Chris Hedges's Blog, page 330

Trump Pleads With Venezuela’s Military to Back Guaido

MIAMI — President Donald Trump on Monday pleaded with Venezuela’s military to support opposition leader Juan Guaido and issued a dire warning if they continue to stand with President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

“You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything,” Trump said in a speech at Florida International University in Miami before large American and Venezuelan flags.

Trump added: “We seek a peaceful transition of power, but all options are open.”

The Venezuelan military could play a decisive role in the stalemate but has largely remained loyal to Maduro.

In remarks broadcast on state television, Maduro accused the U.S. president of speaking in an “almost Nazi style” and lashed out at Trump for thinking he can deliver orders to Venezuela’s military.

“Who is the commander of the armed forces, Donald Trump from Miami?” Maduro said. “They think they’re the owners of the country.”

Trump said “a new day is coming in Latin America,” as he sought to rally support among the largest Venezuelan community in the U.S. for Guaido. The U.S. recognizes him as the country’s rightful president and condemns Maduro’s government and its socialist policies.

As the monthslong political crisis stretched on, the military has blocked the U.S. from moving tons of humanitarian aid airlifted in recent days to the Colombian border with Venezuela. The aid shipments have been meant in part to dramatize the hyperinflation and shortages of food and medicine that are gripping Venezuela. Trump said of Maduro, “He would rather see his people starve than give them aid.”

Critics say Maduro’s re-election last year was fraudulent, making his second term illegal.

Venezuela’s power struggle is headed to a potentially violent showdown Saturday, when Guaido will try to run caravans of U.S. humanitarian aid across the Venezuelan border from Colombia. Maduro denies a humanitarian crisis exists, blaming the Trump administration for mounting a coup against him.

More than 2 million Venezuelans have fled the country in the last two years, most flooding across the border into Colombia, Brazil and Peru. Those left behind struggle to afford scarce supplies of food and medicine as inflation soars.

Maduro maintains support from Russia, China and Turkey, while Guaido has won recognition from dozens of world leaders in Latin America and Europe, who are demanding that Maduro holds new elections or steps down.

So far, Maduro isn’t budging. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Maduro said Venezuela is ready to make an economic rebound once Trump removes his “infected hand” from the country that sits atop the world’s largest petroleum reserves.

Trump urged the Venezuelan military to accept Guaido’s offer of amnesty and refrain from violence against those opposing Maduro’s government. And he praised the Venezuelan opposition, saying of the people of Venezuela, “They are turning the page on dictatorship and there will be no going back.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said earlier Monday that the U.S. “knows where military officials and their families have money hidden throughout the world.”

South Florida is home to more than 100,000 Venezuelans and Venezuelan-Americans, the largest concentration in the country. Speaking in the presidential battleground state, Trump also sought to draw a contrast with the policies of progressive Democrats, which he brands as “socialist,” as he gears up for re-election.

Trump said that “socialism has so completely ravaged” Venezuela “that even the world’s largest reserves of oil are not enough to keep the lights on.” He added: “This will never happen to us.”

“Socialism promises prosperity, but it delivers poverty,” he said.

Trump was introduced by first lady Melania Trump and joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, who have all been outspoken in their criticism of Maduro’s government. Trump also spoke of the socialist governments in Cuba and Nicaragua, which have large expatriate communities in the Miami area.

“Socialism is dying and liberty, prosperity and democracy are being reborn” throughout the hemisphere, Trump said, expressing hope that soon, “This will become the first free hemisphere in all of human history.”

In Cuba, the foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, tweeted that he considered “offensive” Trump’s speech and that it “confirms the threat of military aggression against Venezuela.” He added, “Humanitarian aid is a pretext for a war.”

Shortly after Trump ended his speech, he tweeted, “I ask every member of the Maduro regime: End this nightmare of poverty, hunger and death. LET YOUR PEOPLE GO. Set your country free! Now is the time for all Venezuelan Patriots to act together, as one united people. Nothing could be better for the future of Venezuela!”

Guaido addressed the crowd in a pre-recorded video released by the White House and thanked Trump and the state of Florida for their support.

“Now there is a debate between the democracy and dictatorship — one between life and death,” Guaido said in Spanish. “Today this fight is existential.”

Trump said the U.S. is “profoundly grateful” to dissidents and exiles who have protested and raised alarms about the actions of the Maduro government. But his administration has also come under criticism for not doing enough to grant asylum to those fleeing the country.

“President Trump is two-faced on the Venezuela issue,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo. “He talks about fighting the Maduro regime, but his administration keeps deporting and detaining Venezuelans fleeing repression from the Maduro regime.”

Trump had been spending the holiday weekend at his private club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Future Rabbis Plant With Palestinians, Sow Rift With Israel

AT-TUWANI, West Bank — Young American rabbinical students are doing more than visiting holy sites, learning Hebrew and poring over religious texts during their year abroad in Israel.

In a stark departure from past programs focused on strengthening ties with Israel and Judaism, the new crop of rabbinical students is reaching out to the Palestinians. The change reflects a divide between Israeli and American Jews that appears to be widening.

On a recent winter morning, Tyler Dratch, a 26-year-old rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Boston, was among some two dozen Jewish students planting olive trees in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani in the southern West Bank. The only Jews that locals typically see are either Israeli soldiers or ultranationalist settlers.

“Before coming here and doing this, I couldn’t speak intelligently about Israel,” Dratch said. “We’re saying that we can take the same religion settlers use to commit violence in order to commit justice, to make peace.”

Dratch, not wanting to be mistaken for a settler, covered his Jewish skullcap with a baseball cap. He followed the group down a rocky slope to see marks that villagers say settlers left last month: “Death to Arabs” and “Revenge” spray-painted in Hebrew on boulders and several uprooted olive trees, their stems severed from clumps of dirt.

This year’s student program also includes a tour of the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, a visit to an Israeli military court that prosecutes Palestinians and a meeting with an activist from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Israel.

The program is run by “T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights,” a U.S.-based network of rabbis and cantors.

Most of T’ruah’s membership, and all students in the Israel program, are affiliated with the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative movements — liberal streams of Judaism that represent the majority of American Jews. These movements are marginalized in Israel, where rabbis from the stricter Orthodox stream dominate religious life.

