be leveled at Azerbaijani officials under the Global Magnitsky Act, which places travel and financial restrictions on known human rights abusers.
Dozens of individuals across the world are currently sanctioned under the act, which takes its name from a Russian lawyer who died in prison.
Kauzlarich criticized both the Obama and Trump administrations for being reluctant to act on human rights abuses in Azerbaijan.
“Azerbaijanis don’t respond well to private diplomacy. They need to be pressed publicly,” Kauzlarich said.
A majority Shiite country under secular leadership, Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a strategic partner of the United States and Europe. The country has long been seen as a valuable regional player in the global war on terrorism and is a transit point for U.S. and NATO supplies headed to Afghanistan. The country could also form a crucial part of Europe’s plan to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
“Washington doesn’t want to compromise other interests,” said Alex Raufoglu, a D.C.-based Azerbaijani journalist.
Azerbaijan has been known to lavish Western officials with gifts and foreign trips, in a lobbying strategy that has been dubbed “caviar diplomacy.” The name comes from a 2012 report by the European Stability Initiative, which maintained that Azerbaijan was giving kilograms of caviar to a number of officials from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which oversees the implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Azerbaijan is one of the council’s 47 member states.
A 2015 investigation by the Washington Post found that in 2013, 10 members of Congress and dozens of their aides were taken on an all-expenses-paid trip funded by the state-run oil company SOCAR to a conference in the capital, Baku, and given lavish gifts, such as silk scarves, crystal tea sets, and Azerbaijani rugs. An ethics report cited by the Post claimed that funds for the trip were channeled through nonprofits in the United States so as to conceal their source.
A letter signed by four political prisoners announcing their hunger strike cautioned other political detainees against waiting for help from the West. “Western organizations have put all principles and values on sale in Azerbaijan,” it read.
The letter could not be independently verified by FP.
“We are overlooked. It hurts. It really hurts,” said Ismayilova, the investigative journalist.
Foreign governments and international organizations welcomed Ismayilova’s release from prison in 2016. But authorities have continued harassing her, and she is banned from leaving the country.
“When I was released, everyone was kind of comforted by this move, and they forgot about the others,” she said.
Over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims forcibly sent to Bangladesh in the past year or two
Arakanese Buddhists team up with Christian Kachins to fight fellow Bamar Buddhists
2019-01-15
Myanmar, previously known as Burma, has a 70-year long history of internal armed conflicts between its predominantly-Buddhist armed forces and the Muslim and Christian separatist ethnic groups like the Rohingyas, the Kachins and the Shans in the Northern and North-Eastern parts of the country.
But of late, the army has been fighting a Buddhist group too. It is called the Arakan Army.
The Arakan Army’s grievance is that the two million Arakanese Buddhists, also called Rakhine Buddhists, are being discriminated against by mainstream Myanmarese Buddhists called “Bamar” who are ensconced in power in the national capital, Yangon.
On January 4 this year, the Arakan Army carried out coordinated assaults on four posts manned by the Myanmarese paramilitary Border Guard Police at Buthidaung Township in Rakhine state, close to the border with Bangladesh.
At least 13 policemen were killed and nine wounded in the attacks. Video footage subsequently released showed that at least one base was overrun by rebels using newer AK-series assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles and not rudimentary assault rifles and small-arms, and home-made crude Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) as before.
The Arakan Buddhists and the Arakan Army consider the “Bamar” to be “colonial oppressors” though they too are Buddhists. “Arakan is ours. If the Myanmarese go back to their native place there will be no fighting,” said Khaing Thu Kha, the Arakan Army spokesman in an interview to the media.
The Arakan Buddhists’ taking up arms against it has shocked the Myanmarese army officially called “Tatmadaw.” It was the Tatmadaw which had nurtured the Arakan Army to help it intimidate and drive out the Muslim Rohingyas of Arakan into Bangladesh.
Over 700,000 Rohingya Muslims were forcibly sent to Bangladesh in the past year or two, on the grounds that they were Bangladeshi immigrants and not indigenous to Myanmar.
As in many other cases the world over, an armed group nurtured by the State or government, eventually turned against its creators or sponsors.
