Day: October 20, 2023

The United Nations’ General Assembly brings world leaders to New York each fall to discuss global problems like escalating climate disasters and widening inequality. But on the sidelines, heads of state often use their time in midtown Manhattan to pull aside leaders they need to glad-hand and cajole.

That’s how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met Tuesday afternoon, the first face-to-face meeting for the two leaders since the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine 18 months ago. Zelensky has been wanting to press Netanyahu in person for more assistance and a more coordinated front against Iranian weapons transfers to Russian forces in Ukraine.

But Israel, which relies on Russian-controlled airspace over Syria to attack Iranian proxies in the region, has been careful not to irk Moscow. That has required walking a fine line. 

After Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to topple Kyiv last year, Israel’s decision to not join other countries in imposing sanctions on Russia stood out on the world stage. Russian citizens and oligarchs still have freedom of movement in and out of Israel. No Israeli Prime Minister has visited Ukraine’s capital since Russia stepped up its aggression. And while Israel has provided humanitarian aid and defensive warning systems to Ukraine, it has balked at sending lethal, offensive military equipment or its most effective anti-missile technology. 

Zelensky would like to change that. He also has sought to partner with Israel on working to block Iranian arms shipments to Russia for use in Ukraine. For months, Russian forces have used Iranian-made Shahed drone systems to attack Ukrainian cities. US intelligence officials have said that Iranian soldiers have been spotted in Crimea helping Russian forces use Shahed drones to strike Ukrainian power stations and infrastructure, and likely honing the use of the technology.

In May, Zelensky called out Iran for selling its weapons to Russia, telling Tehran in a video address that Iran was acting as “an accomplice to Russian terror.”

That presents a complicated, but common interest between Israel and Ukraine in finding ways to stop the flow of Iranian drone arsenals, says Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Both Zelensky and Netanyahu are leaders of countries that are suffering from Iranian weapons, so that creates all kinds of opportunities for intelligence sharing and cooperation to better defend their respective people,” says Bowman.

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When Zelensky walked into the meeting room on the sidelines of the UN general assembly, he gripped Netanyahu’s hand and the two leaders leaned forward and patted each other on the back, according to video posted online. “You have a very big team,” remarked Zelensky, as he shook hands with a line of Israeli officials. Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, explained the meeting was “very attractive” and “there were other people who wanted to participate.”

As Zelensky was about to sit down, he saw Israeli’s top intelligence official, Mossad director David Barnea, across the room, and walked over to shake his hand and the two embraced and spoke briefly.

Zelensky later posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that he and Netanyahu focused their talks “on our cooperation” and “civil defense.” “I informed him about Russian strikes on our cities, ports, and critical infrastructure using Iranian drones,” Zelensky wrote. “We share concern about the increasing military cooperation between Russia and Iran.”

Israeli officials declined to provide many details about what was discussed in the meeting with Zelensky. A statement from Netanyahu’s office described the meeting as “cordial” and said that Netanyahu “made it clear that Israel would continue to assist Ukraine on humanitarian issues, including dealing with anti-personnel mines.”

Zelensky was not the only world leader Netanyahu met with on the sidelines of the annual diplomatic gathering. He also had a one-on-one with President Joe Biden, who has yet to invite Netanyahu to the White House since he returned to the role of prime minister in December. It may end up being a break with tradition on Biden’s part. For decades, the U.S. president has welcomed the newly installed Israeli Prime Minister to the White House within the first year of the Israeli leader taking office. (Biden still has a few months to extend an invite.) The less formal meeting at the UN gathering amounted to a half measure from Biden, reflecting his concerns over Netanyahu’s policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank and his controversial push to weaken Israel’s judiciary.

Protests have followed Netanyahu during his visit to the U.S. In San Francisco, where the Israeli leader met with Elon Musk, protestors projected an illustration of Netanyahu in prison garb on a wall of the infamous former prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. In the days before Netanyahu arrived in New York, activists projected a message onto the side of the iconic UN building that read, “Don’t believe Crime Minister Netanyahu. Protect Israeli democracy.”

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former State Department senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations, says that the Biden Administration has been cooperating extensively with Israeli officials in recent months, including spending time brokering talks with the Saudi royal family to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but that Biden has been reluctant to give Netanyahu the high-profile platform that comes with a White House visit. “I think the administration didn’t want to legitimize the Israeli government at a time when it’s very unhappy, both on the issue of the judicial overhaul and Israeli policies with the Palestinians,” Miller says. 