The T’ruah program, now in its seventh year, is meant to supplement students’ standard curricular fare: Hebrew courses, religious text study, field trips and introductions to Jewish Israeli society. Though the program is optional, T’ruah says some 70 percent of the visiting American rabbinical students from the liberal branches of Judaism choose to participate.

The year-long program is split into one semester, focused on Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and another, on alleged human rights abuses inside Israel.

T’ruah claims its West Bank encounters aren’t one-off acts of community service, but experiences meant to be carried home and disseminated to future congregations.

“We want to propel them to action, so they invite their future rabbinates to work toward ending the occupation,” said Rabbi Ian Chesir-Teran, T’ruah’s rabbinic educator in Israel.

The group began its trip in the most Jewish of ways, a discussion about the weekly Torah portion that turned into a spirited debate about the Ten Commandments.

“The Torah says don’t covet your neighbor’s fields, and we’re going to a Palestinian village whose private land has been confiscated for the sake of covetous Jews building settlements,” Chesir-Teran said.

As their bus trundled through the terraced hills south of Hebron, students listened to a local activist’s condensed history of the combustible West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

As part of interim peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was carved up into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, along with a section called Area C that remains under exclusive Israeli control.

The destinations of the day — the Palestinian villages of At-Tuwani and Ar-Rakkes — sit in Area C, also home to around 450,000 Israeli settlers. Palestinians seek all of the West Bank as the heartland of a hoped-for independent state.

The group was guided by villagers to their olive trees — an age-old Palestinian symbol and a more recent casualty of the struggle for land with Israeli settlers.

Israeli security officials reported a dramatic spike last year in settler violence against Palestinians.

Yishai Fleisher, a settler spokesman, blamed the attacks on the “atmosphere of tension” in the West Bank. “We’re against vigilantism, unequivocally,” he said.

As Israeli soldiers watched from the hilltop, Palestinians and Jews dug their fingers into the crumbling soil, setting down roots where holes torn out of the field hinted at recent vandalism.

Dratch said he came of age in Pennsylvania during the violent years of the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. “My religious education was steeped in fear of Palestinians,” he said.

But in college, Dratch’s ideas about Israel changed. Dratch says he still supports Israel, while opposing its policies in the West Bank. “I realized I could be Zionist without turning my back on my neighbor, on Palestinians,” he said.

With hundreds of young American rabbis sharing such sentiments, some in Israel find the trend alarming.

“I worry about a passion for social justice becoming co-opted by far-left politics among future American Jewish leaders,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish research center in Jerusalem.

“Future rabbis are marginalizing themselves from the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews,” he added.

As Israel heads toward elections in April, opinion polls point to another victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his religious, nationalist allies.

In the U.S., meanwhile, surveys show American Jews, particularly the younger generation, holding far more dovish views toward Palestinians and religious pluralism. Netanyahu’s close friendship with President Donald Trump has further alienated many American Jews, who tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

Two weeks after visiting At-Tuwani, the group received disheartening news: half of the 50 trees they’d planted had been uprooted, apparently by settlers. The students scrambled to make plans to replant.

Dratch said that while his time in Israel has provided him with plenty of reasons to despair, he still harbors hope for change.

“We’ll be sharing these stories to give people a full picture of what it means to care about this place,” he said.

N. Carolina Elections Chief Says Ballots Handled Illegally

RALEIGH, N.C. — A Republican operative conducted an illegal and well-funded ballot-harvesting operation, North Carolina’s elections director said Monday, but the first session of a days-long hearing produced scant evidence that the GOP congressional candidate he worked for knew about it or even benefited.

The director’s testimony came at the opening of a state elections board hearing into whether mail-in ballots were tampered with in the race for the state’s 9th congressional district seat that saw Republican Mark Harris narrowly defeat Democrat Dan McCready.

The race wasn’t certified, leaving the country’s only congressional election without a declared winner. The elections board is expected to either declare a winner or order a new election after the hearing.

“The evidence that we will provide today will show that a coordinated, unlawful and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme operated in the 2018 general election” in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, which are part of the congressional district, state elections director Kim Strach said.

Harris held a slim lead over McCready in unofficial results following November’s election, but the state elections board refused to certify the contest after allegations of potential ballot manipulation surfaced. There wasn’t evidence presented Monday that the election irregularities were so widespread that it would overturn Harris’ 905 vote lead. The hearing will continue Tuesday and could continue beyond then.

The investigation targeted a political operative working for Harris’ campaign named Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr.

One witness, Kimberly Sue Robinson, said she turned over her signed, blank ballot to Dowless’ workers in an unsealed envelope. She said she’d done the same thing in previous elections, trusting Dowless would make good choices. The registered Republican’s vote was counted in November’s election.

Dowless was hired to produce votes for Harris and Bladen County Sheriff Jim McVickers, but his methods last year included paying people to visit potential voters who had received absentee ballots and getting them to hand over those ballots, whether completed or not, Dowless worker Lisa Britt testified.

It’s illegal in North Carolina for anyone other than a guardian or close family member to handle a voter’s ballot.

Dowless was called to testify late Monday, but his attorney said he wouldn’t do it without legal protection against prosecution for events he described. The board refused.

Britt testified she collected about three dozen sometimes unfinished ballots and handed them to Dowless, who kept them at his home and office for days or longer before they were turned in, said Britt, whose mother was formerly married to Dowless. While the congressional and sheriff’s races were almost always marked by voters who turned in unsealed ballots, Britt said she would fill in down-ballot local races — favoring Republicans — to prevent local elections board workers from suspecting Dowless’ activities.

“Most people aren’t concerned with the school board or some of the other little people on there,” Britt said.

While Dowless and Harris’ main campaign consultant were in constant contact, she didn’t have any indication Harris knew about the operation, Britt said.

“I think Mr. Harris was completely clueless as to what was going on,” Britt said.

Britt’s mother said she overheard a phone conversation in which Harris and Dowless before November’s election discussed the Republican’s strong showing. Sandra Dowless said Harris asked McCrae Dowless, the ex-husband who she lived with for six months last year, how he knew the Republican was running strongly.

“I know the people and I know how they vote,” Sandra Dowless recounted her ex-husband as saying.

Strach said McCrae Dowless paid local people he recruited $125 for every 50 mail-in ballots they collected in Bladen and Robeson counties and turned in to him. That means they could have been altered before being counted.