MULTI-ETHNIC ASSAULT
What is more shocking is that the Arakanese Buddhists have teamed up with the Christian Kachins to fight fellow Bamar Buddhists. The Arakan Army has been conducting joint operations with the Kachin separatist army.
According to Myanmarese historian, Thant Myint-U, “The emergence of the Arakan Army is one of the biggest shifts in Myanmar’s armed conflict landscape in a generation. It’s an upsurge in violence that tears Arakanese and Burmese societies apart in a way unprecedented in modern times. It’s a shock to the system.” Unlike the Muslim Rohingya, the majority-Buddhist Rakhine (also known as the Arakanese) are officially recognised by the central government as an ethnic minority. But still they feel marginalised. Historically, Myanmar has been dominated by the Bamar ethnic majority based in Central and Southern Myanmar.
On January 4 this year, the Arakan Army carried out coordinated assaults on four posts manned by the Myanmarese paramilitary Border Guard Police at Buthidaung Township in Rakhine state, close to the border with Bangladesh
Myanmar’s inability to forge its various ethnic and religious groups into one nation has led to peripheral groups demanding either a confederation or outright independence.
Like the Kachins and Shans, the Arakanese Buddhists also want self-determination and independence. They want the restoration of the independent Arakan state which existed till the late 18th century when the Bamar Buddhists occupied it and took away the sacred golden Buddha statue known as Mahamuni. Even today, Rakhine Buddhists mourn the sacking of their capital city by the Bamar army in 1784, and the seizure of Mahamuni.
Presently, the Rakhine Buddhists feel that their region and their economic and political rights have been neglected by the mainstream Bamar Buddhists though their region is rich in natural resources.
China is going to invest in the Rakhine region and develop the Sitwe harbour. But Rakhine Buddhists wonder if they will get a share of the fruits of development or a chance to participate in the development of the region.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) government had refused to share executive power at the state level after the Arakan National Party had won a majority of votes in Rakhine state in the 2015 elections. Rakhine parliamentarians have had no influence over the government. This has given rise to movements named “The Way to Rakitha” and the “Arakan Dream 2020” which are based on the self-determination of the Arakanese.
IMPACT OF ROHINGYA ISSUE
The Rohingya Muslim issue had indirectly helped boost Rakhine Buddhist separatism. While fighting against the Rohingya Muslims, the Arakan Buddhists realised that the only language the Myanmar Government would understand was violence and that Rakhine nationalism would be served best by fighting the State with arms. Things turned ugly in January 2018 when Rakhine nationalist commemorations to mark the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Arakan Kingdom to Bamar invaders in the Rakhine town of Mrauk U ended in violence.
Demonstrators tried to seize the local General Administration Department (GAD) building. GAD is a powerful civilian agency controlled by the military. Security forces reacted by shooting dead seven Rakhine Buddhists. Subsequently on January 30, Mrauk U’s former town administrator, Bo Bo Min Thaik, was murdered and his body left to rot on a roadside.
LINK UP WITH OTHER REBELS
Interestingly, the Arakan Army was born, not in Arakan, but in the Kachin state bordering China, where it forms part of the China-backed, United Wa State Army (UWSA)-dominated Northern Alliance.
The Northern Alliance (NA) is a coalition of ethnic armies. At present, it includes the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta-ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Arakan Army (AA).
The Arakan Army and its allies in the Northern Alliance are of greater concern to the Tatmadaw than the Rohingyas’ Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). Unlike the poorly-armed ARSA, the Arakan Army and its allies are well-equipped and organised. The Arakan Army also has militant cells in towns to plant explosives and target security and government officials.
Furthermore, unlike ARSA, which has no foreign support, the Northern Alliance has China’s support. The government in Yangon is unable to tackle China on this issue because China backs it on the Rohingya issue in the UN and in other world fora where the Yangon regime is pilloried for its abominable treatment of the Rohingyas.
Myanmar’s inability to forge its various ethnic and religious groups into one nation has led to peripheral groups demanding either a confederation or outright independence
This suggests that the regime in Yangon cannot take measures like complete expulsion as it did in the case of the Rohingya Muslims. It has to negotiate an end to the conflict across the table at some stage or the other.
But given the power of the Tatmadaw even over civilian governments in Myanmar, a negotiated peace with political accommodation appears to be a far cry.