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On Ukraine, Miller adds, Israeli leaders have acted very cautiously to avoid upsetting Russia, and the Biden Administration has not leaned significantly on Israel to do more. “I think the Americans have given the Israelis a sort of margin to operate without calling in chits and pressing them hard,” Miller says.

Fox News has independently confirmed that two American nationals held captive by Hamas have been released. 

A source with knowledge of the release confirmed to Fox News that the two American hostages, a mother and her daughter, were released “on humanitarian grounds” following Qatari mediation efforts.

“In response to Qatari efforts, Al-Qassam Brigades released two American citizens (a mother and her daughter) for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless,” Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida also said Friday. The Al-Qassam Brigades is the armed wing of Hamas.

A source tells Fox News the hostages are now in the care of the Red Cross. Their identities have not been released.

LIVE UPDATES: ISRAEL AT WAR WITH HAMAS 

As of this morning, there were 11 Americans unaccounted for since Hamas launched its war against Israel on Oct. 7. 

The Israeli military said Thursday there are 203 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

President Biden, speaking in Israel Wednesday, said, “There’s no higher priority than the release and safe return of all these hostages” captured by Hamas.

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“To those who are living in limbo, waiting desperately to learn the fate of a loved one, especially to families of the hostages – You’re not alone. We’re working with partners throughout the region, pursuing every avenue to bring home those who are being held captive by Hamas,” Biden said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

As much of the world’s attention shifted to the Middle East this week, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky staked out contrasting positions on the war between Israel and Hamas.

The Russian president has reportedly not called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the weekend, and did not release a message of support or condolences following the attacks on Saturday.

Instead, Putin took the opportunity to blame U.S. policy for the latest outbreak of violence. “I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East,” Putin said. “[Washington] tried to monopolize regulating [the conflict], but was unfortunately unconcerned with finding compromises acceptable for both sides. It put forward ideas on how it should be done and pressured both sides. Each time, however, without taking into account the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people,” he added, according to the Moscow Times.

On Thursday, Russia’s foreign ministry called on Israel to agree to a ceasefire and allow goods to come into Gaza. “The unacceptability of the indiscriminate bombardment leading to numerous civilian casualties was emphasized,” a Russian statement said.

Putin and Netanyahu have reportedly shared a friendly relationship in the past, but it has deteriorated over the course of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Israel has refused to join the Western sanctions regime, abstained from providing weapons to Kyiv, and largely maintained neutrality on the war, but tensions between Moscow and Tel Aviv have grown due to other factors.

For one, the war in Ukraine has brought Russia closer with Iran, who some have been quick to blame for the attacks in Israel over the weekend.

Second, as Moscow’s former chief rabbi explained to reporter Pjotr Sauer, many Jewish people are uncomfortable with Putin’s framing of the war as a fight against a “neo-Nazi” government.

Sauer elaborates in the Guardian: “Last summer, these tensions first spilled over into the public, when Russian officials accused Israel of supporting the ‘neo-Nazi regime’ in Kyiv. The spat was ignited after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recycled an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Adolf Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’ – comments that Israel described as ‘unforgivable and outrageous.’”

Zelensky, meanwhile, has repeatedly affirmed his country’s support for Israel, comparing Hamas’s attacks over the weekend to Russia’s conduct during the war. “The only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelensky said during a speech to NATO on Monday. He later told a French television station that he was confident that Moscow was supporting Hamas “in one way or another.”

During his visit to Brussels, the Ukrainian president also acknowledged that “everybody’s afraid” that Western attention and support for Kyiv could diminish as focus shifted toward the Middle East.

Zelensky earlier said Moscow stood to gain from tumult around the world. “We have data very clearly proving that Russia is interested in inciting war in the Middle East. So that a new source of pain and suffering would erode global unity and exacerbate cleavages and controversies, helping Russia in destroying freedom in Europe,” he wrote on X. “We can see Russian propagandists gloating. We can see Moscow’s Iranian friends openly extending a helping hand to those who attacked Israel.”

In Responsible Statecraft this week, Mark Katz, professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, explored these dynamics and analyzed why, contrary to some opinions, a larger war in the Middle East could run counter to Moscow interests.

“While many in the West seem to think that Russia somehow benefits whenever conflict erupts in the Middle East, this might be an occasion when it does not. Moscow may be calling for a ceasefire, then, because it sees this as the best way to protect its interests,” he concluded. “The problem for Moscow, however, is that it is not in a strong position to either persuade or coerce Israel or Hamas to agree to one. Perhaps this is why Foreign Minister Lavrov indicated that President Putin would not be making calls to any other leaders about this.”