The operation’s scope allowed Dowless to collect nearly $84,000 in consulting fees over five months leading into last year’s general election, said Strach, adding that in addition to reviewing financial and phone records investigators questioned 142 voters in the south-central North Carolina counties.

Harris received 679 mail-in ballots in Bladen and Robeson counties, compared to 652 for McCready, Strach said. But McCready’s lawyers contend nearly 1,200 other mail-in ballots were sent to voters and never returned — enough to erase Harris’ Election Day lead.

Strach was expected to touch on the unreturned ballots later in the hearing.

“It’s not just about those that have been returned. It’s potentially about those that haven’t been returned,” she said.

Dowless and Harris attended Monday’s hearing. McCready did not.

Four of the five members on the elections board — composed of three Democrats and two Republicans — would need to agree a new election is necessary.

If that doesn’t happen, McCready’s lawyers said state officials should send their findings to the Democrat-dominated U.S. House and let it decide whether Harris should be seated — arguing that the U.S. Constitution gives the House authority over the elections and qualifications of its members.

Predators Home In on Developmentally Disabled Women

Julie Neward’s sister, Natalie, is developmentally disabled. She is “nonverbal”: her only form of communication is moaning. She moans when she is hungry, when she wants a bath or when she is tired. Natalie communicates well with her eyes, however, and she is able to walk. Neward explains that Natalie’s body functions differently than most women’s. She does not menstruate. She can’t make tears, nor does she have sweat glands.

Although Natalie, 37, lives at home, during the day she visits a day care facility for disabled people.

One day, in 2012, as she was driving home from work, Neward received a phone call from an urgent care center, where her mother had taken Natalie.

“It was a nurse from an urgent care facility, telling me I had to bring my sister in to receive an antibiotic,” Neward recalls. “Natalie had just been diagnosed with gonorrhea.”

For Neward, the diagnosis explained the many health issues her sister had been suffering from in the previous months. Their mother had noted changes in Natalie’s behavior. She would moan all night and was not sleeping well. She would not urinate in her diaper.

“When she didn’t improve, we decided to see what may have contributed to her behavior,” Neward says. “We pulled her medical records from the clinic, as I am her co-conservator and I had the right to see them. I saw she was being treated for a urinary tract and yeast infection. But no one looked at why she was having these recurring problems.”

Natalie has a seizure disorder that had been successfully managed for years, but one weekend during this period, she suddenly began having recurring epileptic episodes.

“Her body was under attack,” Neward says. “My mother brought her to urgent care and finally a doctor—a woman—randomly tested her for STDs [sexually transmitted diseases]. No one [had previously] thought about sexual assault.”

Natalie lived at home, with her mother and her younger sister. Her only exposure to men was through the day care facility. When they realized that someone there had sexually abused Natalie, they immediately followed up.

“The facility settled with us immediately,” Neward recalls. “They said we should not have called the police. My mother signed a nondisclosure agreement, so she cannot reveal the name of the facility or the settlement. Makes me wonder who else was harmed, as Natalie was probably not the only victim.”

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California Pursues a Victims-First Approach to Rape-Kit Testing



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Natalie’s story is not unique among women and girls with developmental or physical disabilities. The American Psychological Association estimates that women with disabilities have a 40 percent greater chance of suffering violence and abuse than women without disabilities.

And that estimate may be on the low end. According to the Center on Victimization and Safety at the Vera Institute of Justice, sexual abuse, rape, assault and unwanted pregnancies among developmentally disabled women is largely underreported.

Such women are targets for other types of abuse as well, include neglect, the withholding of mobility devices or medications, not receiving medical care when needed or being denied food, access to community resources or assistance in getting out of bed or getting dressed; some are even left in soiled undergarments.

Karyn Harvey, a Baltimore psychologist, says that women with intellectual disabilities often don’t know how to tell someone they have been sexually or physically abused. They may be uncomfortable and sense that something bad is happening, but they don’t know how to verbalize the trauma they have experienced. After an assault, their behavior may change—they may even become violent—as a way of dealing with their emotions. Such behavior is frequently dismissed as “acting out,” rather than serving as a stimulus for exploring its trigger.

Harvey notes that the population of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is growing. In 2004, one in 166 children was diagnosed with autism. Now the figure is 1 in 59, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of children born of women who have abused opioids, crack cocaine and alcohol is also growing, which contributes to the population of children born with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Harvey recalls the case of a friend’s daughter who has autism. One day, the girl started exhibiting aggressive behavior, throwing things and acting out. When her caregivers began exploring the cause of the behavioral change, they discovered that the girl had been abused, and that the perpetrator was still in her class–she was continuing to see him every day.

Harvey said her friend went through 15 different therapists to find the right help for her daughter.

“We need clinicians now more than ever,” she says. “It’s a civil rights issue. Too often these people will be overmedicated for control; they are not being treated for the trauma they have experienced.”

When it becomes necessary to remove an abusive caregiver from the home, new challenges arise. Rhoda Olkin, a Northern California psychotherapist, says it can be especially difficult for people with physical disabilities to change caregivers, partly because of the difficulties inherent in change and the special needs that must be accommodated. “The barriers to making a change are monumental when you think about all the things a caregiver does,” Olkin says. “Who will go to the grocery store? Who will take care of the car? Who will cook meals? Who will change the batteries in the wheelchair?”

Olkin can cite many incidents of caretaker abuse. One client, for example, was taken to the toilet, then left there while the caregiver went off and had breakfast. One disabled woman was taken for a walk by her caregiver, who happened to be her son. During the outing, they had a disagreement, and the son expressed his anger by removing the batteries from his mother’s wheelchair, leaving her stranded on the sidewalk.

The limited number of qualified caregivers available is another problem for the disabled. The scarcity of responsible caregivers means that it’s often the caregiver who gets to choose the client, not the other way around. Olkin notes that some abusers choose to accept clients specifically because they are seen as exploitable. “When you cede control to someone,” she says, “there are many things that can happen,” ranging from physical abuse to financial theft.

Olkin cites a clear need to increase training requirements and selection standards for those who apply for jobs caring for disabled people in nursing homes, assisted-living centers and in private homes. But such jobs tend to pay poorly, and the work itself is not particularly respected in our society.

“[Caregiving] should be seen as an honor,” Olkin says. “We should upgrade the role.”

Nora Baladerian, a psychologist in Southern California, has countless stories of patients with developmental and intellectual disabilities who have been abused. In many cases, the abuse was not immediately recognized, and the victims did not get therapy.