The Citigroup Inc (Citi) logo is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren/Files
JANUARY 16, 2019
(Reuters) - Citigroup’s female employees earn 29 percent less than their male counterparts, the Wall Street bank revealed on Wednesday, while announcing targets for appointing more women and minorities to senior roles.
The median pay for Citi’s women employees globally was just 71 percent of the median for men, while that for minorities in the United States was 93 percent of the median for non-minorities, the company said, citing an internal analysis.
The third largest U.S. bank also said it would hire more women globally and black employees in the United States to senior roles.
By the end of 2021, it wants at least 40 percent of roles at assistant vice president level through to managing director level to be held by women, and 8 percent of such roles in the United States to be held by black employees.
Currently, more than half of Citi employees globally are women and over 45 percent of its U.S. workforce are minorities, the company said.
“We know we need a comprehensive approach to our diversity initiatives to make the progress we want to see,” Sara Wechter, head of human resources at Citi, wrote in a blog post.
Citi, along with other Wall Street banks and financial companies, has been under pressure to disclose how much less it pays women than men.
A 15-year study by the Washington-based Institute for Women’s Policy Research found last year that American women earn an average of 39 percent less than men but that this figure rises when taking account of time off for family or childcare.
Refugees from Sudan and Eritrea queue at the Israeli interior ministry in order to renew their visas or submit asylum requests in the early hours of 4 February.Oren ZivActiveStills
The year 2018 was one of the most critical for African refugees in Israel. Under threat of imminent deportation, the community and their local supporters took to the streets, pleading for their rights to be recognized.
The mass deportations did not materialize.
First, it became clear that African governments were unwilling to accept refugees who had been forced out of Israel. That prompted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to reach a deal with the United Nations aimed at resettling African refugees in the West.
Netanyahu scrapped that deal after being criticized by lawmakers in Israel’s ruling coalition who viewed the arrangement as insufficiently tough on refugees. The lawmakers objected to how the deal was contingent on allowing approximately half of African refugees to remain in Israel for five years.
Despite shelving his most merciless anti-refugee plans, Netanyahu continued attacking Africans living in Israel. He remains among Israel’s top 10 leaders in its war against African refugees.
10. Ayoob Kara, communications minister
In January 2018, Ayoob Kara, a government minister, suggested that African refugees were a health hazard.
He used that eliminationist language during a conference of Likud – the party led by Netanyahu – in Eilat, a Red Sea resort. Kara was seeking credit for overseeing a policy – then as a minister for regional cooperation – to fire Africans from that city’s hotel industry.
The policy had been implemented after Africans across Israel went on strike in early 2014. A week-long strike was called as part of protests against Israel’s jailing of refugees.
Hotel owners in Eilat lobbied Israel’s government to substitute African workers with people living in Jordan. Under the plan, permits were issued so that hundreds of workers could enter Israel from Jordan each day and then be bussed back to Jordan in the evening.
The Israeli government insisted that an African be fired each time a worker from Jordan was recruited.
According to Kara, the objective of the plan was to “save tourism in Eilat.” Its effect, he added during his 2018 speech, was that “we expelled the illegal [African] workers that burst in here and were a sanitary nuisance.”
Kara, a member of the Druze religious minority, is now Israel’s communications minister.
9. Nissim Malka, rabbi and politician
As mayor of Kiryat Shmona – a town in northern Israel – Nissim Malka used his position to muzzle anti-racist campaigners.
In March, staff and students at Tel-Hai College were scheduled to hold a comedy evening to raise funds for fighting the deportation of refugees. Right-wing local residents had threatened to converge on the venue – a cooperative bar linked to the local authority – and break up the event.
Rather than condemn those threats, Malka banned the event, accusing its organizers of “trying to create unnecessary arguments and divide our city.”
It was not surprising that Malka would, in effect, side with racist bullies. He has previously campaigned against Africans who fled vigilante violence in Tel Aviv and moved to Kiryat Shmona.
In 2012, Malka announced that the authorities “would carry out major enforcement activities” against “the infiltrators that are living in Kiryat Shmona and are working at businesses in town, especially in the food industry.”
Malka, who is also a rabbi, marked 10 years as mayor in 2018. He no longer holds the post after losing an election later in the year.
