International
Spanish chef José Andrés resorts to his influence and pain to change Israel’s policy in Gaza
Spanish chef José Andrés has resorted to his influence in Washington and the immense pain he feels for the death of seven aid workers of his NGO, World Central Kitchen (WCK), so that the United States asks Israel for changes in its military strategy in the Gaza Strip.
When José Andrés speaks, Washington listens. He has important connections in political circles: the former president of the United States. Barack Obama awarded him the Medal of the Arts and Humanities in 2016, and earlier this year, the former president of the Lower House, Nancy Pelosi, nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The chef, who is also a U.S. citizen, has a close relationship with the president, Joe Biden, and both talked on the phone after the tragedy.
After that call, Biden issued one of the strongest statements to date against the Israeli government, accusing him of “not having done enough to protect humanitarian workers” since the beginning of the war and said he “have a broken heart” by the death of WCK aid workers in Gaza.
Since the moment of the tragedy, José Andrés has used the loudspeaker that gives him his position to question Israel’s policy and make it clear that this is not an isolated incident, since the beginning of the conflict 196 humanitarian workers have died and more than 33,100 Palestinians have asked for their lives.
Even more important, José Andrés has asked for an independent investigation into the attack on the WCK convoy and has urged the United States, Australia, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdom, countries of origin of the deceased aid workers, to join this call, although Washington has already refused to do so.
In an interview with the ABC network, broadcast this Sunday, José Andrés insisted on the need for an independent investigation and considered that Israel is waging a “war against humanity itself.”
“This is no longer about the seven men and women of WCK who perished in that unfortunate event. This has been happening for too long. It’s been six months attacking anything that seems to move,” said José Andrés.
“This doesn’t look like a war against terror. This no longer looks like a war to defend Israel. Actually, at this point, it seems that it is a war against humanity itself,” he added.
Therefore, he argued, it is imperative that a “deeper” investigation be carried out, in which the videos of the event and the radio conversations of the military involved can be analyzed.
“The one who has perpetrated the attack cannot investigate himself,” he stressed.
The Israeli Army has carried out its own investigation and, in its first conclusions published on Friday, it stated that the attack was the result of a chain of “serious mistakes” and assured that they fired believing that there were two Hamas “gunmen” inside the vehicles.
When asked about it, José Andrés was especially forceful. “Every time something happens, we can’t just include Hamas in the equation,” he said.
José Andrés has not only made this type of statement on the ABC network, but he also published an opinion article this week in The New York Times and has used his account on the social network X, with more than a million followers, to question Biden’s policies towards Israel.
The pressure on Biden is enormous, especially since the chef’s words come at a time when his policy towards Israel could cost him dearly in the November elections, especially in key states where the Arab community has an important weight, such as Michigan and Minnesota.
In this context, Biden spoke on the phone with Netanyahu on Thursday and gave him an ultimatum. For the first time, the US leader put conditions for his government’s support for the war in Gaza and warned that Washington’s policy would change if Israel did not take “concrete” measures to improve the humanitarian situation.
Hours later, Israel facilitated the entry of more humanitarian aid into Gaza and dismissed two commanders responsible for the attack on the co-operants.
The real test will now be the negotiations of the next few days in Cairo, in which the United States is putting pressure on Israel to reach an agreement with Hamas and achieve a ceasefire in the Strip, in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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