“The regional centers annually assess many aspects of the person’s life, except sexual abuse,” Baladerian says, referring to nonprofit private corporations that contract with the California Department of Developmental Services to provide for or coordinate for individuals with developmental disabilities. “Victimization [and] sexuality is not on their list. The regional centers seem to resist this issue,” she says.

Unaddressed sexual abuse tends to recur, Baladerian says. The best way to protect a loved one is to let those who have contact with them—for example, caregivers, medical professionals or drivers—know that the family is highly aware of the potential for abuse.

Baladerian has developed a tool called “My Power is After” to help disabled women identify and verbalize abuse. She teaches them to become human video recorders, to observe everything around them—where they are, what they see, even what they smell.

Part of the training involves teaching them that, if something out of the ordinary happens, they must immediately alert someone they trust. She teaches them not to eat, drink, change clothes or shower after an attack, to get to the hospital as quickly as possible, and to report everything they see, hear and taste.

Baladerian has had some success with her training. She recalls a client who received the training and was later abused on a bus coming back from her day program. The bus driver had altered the route and dropped the other clients off first, leaving Baladerian’s client until the end of the run, when he abused her. When he finally dropped her off at home, she told her mother what happened, and reported everything she saw and heard. When the bus driver pulled back up at the school, the police were waiting for him.

Baladerian has also created a tool for families to keep an eye on their disabled female relatives. She advises family members to make a list of everyone who has access to their relative and review it monthly for changes. The list should include the names, license numbers, credentials and schedules of everyone who has contact with the relative throughout the day, including teachers, school bus drivers, therapists and daycare employees. If someone does not want to give you the information, Baladerian says, find someone else. It’s much the same as when hiring a babysitter. More information is detailed in her book, “How to Reduce the Risk of Abuse to People with Developmental Disabilities.”

While these tools have been helpful, the lack of specialized therapists who provide trauma treatment for abuse victims with disabilities is a problem. However, Baladerian says that a new program will be launched this year to train therapists in trauma therapy for crime victims with developmental disabilities.

But unless society begins to take seriously the care for our most vulnerable citizens, including children and adults with disabilities, it is unlikely laws or attitudes will change.

The preponderance of care for the disabled will most likely continue to fall to the family, and a disabled woman without close friends or family to scrutinize those who come in contact with her will remain exceptionally vulnerable to those who would do her harm.

 

 

Haitians Seek Water, Food as Businesses Reopen After Protest

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Businesses and government offices slowly reopened across Haiti on Monday after more than a week of violent demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moise over skyrocketing prices that have more than doubled for basic goods amid allegations of government corruption.

Public transportation resumed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, where people began lining up to buy food, water and gasoline as crews cleared streets of barricades thrown up during the protests.

Moise has refused to step down, though his prime minister, Jean-Henry Ceant, said over the weekend that he has agreed to reduce certain government budgets by 30 percent, limit travel of government officials and remove all non-essential privileges they enjoy, including phone cards. Ceant also vowed to investigate alleged misspending tied to a Venezuelan program that provided Haiti with subsidized oil and said he has requested that a court audit all state-owned enterprises. He also said he would increase the minimum wage and lower the prices of basic goods, although he did not provide specifics.

Many Haitians remained wary of those promises, and schools remained closed on Monday amid concerns of more violence.

“The government is making statements that are not changing anything at this point,” said Hector Jean, a moto taxi driver who was waiting for customers. He recently had to buy a gallon of gas for 500 gourdes ($6), more than twice what he normally pays, and he has been unable to find customers who can afford to pay higher fares.

“It’s very hard to bring something home,” he said. “I have three kids.”

Other goods in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation have also doubled in price in recent weeks: A sack of rice now costs $18 and a can of dry beans around $7. In addition, a gallon of cooking oil has gone up to nearly $11 from $7. Inflation has been in the double digits since 2014, and the price hikes are angering many people in Haiti, where about 60 per cent of its nearly 10.5 million people struggle to get by on about $2 a day. A recent report by the U.S. Agency for International Development said about half the country is undernourished.

Dozens of people on Monday stood outside a financial services company waiting to pick up money transfers from relatives abroad. Among them was 35-year-old Andre Simon, a taxi driver who had been standing in line for at least three hours and has been unable to work for more than a week.

“I don’t have anything at home,” said Simon, who drives a small, brightly colored truck known as a tap-tap. “I need that money badly.”

The latest violent demonstrations prompted the U.S. government to warn people last week not to travel to Haiti as it urged Moise’s administration to implement economic reforms and redouble efforts to fight corruption and hold accountable those implicated in the scandal over the Venezuelan subsidized oil program, known as Petrocaribe. A Haitian Senate investigation has alleged embezzlement by at least 14 former officials in ex-President Michel Martelly’s administration, but no one has been charged. Meanwhile, Haitians have demanded a probe into the spending of the $3.8 billion Haiti received as part of the Petrocaribe program.

“Corruption goes unpunished, and people are just really tired of it,” said Athena Kolbe, a human rights researcher who has worked in Haiti. “I can’t imagine that things are going to calm down.”

She said she doesn’t believe claims that opposition leaders are behind the demonstrations or that people are being paid to protest as has happened in previous years given the incredible number of people that have taken to the streets in recent days. However, Kolbe warned that even if Moise were forced to step down, it would not resolve one of Haiti’s underlying issues: how to address corruption.

“People are just kind of exhausted with the business elite running the country and retaining control and not knowing where public funds are going,” she said.

Martelly hand-picked Moise in 2015 to be the candidate for the ruling Tet Kale party even though the businessman from northern Haiti had never run for office. Moise was sworn in as president in February 2017 for a five-year term and promised to fight corruption and bring investment and jobs to one of the least developed nations in the world. His swearing-in marked Haiti’s return to constitutional rule a year after Martelly left office without an elected successor amid waves of opposition protests and a political stalemate that led to suspended elections.

Moise’s administration previously set off deadly protests in July when officials abruptly announced double-digit increases in the prices for gasoline, diesel and kerosene as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund to eliminate fuel subsidies and boost government revenue. At least seven people died in those protests, which also forced Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant to resign after facing a no-confidence vote in parliament.