8. Gadi Yarkoni, local authority chief
Gadi Yarkoni, head of Eshkol regional council in southern Israel, was instrumental in having Africans moved from accommodations provided to them.
During 2018, 15 students from South Sudan were housed in Avshalom, a short distance from Israel’s boundary with Gaza. They were studying agriculture in Ashkelon Academic College as part of a program sponsored by the Israeli government.
It was something of an exception: Israel had begun deporting refugees from South Sudan en masse in 2012 – less than a year after that state was established. Yet even this rare act of official benevolence was too much for Israelis living in Avshalom, who closed the gate to the village, preventing the African students from entering it.
One resident went so far as to describe the students as “human trash.”
Although the police ordered the gate’s reopening, Yarkoni intervened to urge the college authorities that the students be moved. Deceptively, he suggested that local residents were simply afraid of having 15 young men living in the same house and would have reacted the same way if the students were Israeli.
7. Amir Ohana, lawmaker
Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia – neighbors at loggerheads, often violently, for more than two decades – may finally be improving. Leaders of the two countries held talks in July, committing themselves to a peaceful future.
Despite the breakthrough, Eritreans – who comprise the majority of Africans living in Israel – would face considerable risks if they were expelled by Israel. Their country remains a dictatorship.
Amir Ohana, a Likud member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has implicitly recognized such concerns are valid by saying that the situation in Eritrea could deteriorate. His “solution” is “removing the infiltrators” before the situation in Eritrea “changes for the worse again.”
Speaking at a Knesset committee meeting during the summer, Ohana said “we’re going to push with all our might” for the mass expulsion of Eritreans.
6. Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir, pranksters
Followers of the late Meir Kahane – a notorious firebrand who urged that all Palestinians be expelled from their homeland – are known for their extreme violence. Baruch Goldstein, who committed the 1994 massacrein Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, drew inspiration from Kahane.
Two of Kahane’s most high-profile followers displayed a warped sense of humor during 2018.
As the Netanyahu government announced plans – subsequently dropped – to force 37,000 Africans out of Israel early in the year, some extremists sought to worsen the confusion which the refugees encountered.
Itamar Ben Gvir and Baruch Marzel, leaders of the party Strength for Israel, plastered signs across south Tel Aviv, in neighborhoods with high concentrations of Africans. The posters offered aid to people facing deportation.
מה שנראה כתעלול על חשבון אריתריאים של איתמר בן-גביר וברוך מרזל, הסתיים במבול שיחות לחברת מערכת "כאן חדשות" @Shira_HN. איך זה קרה? צפו pic.twitter.com/DEQEzxzEDY
Eritreans who read the notices, which were printed in their native tongue Tigrinya, were led to believe that they were being promised refuge in the homes of Israeli citizens.
But when the Eritreans dialed up the phone numbers on the posters, their calls were answered by Israelis who had no knowledge of what they were attempting to communicate.
It appears that the whole thing was a prank orchestrated by racists, who wished to make fun of people in distress.
5. May Golan, campaigner
May Golan, a political activist in Tel Aviv, once declared she was “proud to be a racist.”
In 2018, the newspaper Haaretzexposed how she had fabricated data about the number of Africans entering Israel for scaremongering purposes.
Asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea hold a mock Libya slave auction outside the embassy of Rwanda in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, in a protest against the Israeli government’s plan to deport refugees to third states in Africa, presumed to be Rwanda and Uganda, 22 January.
Oren ZivActiveStills
Golan – another follower of Meir Kahane – conceded as much in a follow-up interview with the TV channel Reshet 13.
Time will tell if being outed as a liar causes any damage to Golan’s political ambitions. She is hoping to be selected as a Likud candidate in April’s parliamentary elections.
4. Oren Hazan, lawmaker
In early 2018, Oren Hazan, a novice lawmaker, received a six-month ban from taking part in Knesset debates. He was punished for a series of insults directed at fellow politicians.
Hazan, who represents Likud, has proven adept at finding platforms other than the Knesset chamber for airing his bigoted views. He is perhaps best known for boarding a bus transporting Palestinians to see relatives in prison during 2017, telling one woman that her son was a “dog” and an “insect.”
