DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ The Occupied West Bank: Divided by Faith, United by Fear
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-12 | by ( Jeffrey Gettleman | More About Jeffrey Gettleman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As Moish Feiglin pulls up to his settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, he points to an eight-foot-tall concrete slab blocking the middle of the road. He slowly drives around it and nods his head to more security barriers and heavily armed soldiers peering from behind the entrance gate. “I don’t have rock-proof glass on my car windows,” he says. “I don’t want rock-proof glass.”“But you have to understand what people are preparing for,” he adds. “They are preparing for 200 terrorists to come in.”

Persons: Moish Feiglin, ”, “ Organizations: West Bank Locations: Tekoa

Even before the Hamas attacks, settler violence was hitting its highest levels since the United Nations began tracking it in the mid 2000s. According to U.N. figures, there used to be one incident of settler violence a day. The West Bank, which has been rocked by major uprisings before, feels primed to explode. Gaza and the West Bank are two separate areas that Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Roughly half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, alongside an estimated 2.7 million Palestinians.

Persons: ”, “, Israel, Naomi Kahn, ” “, “ I’m Organizations: West Bank, United Nations, Israel Defense Forces, Palestinian, Palestinian Authority Locations: Gaza, West, Israel

Yet videos released by Hamas fighters themselves depict the brutal killing of unarmed civilians. Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli security service, said Israel may have agreed to let humanitarian aid enter Gaza on Saturday morning in light of the hostages’ release Friday night. “But we cannot fall for this trap.”There are still many questions of why, of all the 200 or so hostages, the Raanans were released. Hamas might be trying to temper Israeli retaliation on Gaza by gaining some good will from the Biden administration. President Biden and his team have been closely advising Israel on how it is waging its war on Gaza, although it is not clear how much Israel actually listens to what the Americans say.

Persons: Gazans, —, Yaakov Peri, Shin, Mr, Peri, Robert D’Amico, ”, D’Amico, Biden Organizations: Hamas Locations: Israel, Gaza, California

On top of that, several hostages were gravely wounded by gunshots and grenades during the terrorist attack. Family members and international organizations are beseeching Hamas to show mercy and release the old, the young, the sick and the wounded first. The International Committee of the Red Cross is one of the groups trying to help. Within two days of the attack, Red Cross officials said, they had approached Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. The Red Cross is also asking Hamas to allow in medicine and to immediately release the hostages with urgent health needs, like Rut.

Persons: “, ”, Fabrizio Carboni, ” Mr, Carboni Organizations: Hamas, International Committee, Red Cross, Cross Locations: Doha, Qatar, Gaza

Shanta even marched into the Foreign and Home Ministries, clutching a plastic envelope of documents and pictures, and demanding answers. A Russian officer sent a relative a message: “Your brother was buried on 14 July at 12:50 at Navo-Talisty’s cemetery, Ivanovo, Russia. Her family is Hindu and believes the soul can be released from the body only by cremation. She wants to travel to the Russian cemetery, 200 miles from Moscow, and bring home her brother’s remains. But Nepali officials in Moscow told her the Russian Army would not allow this.

Persons: Shanta, “, ” Shanta, Thomas Gibbons, Neff Organizations: Foreign, Home Ministries, Russian Army Locations: Navo, Talisty’s, Ivanovo, Russia, Moscow, London

Yosef Chaim Bernfeld, a young businessman from New York who is trying to clean up his life, journeyed to Uman this weekend for a “spiritual fix.”Every Jewish New Year, even this one during a raging war, thousands of Hasidic pilgrims turn this city in central Ukraine into a mini Jerusalem. They roam around in big groups sucking down Coke Zero and kosher pizza, paying in shekels. They pump out Hebrew hip-hop and dance hard together in the middle of the street. They exchange blessings — “I ask God to give you a sense of belonging, to give you stability, to grow your business this year” — and drink copious amounts of red wine way past the wartime curfew.

Persons: Yosef Chaim Bernfeld, — “ Locations: New York, Uman, Ukraine, Jerusalem, shekels

But after the destruction of a major dam just downriver, that shimmering lake, one of Europe’s biggest, simply disappeared. For 60-plus years, the Bezhan family ran a fishing business on these shores. They bought boats, nets, freezers and enormous rumbling ice-making machines, and generation after generation made a living off the fish. But now there are no fish. Then it would take another 10 years for the fish to grow — for some species, 20.”

Persons: ”, Serhii Bezhan Locations: Ukraine

No one was in the dark about what was happening at 80 Albert Street. “I was really angry,” said Mpho Phalatse, who would go on to serve for just over a year as Johannesburg’s mayor. The building, she said, was “quite frankly, not habitable.”Neighbors were constantly complaining about the crime spilling out of it and the slumlords who had hijacked it. It was a city-owned building that had been essentially abandoned. A 2019 report by city inspectors showed scorched outlets and melted wires in the building’s rooms, clear fire hazards, all adding up to a steady drumbeat of increasingly worrisome signs.

Persons: ”, Mpho Phalatse Organizations: Albert Locations: Johannesburg

One summer evening as the sun sank behind the Dnipro River, the mammoth waterway that bisects Ukraine, Anatolii Volkov walked along a river beach, head down. A Ukrainian archaeologist, Mr. Volkov looked as if he was just taking a stroll. “Look at this,” he said. He bent down and picked up an object about two inches long. He rubbed his fingers over the grooves.

Persons: Anatolii Volkov, Volkov, ” Locations: Dnipro, Ukraine, Ukrainian

☆ How War Destroyed a ‘Long and Happy Marriage’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( Jeffrey Gettleman | More About Jeffrey Gettleman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It was there she realized that she didn’t want to go back home. I wasn’t thinking about divorce. I didn’t know if the Russian troops would come for us or not. I didn’t know if I’d be alive or not. “Like: Is this person who I spent so many years of my life with still the right person for me if I don’t know who I am anymore?”

Persons: Tetiana, I’d, Trofymenko, ” Locations: Ukraine, Turku, Finland, Russian

Every morning at the stroke of nine, in the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi, the entire town square comes to a standstill for a moment of silence to mourn the war dead. Languid, operatic music flows from a speaker positioned on a wrought iron balcony overlooking the cobblestone square. For a few minutes, as the sun beams down and flags snap in the wind, everyone and everything stops. Chernivtsi, tucked into the southwest corner of Ukraine, hundreds of miles from the front, has never been hit by a missile — and it’s not small, 300,000 people. There are few checkpoints or military vehicles or clumps of young men in camouflage crowding the coffee machine at the supermarket — like there always are in Ukraine’s cities in the east, center and south.

Persons: there’s Organizations: Police Locations: Ukrainian, Chernivtsi, Ukraine

Search resuls for: "More About Jeffrey Gettleman"

11 mentions found