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Associated Press writer Evens Sanon reported this story in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and AP writer Danica Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

China Accuses U.S. of Trying to Block its Tech Development

BEIJING — China’s government on Monday accused the United States of trying to block the country’s industrial development by alleging that Chinese mobile network gear poses a cybersecurity threat to countries rolling out new internet systems.

And in a potential blow to the U.S.’s effort to rally its allies on the issue, British media reported that U.K. intelligence agencies found it’s possible to limit the security risks of using Chinese equipment in so-called 5G networks.

The U.S. argues that Beijing might use Chinese tech companies to gather intelligence about foreign countries. The Trump administration has pressured allies to shun networks supplied by Huawei Technologies, threatening the company’s access to markets for next-generation wireless gear.

Huawei, the biggest global maker of switching gear for phone and internet companies, denies accusations it facilitates Chinese spying and said it would reject any government demands to disclose confidential information about foreign customers.

The U.S. government is trying to “fabricate an excuse for suppressing the legitimate development” of Chinese enterprises, said the spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, Geng Shuang. He accused the United States of using “political means” to interfere in economic activity, “which is hypocritical, immoral and unfair bullying.”

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, speaking last weekend in Germany, urged European allies to take seriously “the threat” he said was posed by Huawei as they look for partners to build the new 5G mobile networks.

The 5G technology is meant to vastly expand the reach of networks to support internet-linked medical equipment, factory machines, self-driving cars and other devices. That makes it more politically sensitive and raises the potential cost of security failures.

Pence said Huawei and other Chinese telecom equipment makers provide Beijing with “access to any data that touches their network or equipment.” He appealed to European governments to “reject any enterprise that would compromise the integrity of our communications technology or our national security systems.”

In what could amount to a turning point for the U.S. effort to isolate Huawei, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre has found that the risk of using its networks is manageable, according to the Financial Times and several other British media outlets.

The reports cited anonymous sources as saying that there are ways to limit cybersecurity risks, and that the U.K.’s decision would carry weight with European allies who are also evaluating the safety of their networks.

The British government is to finish a review of its policies on the safety of 5G in March or April. The office of British Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday that “no decisions have been taken.”

If eventually confirmed, “such a decision by the U.K. would be a strong message and could be influential in the medium term,” said Lukasz Olejnik, a research associate at Oxford University’s Center for Technology and Global Affairs.

The British review “could inevitably serve as an input or a reference point in other countries’ risk assessments,” he added.

European officials, including a vice president of the European Union, have expressed concern about Chinese regulations issued last year that require companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies. No country in Europe, however, has issued a blanket veto on using Huawei technology in the way the U.S. has urged.

The U.S. Justice Department last month unsealed charges against Huawei, its chief financial officer — who had been arrested in Canada — and several of the companies’ subsidiaries, alleging not only violation of trade sanctions but also the theft of trade secrets.

The United States has not, however, released evidence to support its accusations that Huawei and other Chinese tech companies allow the Chinese government to spy through their systems. That has prompted some industry analysts to suggest Washington is trying to use security concerns to handicap Chinese competitors.

“China has not and will not require companies or individuals to collect or provide foreign countries’ information for the Chinese government by installing backdoors or other actions that violate local laws,” said Geng.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre acknowledged last summer that it had concerns about the engineering and security of Huawei’s networks. While not commenting Monday on the media reports, it added: “We have set out the improvements we expect the company to make.”

Huawei said in a statement Monday that it’s open to dialogue and that “cybersecurity is an issue which needs to be addressed across the whole industry.”

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Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

Google Secretly Expands Tech Empire Across the U.S., Getting Millions in Tax Breaks

Amazon spent much of the last three months in the media spotlight, with its search for a second headquarters outside Seattle leading both to bidding wars between cities fighting for its affections, and extensive backlash from residents and elected officials in New York City, one of the winning locations. The protests against the new development were loud enough to cause Amazon to cancel the deal last week.

While Amazon received both suitors and scrutiny, another tech behemoth was quietly expanding its footprint across the United States. At the end of 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced expansion plans leading to a presence in 24 out of 50 states. The Verge reported in December that “So far, most of Google’s facility development plans in the US have been met with little opposition outside of the Bay Area.” According to a new report in The Washington Post, however, that might be because the public wasn’t aware of them.

Post Reporter Elizabeth Dwoskin writes that Google’s “development spree has often been shrouded in secrecy, making it nearly impossible for some communities to know, let alone protest or debate, who is using their land, their resources and their tax dollars until after the fact.”

In Midlothian, Texas, Google, under the name Sharka LLC, received over $10 million in tax breaks from local government for developing a data center in the town. Larry Barnett, president of Midlothian Economic Development, one of the agencies that negotiated tax breaks, told Dwoskin that he knew Sharka LLC was really Google, but the company had asked for secrecy, and didn’t reveal itself publicly until the deal was finalized. Travis Smith, managing editor of the Waxahachie Daily Light, a local paper, said, “I’m confident that had the community known this project was under the direction of Google, people would have spoken out,” adding, “We didn’t know that it was Google until after it passed.”

The process repeated itself in multiple cities.

In San Jose, Calif., where Google is planning its second-largest campus after its original home in Mountain View, the company has used nondisclosure agreements with local officials and developers to keep its plans under wraps. Records of this, going back to 2006, were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests by the San Jose branch of the Partnership for Working Families, an organization that advocates against economic inequality. The organization requested documents from local governments in eight cities in which Google already has data centers, plus Midlothian and seven cities in which Google has offices. The FOIA’d documents revealed:

Officials in eight of the cities signed non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, in their real estate dealings with Google, according to the documents. The documents also show that the search giant used shell companies to negotiate to build data centers in five of the six localities with data centers that responded to the records requests, including Midlothian; Berkeley County, S.C.; Council Bluffs, Iowa; Lenoir, N.C.; and Clarksville, Tenn. Google’s identity was eventually revealed, but often so late in the process that it precluded public debate.

Google spokesperson Katherine Williams told the Post that Google is committed to engaging communities in its development plans, saying in a statement: “We believe public dialogue is vital to the process of building new sites and offices, so we actively engage with community members and elected officials in the places we call home. … Of course, when we enter new communities we use common industry practices and work with municipalities to follow their required procedures.”