Interviewed by an Australian activist in 2018, Hazan described Africans who had come to Israel as “fake refugees,” alleging they “don’t even have culture.”
“In the end of the day, those people that came from the black lands, came from Africa, all the way to Israel, they did it only for one reason. They came here to search for work, for jobs, they came here to search for a future,” he said.
Complaining about how Africans were having babies, Hazan concluded the interview with eliminationist language.
“If you will not deal with the problem right now, you will suffer in the future,” he said. “If you will not kick them out right now, they will kick you out in the future. If you will not wake up, you will wake up not just in a dream – in a nightmare. You need to destroy the problem when it’s still small.”
Hazan is a resident of Ariel, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
3. Moshe Edri, police chief
In late January 2018, just before he stepped down as Tel Aviv police chief, Moshe Edri issued a frightening directive. Expecting that Africans would be rounded up for expulsion, Edri told police officers that they would soon be unleashing physical force against the refugees.
“The scenario that really worries me the most is large public disturbances. We have absolutely no advantage over them, and therefore the swath of police tools must be available to the station. In other words, very quickly we will have to switch to shock grenades, water cannons, exerting force,” said Edri, according to Israel’s Channel 10.
A leaflet distributed by the Israeli government encouraging asylum seekers to leave to an unnamed third country is found lying on the ground outside the interior ministry on 4 February.
Oren ZivActiveStills
Edri suggested that the police were powerless against the Africans, and that their only option left was to use lethal force. “They take stones, rocks, rods, sticks, and beset you, and the only thing left for you to do is to shoot live fire,” he said.
Fortunately, the plans were not implemented – as the mass deportations were called off.
Later in 2018, Edri took up a top-level post in the public security ministry, which oversees Israel’s prisons and police.
2. Aryeh Deri, interior minister
As interior minister, Aryeh Deri has overseen Israel’s war against African refugees.
He played a central role during the early months of 2018 in trying to push forward the mass deportation plans. Before those plans were scrapped, he went on radio telling refugees that they must go back to Africa, as the continent was their “natural place.”
Deri has dodged accountability. When activists challenged his deportation drive in a religious court during 2018, he refused to cooperate.
He even declined to recognize the court, despite how his party Shas only regards religious courts as legitimate.
Towards the end of 2018, Deri was charged with fraud and tax-related offenses.
The allegations may not spell the end of his career. He has previously proven capable of making a political comeback after being imprisoned for taking bribes.
1. Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister
In March, Benjamin Netanyahu praised the wall that Israel has built along its boundary with Egypt. Without it, he claimed, Israel would face “severe attacks by Sinai terrorists, and something much worse, a flood of illegal migrants from Africa.”
That same month, Israel put into effect part of a secret deal to provide at least one African nation with military aid. Netanyahu wanted that country – which has not been named – to accept refugees that Israel is seeking to deport.
Eventually, Netanyahu was forced to admit failure; no less than five African nations ultimately turned downhis demand that they take refugees expelled from Israel.
For the time being, Netanyahu’s efforts to expedite the deportations have been thwarted. But his draconian anti-refugee policies have already had a pronounced effect.
Tens of thousands of Africans have been removed from Israel since Netanyahu became prime minister.
The crisis of African refugees may have fallen from the headlines. That does not mean it has gone away.
If Netanyahu heads Israel’s government after April’s election, it is a tragically safe bet that he will continue pursuing his racist objectives.
Theresa May has survived as prime minister after weathering a dramatic no-confidence vote in her government, but was left scrambling to strike a Brexit compromise that could secure the backing of parliament.
Graffiti reading “50 years of resistance: Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine” is seen on a wall in Issawiyeh.
From left, Rafik Bakhishov, Zafar Ahmadov, and Tofig Yagublu take part in a hunger strike at the headquarters of the opposition party Musavat in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Jan. 15. (Khadija Ismayilova)
At least 13 policemen were killed and nine wounded in the attacks. Video footage subsequently released showed that at least one base was overrun by rebels using newer AK-series assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles and not rudimentary assault rifles and small-arms, and home-made crude Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) as before. 
Refugees from Sudan and Eritrea queue at the Israeli interior ministry in order to renew their visas or submit asylum requests in the early hours of 4 February.