In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:

—A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that “After 18 months of grinding conflict, Ukrainians remain deeply committed to winning the war with Russia — although slightly less so than they were in the early months of the war.” The number of Ukrainians who would want to keep fighting until “it wins the war” dropped to 60% from 70% in September 2022. The number of respondents who wanted to seek a negotiated settlement “as soon as possible” increased slightly during the same time period, from 26% to 31%.

The poll also found that “In the South (45%) and East (52%) regions closest to the front line, support for continuing the fight is still lower than the rest of the country. As a result, the proportion who favor a negotiated end to the war as quickly as possible is also highest in the South (41%) and East (39%).” Just over 70% of residents of the north of Ukraine, which includes Kyiv, and the West were in favor of continuing to fight.

—Another poll — from the Eurasia Group Foundation — found that a majority of Americans (58%) think the United States should push for a negotiated settlement in the war in Ukraine. As Daniel Larison notes in RS today, “Support for diplomatic solutions [in Ukraine and elsewhere] has majority backing of Americans from across the political spectrum, so it is remarkable how little support for those same solutions can be found among our elected representatives and policymakers in Washington.”

The poll also found that a plurality of respondents named “avoiding a direct war between the U.S. and nuclear-armed Russia” as the top goal for the future of U.S. support of the war effort. More respondents believed that the “U.S. responded well to Russia’s war in Ukraine than did not,” though there was a strong partisan divide on that question.

— A New Yorker profile of national security adviser Jake Sullivan examines the administration’s approach to the war in Ukraine, explores some of the internal debates over which weapons to send to Kyiv, and looks into how Sullivan thinks about the question of diplomacy. The piece reports that the White House was “fully briefed” on the Track Two talks that took place between former and prominent Russians in the spring.

“There is little doubt that the Biden Administration has actively considered ways to get Russia to the negotiating table,” writes Susan Glasser. “Privately, Sullivan has had extensive discussions about what a peace deal might look like. ‘My conversations with him all the way through have been about what can you do to eventually bring this war to an end,’ an informal adviser of Sullivan’s told me. (…) ‘they want to find a way to eventually get to a freeze, to eventually get to a negotiated settlement. But it has to be something that keeps nato together. It has to be something that doesn’t isolate the Ukrainians or have them go off and undermine everything that’s been done. That’s a hard square to circle.’”

—National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that funding for Ukraine would not be endless. “On the Ukraine funding, we’re coming near to the end of the rope. Today we announced $200 million, and we’ll keep that aid going as long we can, but it’s not going to be indefinite,” he said. The White House is reportedly planning to try to get its languishing aid request for Ukraine through Congress by combining it with funding for Israel, Taiwan, and border security, though some Congressional Republicans have balked at the proposal.

U.S. State Department news:

During a press briefing on Tuesday focused almost exclusively on the war in Gaza, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that he didn’t have any evidence suggesting that Russia was involved in Hamas’s attacks.

Leaders respond differently in moments of crisis. Some buckle, cringe or stay aloof and unconcerned, others abandon ship and run away while some rise up to the challenge and forge a new nation or organization from the experience.

The ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East offer us a chance to examine the role of effective leadership in a moment of national challenge. On February 24, 2022, the Russian military invaded Ukraine, setting off the biggest attack on a European country since the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and troops have been killed and injured, about eight million Ukrainians have been internally displaced and 8.2 million have fled the country. The losses on both sides are mounting and there are no indications of when the fight would end. However, the leadership style of the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in this moment of immense national disaster has captured the world’s imagination. He embodies valour and resilience, two important leadership traits required in times of turmoil.

Zelensky, 45, was a TV actor who used to play president of his country in drama skits before he was elected in 2019. When the Russian tanks rolled into his country last year, many were not sure of how he would respond. Eighteen months on, Zelensky has acquitted himself as a leader made for the moment, leading his people to confront a superpower which is waging the biggest land assault in recent history.

Zelensky has inspired thousands of his compatriots to fight for their motherland, motivated many from foreign lands into his army and forged an international campaign to bolster military and financial support. The world has come to admire Zelensky – who has since replaced his business suits with fatigue – hoping from plane to plane, visiting foreign capitals, meeting heads of states, addressing parliaments and global audiences and securing the backing of NATO, EU, G7, G20 and other organizations and countries. His speeches have succeeded in sensitizing the world to the dangers of Vladimir Putin seizing his country.