While real estate development negotiations are not exactly paragons of transparency in general, the level of secrecy surrounding data center deals, especially when it comes to Google, is particularly egregious. As Michelle Wilde Anderson, a Stanford Law School professor specializing in state and local government law, told Dwoskin, “If you scrutinize the winners and losers in this bargain, you see that Google is overwhelmingly the winner. Google has a strategic interest in getting their name out of these deals so that they go down more quietly, without public debate.”

Read the full Post article here.

‘A Nameless Ghost’: One Mother’s Reflection on Life Cleaning Houses on Minimum Wage

Although the relationship wasn’t supposed to last, it wasn’t supposed to end the way it did. Stephanie Land was 28. She and her boyfriend were working in cafes in Port Townsend, Ore., living together and saving up until they could part ways to fulfill separate dreams. She planned to move to Montana to study creative writing. Then she got pregnant, the boyfriend got abusive, and she left him. “My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter,” Land writes of what happened next, in “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive.”

“Maid” is a memoir of Land’s years as a single mother, working as a housecleaner on minimum wage, moving from shelters to Section 8 housing, struggling to support her daughter and herself. It’s also a study of just how expensive it is to be poor in America, and how the government punishes people who apply for assistance, demanding time and effort Land couldn’t spare as she scrubbed floors and toilets, and took care of her daughter.

“I’d become a nameless ghost,” Land writes of her relationship with many of her housekeeping clients. “My job was to wipe away dust, dirt, to make clean lines in carpets, to leave without a trace.” But while she was an apparition in her clients’ homes, she was conspicuous and judged in public. Strangers criticized her purchases in the grocery store checkout line. A friend even said Land should thank her for paying taxes that contributed to the programs Land depended on for basic survival.

Now a journalist in Montana, Land spoke to Truthdig shortly after “Maid’s” release, about what people get wrong about poverty in America, the reaction to the book and what she hopes readers learn from her story.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Ilana Novick: Americans who are not poor, or who are not on public assistance don’t often understand what life is like for people who are. What do you think people misunderstand, misinterpret or just generally get wrong about being poor in America?

Stephanie Land: People don’t realize how expensive it is to be poor. There are a lot of conveniences I have now that I’m in a more privileged place—like buying in bulk or doing really big grocery shopping trips so that I don’t have to go to the store as much. I live in a house with a washer and dryer and I don’t have to go to the laundromat.

There’s so much effort that goes into struggling that much. If you think about it, you don’t have a dishwasher, or you can’t heat your whole house, or you can’t always buy new clothes and you wear through the ones you have. And so you’re constantly keeping the things you have as usable as possible; I was very good at not throwing things away and getting as much use out of them as I possibly could. All of that is just an exhausting amount of work, and I think people don’t really see just how difficult that is.

IN: Speaking of struggling, the application process for SNAP benefits, WIC and other government assistance programs involves jumping through multiple bureaucratic hoops, and investing time and effort, both of which applicants need to be able to go to work and take care of their families. For programs that are supposed to help people with so few resources, why do you think the process is so cumbersome and time-consuming?

SL: Well, I think there’s two things. I think the system we have in place is one of not really trusting people at face value, and I think we tend to force people to prove they are [as] low income as they say they are, and that they are actually working. We’re constantly asking poor people to prove that they’re working to get assistance of any kind. There’s kind of a backhanded way of making it as difficult as possible, because if it was easy, they’d be scared that anybody could walk in and get all of this money, even though it’s not that much money at all.

Every time legislators make the process more difficult they get less people signing up, and I think they don’t see that people aren’t signing up because it’s difficult, I think they only see that the numbers are going down, so therefore because they put more work requirements in place, then [they believe] they’re being successful and getting people off government assistance, when it’s really just that [low-income people] are not using that resource anymore, they’re going somewhere else.

IN: So, it’s not that they’ve suddenly got a well-paying job, or that their own circumstances have changed. It’s more that they’ve been discouraged?

SL: Yeah, because it is a discouraging process and you need access to a computer, and the internet, and a telephone and time during the day to meet with your caseworker, and you know, things like a printer, you need utility bills, you need a lot of things just to get the assistance you need. And maybe they do take that into account, I don’t know, but it seems to me the more difficult they make it, the less people sign up, therefore they think that the system is successful because the numbers are going down.

IN: In your time cleaning houses, even when your clients weren’t home, you seemed to learn a lot about them just from being in their homes and seeing their possessions. What surprised you about them? 

SL:  I went into it thinking that wealth saved you from hardship, but I think that the most surprising thing is that rich people still suffered from things like the common cold. I thought if you had access to a gym membership, and juice, and kale, and yoga studios and all of these things, you had the ability to take advantage of all of these things, then you wouldn’t get sick. And it was surprising to me to see that they still suffered from everyday illness. And suddenly that they were human beings, I’d never really associated with wealthy people and my perception of them were ones that were in the media. So it was surprising to see the human aspect of them.

IN: The book is honest about all the things you had to do in order to get childcare for your daughter, in order to pay for basic life expenses, in order to make sure that you even had enough money to travel to work in order to make money. Was it hard to be that revealing?

SL: Actually, I didn’t think all that information was necessary in the first draft, and skipped over a lot of it. I didn’t think it was interesting, like it was so ingrained in my daily life that to me it was like describing what I had for breakfast. But when my editor started working with me on revising and editing the book, she encouraged me to bring a lot of that out.

And I actually went back and reread “Nickel and Dimed” by Barbara Ehrenreich, and a lot of that book is just her going to meet a potential landlord, or looking through the classifieds, or looking for housing for the most part, and describing what she was eating and wearing, and I guess I’ve realized that living that way is not normal to most people. When to me, I was so consumed by it that I didn’t know there was any different kind of life. So, yeah, it was not my original impulse to be as detailed as I was in the end draft, or in the final draft.

IN: Now, having written this book, I was wondering if you could talk about the reaction to it. Is it the reaction you expected? Is there anything that’s surprised you from either readers or reviewers or anyone else who read through the book?

SL: Yeah, I’m honestly surprised that people like the book. I don’t know, I’ve been a writer for social and economic justice, and I’ve been writing on the internet for several years at this point, almost four years, and I know what the comment sections are like, and I know how people usually react to people seeing a single mom on government assistance. People like to place blame on the person going through that, like their bad decisions are what got them there and so they brought this on themselves. And I guess I expected the reaction to the book to be kind of similar to that in some way, or that people would write it off as this victim blaming, or woe is me, or whining, and I didn’t think that people would react so strongly and emotionally to my story, and feel so connected to it.

I think a lot of it is just timing, and I think the government shutdown that happened recently really showed how close the average American worker is to not being able to afford food. And I think people are seeing that this is a problem that isn’t just affecting whatever image they have in their mind of people in poverty, because usually when people imagine an impoverished person, they don’t imagine a person that looks like me.

And that has been extremely detrimental to people living that life because there’s all these stigmas and assumptions made about them when really the person who is struggling could be your neighbor. It’s not just people who live in the dark side of town, or this part of town [where] we never go and is run-down. It seems like people are more ready to listen to stories of hardship because they’re seeing how close they are to it.

IN: I was struck by how often in “Maid” total strangers felt the need to comment on say, the groceries you were buying for your daughter with SNAP benefits. Why do you think they do that?

SL: It always surprises me how personally people take things. Like I really got the sense that people felt like they were personally paying for my groceries, like their tax money bought whatever I bought, like potato chips or something. And they were so offended that I was wasting their money on potato chips. I never really understood that. Like I don’t know, I don’t know if they see it like an involuntary donation for my life and health and taking care of my child, and so they’re a little resentful about that. But it’s also such a visible form of, I don’t know, I don’t want to say a visible form of charity, it’s a visible form of government assistance, it’s probably the most visible.

I guess I don’t understand why people are so offended by people using that program and feel like they can tell them what they should and shouldn’t eat. It just seems like there are so many ways that we try to limit people on food stamps and how they spend that resource at the grocery store, that it’s really insulting. I just kept thinking, How is it any of your business what I choose to feed my daughter, or what I choose to eat?

IN: Health care, particularly the issues with obtaining it for your daughter, comes up a lot. I’m curious what you think needs to change, in terms of cost, accessibility and how doctors treat child patients and their parents or other caregivers?

SL: First of all, I think there should be no question about whether or not children should be covered. I don’t know why children aren’t covered for health insurance just by default, and why that’s not universal. Also, I had a friend tell me she went to the doctor recently and had my book with her, and her doctor asked her, “Oh, what’s that about,” and they were talking about the book, and the doctor said, “I’ve had to realize or come to terms with I need to treat people with low income differently than I do more privileged people, because I can’t just assume a low income person can just go home, and rest, and drink fluid and spend the day in bed and just wait out this viral thing they have. They’re going to continue to get worse and worse and worse because they cannot take a break, because they have to work.” And I guess the doctor was just talking about how hard a realization that was and how he’s really tried to change the way he treats patients because of that.

IN: What were the reactions from your friends and family when you became a single mother? Did they expect to stay with your daughter’s father? Did they, were they supportive at all? It seems like you were going through a lot of this alone.

SL: I don’t know if I can speak to how they felt because I still don’t really know. I just know that I didn’t feel like I could ask them for help. I was always longing for my family to reach out and to help me with childcare, or to help me with my car, or you know. There was so many times that I was in a place that I really, really needed help, and the very few times I reached out to them and said I need you to step up and help me with this, they either couldn’t because they couldn’t afford to, or I think they couldn’t because for some reason they didn’t trust me.

I got the sense from the beginning that they thought I wasn’t being honest in some way. I kind of felt like I had to fend for myself and not tell them what a hard time we were going through. Because for my dad and my stepmom especially, and most of my family, really, I knew they weren’t in a position to be able to help me, and that maybe they wish they could help me more. I didn’t want to make them feel bad by knowing how hard of a time I was having.

IN: I know Mia, your daughter, was a toddler when you first started writing, but I imagine she must be older now, and I was wondering if she’s read the book, and what she thinks about it?

SL: She has kind of grown up with me writing about her, and she kind of loves knowing that her picture is in The Washington Post, or she would ask me how many likes did it get, or how many shares, and are people talking about me. She loves the fame involved in it. But, I also, I’m letting her read the book because I’m home this week, and so I wanted to be around to talk to her and answer any questions she might have about it. So she’s kind of going through the experience and learning what her life was like. I’m trying to be as empathetic to that as possible, because that must be a weird experience to go through.

I’m very thoughtful in how I write about her and make sure that it’s not something that she would be embarrassed of later in life. And I would never do it if she was the type of person who was very private and didn’t want me to write about her in that way. I’ve tried to not do anything that she was uncomfortable with.

IN: What do you hope readers will take away from your experiences and from your book?

SL: Well, I hope first and foremost that people see how hard people in poverty work. I think the general consensus is that we’re lazy and we’re not working hard because we haven’t made it. This myth is kind of shoved down our throats that if you work hard you’re going to make it in this country, and so the people who aren’t making it are obviously not working hard.

But also I hope people do see what a privileged position I was in, I was white, I am white, I was able to get an education, and grew up in lower-middle-class suburbia, had two parents, did not grow up in systemic poverty, and so there are so many, there are millions of other stories like mine that are way worse. And my story is not unique in any way, there are millions of people who are struggling. So my hope is that now that I have people’s attention, that they might start listening to people who are in way more adverse situations than I was, and way less privileged.

White House Indicates Trump to Veto Disapproval of Emergency

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump is prepared to issue the first veto of his term if Congress votes to disapprove his declaration of a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border, a top White House adviser said on Sunday.

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller told “Fox News Sunday” that “the president is going to protect his national emergency declaration.” Asked if that meant Trump was ready to veto a resolution of disapproval, Miller added, “He’s going to protect his national emergency declaration, guaranteed.”

The West Wing is digging in for fights on multiple fronts as the president’s effort to go around Congress to fund his long-promised border wall faces bipartisan criticism and multiple legal challenges. After lawmakers in both parties blocked his requests for billions of dollars to fulfill his signature campaign pledge, Trump’s declared national emergency Friday shifts billions of federal dollars earmarked for military construction to the border.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra told ABC’s “This Week” that his state would sue “imminently” to block the order, after the American Civil Liberties Union and the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen announced Friday they were taking legal action.

Democrats are planning to introduce a resolution disapproving of the declaration once Congress returns to session and it is likely to pass both chambers. Several Republican senators are already indicating they would vote against Trump — though there do not yet appear to be enough votes to override a veto by the president.

The White House’s Miller insisted that Congress granted the president wide berth under the National Emergencies Act to take action. But Trump’s declaration goes beyond previous emergencies in shifting money after Congress blocked his funding request for the wall, which will likely factor in legal challenges.