He makes nightly radio address to his citizens to apprise them of developments and offer words of comfort and succor, visits troops at the frontlines and the wounded soldiers in the hospitals. Additionally, he makes regular visits to homes of people who have lost loved ones to comfort and condole. Last December, Time magazine named him ‘’Person of the Year’’ for the courage he’s shown in leading his country. That edition is one of my favourite copies in a long time.

‘’Zelensky’s success as a wartime leader has relied on the fact that courage is contagious. It spreads through Ukraine’s political leadership in the first days of the invasion, as everyone realized the President has stuck around’’, the magazine’s Simon Shuster wrote in the cover article.

In the early hours of Saturday, October 7, 2023, hundreds of Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s hi-tech intelligence systems and entered the country from the Gaza Strip to launch the most brazen and audacious attacks against the only Jewish nation. Coming exactly 50 years after the Yom Kippur war of October 1973, the assaults were meant to subdue and break Israel. Over 1,300 Israelis lost their lives and about 150 persons of different nationalities were taken hostage. Before the attacks, Israel was in deep political turmoil over Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy on judicial reforms in which he sought to curb the powers of the Supreme Court which many viewed as a power grab and his attempt to intimidate the justices and thwart his ongoing corruption trial.

The protests against the policy were widespread and even army personnel and reservists had threatened to join. The prime minister became the most despised politician in the country. Some observers are quick to blame the political turmoil in Israel for the monumental intelligence failure that enabled the terrorists to train for months across the wall in Gaza and enter Israel undetected. But it was a different Netanyahu that we’ve seen after the attacks.

He has responded swiftly and impressively to the crisis by bringing the country together and rallying the citizens for what would definitely be a long and difficult war against the terrorists. The Prime Minister soon set up a government of emergency Israeli unity and war cabinet, bringing in opposition politicians into the government. A polarized and divided nation soon came together, ready to go to war to achieve a common goal. By the weekend, the PM was visiting troops at the frontline, encouraging them to achieve victory and protect their country.

Providing effective leadership in times severe challenges is one of the most important functions of a leader which is central to the success of a country or an organization. Whether it is famine, war or outbreak of diseases, national leaders must possess the resilience, rigour, adaptability with which to rise to the occasion and steer the country through uncertainty.

Business leaders also require the same set of competencies to face whatever crisis that may arise. Indeed, the saying that real leaders are forged in crisis signifies how crucial effective leadership is in times of serve challenges. Effective crisis management entails the ability to make quick decision while inspiring trust and confidence in the team. History is full of leaders who have excelled or failed in difficult times. In the United States, President George Bush and Rudy Giuliani are renowned for their inspiring leaderships after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt also led impressively well during the Second World War to defeat the Nazis.

A few days after the Hamas attacks, President Joe Biden spoke to families of Americans who were taken hostage. The President explained that it was important that he showed compassion and empathy. In all the 13 years since 2010 that this country has suffered brutal attacks under Boko Haram, no Nigerian President had ever bothered to meet with, or speak to families of victims. President Muhammadu Buhari was notoriously so aloof and unconcerned about the slaughter of Nigerians by Fulani militias in some parts of the country, especially in the North Central, that I suspect that he had severe Empathy Deficit Disorder (EDD).

While Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was commended for touring flooded states in 2012 to sympathize and comfort displaced people, and celebrated for rising promptly to defend the country against Ebola outbreak in 2014, his handling of the abduction of the Chibok girls that same year left a lot to be desired. It was one of the reasons he lost the 2015 election.

President Buhari provided fantastic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that the country prepared adequately for the disease, thus saving thousands of lives, his responses to the many militant and militia attacks in parts of the country, especially Benue, Plateau and North Western States were, at best, sloppy. So many died under his watch, yet he did little or nothing to stop the carnage, and he showed little or no concern to families of the victims.

Businesses could also face serious crisis due to cybercrimes, loss of a key staff, fire, a major fraud and regulatory infractions, etc. It is important for businesses to have a well-prepared standard manual for managing crisis. This manual typically outlines important steps to follow in case of an emergency or problems. In 2002, a bank I worked for as Head of Corporate Communication fell into a major crisis when the CBN suspended it, and a few others, from the foreign exchange market for some months for flouting some regulatory guidelines.

It was a major crisis in the industry and the panic was noticeable. The executive management handled the crisis superbly and from it we learned many lessons in crisis management. Soon after, we developed a manual on crisis management for the institution. Effective communication is an important ingredient in managing crisis in an organization or a country.

The jury is still out on how well the incumbent president is leading the country in this very moment of monumental economic and security difficulties. The first step is for President Tinubu to build a broad national consensus on how best to face this moment.

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.