Trump aides acknowledge that Trump cannot meet his pledge to build the wall by the time voters decide whether to grant him another term next year, but insist his base will remain by his side as long as he is not perceived to have given up the fight on the barrier.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he believes Congress needs to act to “defend” its powers of the purse.

“I do think that we should not set the terrible precedent of letting a president declare a national emergency simply as a way of getting around the congressional appropriations process,” he said.

Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, a critic of Trump’s border policies, said he would support legislation to review Trump’s emergency declaration, saying, “It sets a dangerous precedent.”

“My concern is our government wasn’t designed to operate by national emergency,” he told CBS.

Trump ally Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told ABC that he believes there are enough GOP votes to prevent the supermajorities required to override a veto.

“I think there are plenty of votes in the House to make sure that there’s no override of the president’s veto,” he said. “So it’s going to be settled in court, we’ll have to wait and see.

Israeli Leaders’ Nazi Remarks Scuttle Summit With Europeans

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s off-hand comment in Warsaw about Poland and the Holocaust set in motion a diplomatic crisis that on Monday scuttled this week’s summit of central European leaders in Israel.

Poland’s abrupt decision to cancel its participation in the planned Visegrad conference in protest blew up the gathering, which Netanyahu has touted as a major milestone in his outreach to emerging democracies in eastern Europe and his broader goal of countering the criticism Israel typically faces in international forums.

The crisis was sparked last week when Netanyahu told reporters that “Poles cooperated with the Nazis.” The seemingly innocuous comment infuriated his Polish hosts, who reject suggestions that their country collaborated with Hitler.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced Sunday that he would be skipping this week’s Visegrad summit, a gathering with fellow prime ministers from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz was supposed to replace him at Tuesday’s meeting in Jerusalem, the first time the gathering is being held outside of Europe.

But after Israel’s acting foreign minister reiterated the collaboration claims, Morawiecki cancelled Poland’s participation altogether, denouncing the comments as “racist.” As a result, the summit was called off and Netanyahu was planning to meet the other leaders independently.

Lost in the diplomatic uproar was that Netanyahu was actually defending his close alliance with Poland and other eastern European leaders when he made his comments.

Historians and domestic critics have accused Netanyahu of cozying up too tightly to nationalistic leaders who have promoted a distorted image of the Holocaust and turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism associated with them.

Morawiecki himself last year equated Polish perpetrators of the Holocaust to supposed “Jewish perpetrators.” Netanyahu has recently hosted leaders of Lithuania, Ukraine and other countries who have engaged in selective World War II-era commemorations that play down their countries’ culpability while making heroes out of anti-Soviet nationalists involved in the mass killing of Jews.

In response to a question from The Associated Press during his two-day visit to Warsaw, Netanyahu said he raises the issue of historical revisionism with the various leaders. He rejected the notion he was a partner to diminishing anyone’s complicity in the genocide of Jews in World War II.

“I know the history. I don’t starch it and I don’t whitewash it. In Lithuania, in particular, there were some horrible things. No one is concealing that,” said Netanyahu, the son of a historian. “This whole idea that we diminish history — we don’t distort, and we don’t hide, and no one has any interest in that, on the contrary.”

In the same briefing with his travelling press corps, Netanyahu tried to deflect prominent criticism by Israeli historians of the deal he struck with Polish leaders over their country’s controversial Holocaust speech law, which criminalized blaming the Polish nation for crimes committed against Jews during World War II.

Israeli officials saw it as an attempt by Poland to suppress discussion of the well-documented killing of Jews by Poles during and after the wartime German occupation.

“Poles collaborated with the Nazis and I don’t know anyone who was ever sued for such a statement,” Netanyahu told the reporters.

However, some media outlets reported him saying “THE Poles,” which set off an angry rebuke in Warsaw, including a summoning of the Israeli ambassador for clarifications. Netanyahu’s office said he was misquoted and blamed the misunderstanding on an editing error in an Israeli newspaper.

Netanyahu’s office then reiterated that he “spoke of Poles and not the Polish people or the country of Poland.” That only got him in hotter water at home for seemingly catering to the Polish obsession over his wording.

“The prime minister of the Jewish state is selling out the memory of the Holocaust for a dubious alliance with an anti-Semitic leader,” said Tamar Zandberg, leader of the opposition Meretz party.

Nonetheless, the Polish government said it considered Netanyahu’s response insufficient and threatened to withdraw from the conference.

With emotions running high in Poland, Israel’s new acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, went on TV Sunday to reiterate that “Poles collaborated with the Nazis” — even mentioning Poles who “sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers’ milk.”

That prompted Poland to withdraw completely. Following that announcement, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said the so-called V4 summit was cancelled altogether and bilateral meetings would be held instead.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon confirmed the summit was off, saying all four prime ministers had to be present for it to take place.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is already in Israel, is another leader who has trod into the sensitive terrain of World War II conduct.

Orban has lavished praise on Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s World War II-era ruler, who introduced anti-Semitic laws and collaborated with the Nazis. Orban also has backed a state-funded museum that experts say plays down the role of Hungarian collaborators and also used anti-Semitic imagery in a campaign against the liberal American-Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

When pressed by the AP, though, Netanyahu came to his ally’s defense.

“His response was the most direct, saying ‘we are not willing to accept this,’” Netanyahu responded. “He (Orban) attacked Horthy at some point. They are going the furthest here.”

Netanyahu also addressed his warm welcome in January to President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, whose parliament had just designated the birthday of Ukrainian wartime collaborator Stepan Bandera a national holiday.

Bandera’s forces fought alongside the Nazis and were implicated in the murder of thousands of Jews. The same day Poroshenko was visiting Israel, another memorial was being erected in Kiev for Symon Petliura, whose troops are linked to pogroms that killed as many as 50,000 Jews after World War I.

Netanyahu said he was not aware of that specifically but that he had some discussions with Poroshenko on the larger issue.

“I spoke to him too. I speak to them all. It’s not that we can’t raise the issue. We raise it freely,” he insisted.

Still, he then quickly shifted attention toward the contemporary anti-Semitism from the “anarchist left” and Muslim communities.

“I think the mass of anti-Semitism today in Europe is what is happening in western Europe,” Netanyahu said. “What is happening in Britain is astounding. This is the new phenomenon. There is the anti-Semitism of the right that hasn’t changed. That existed and still exists.”