The Weekly Lift - January 27, 2022

This week's selection of positive headlines and articles*:

International Relations: UN Chief Cautiously Optimistic There’s ‘Real Opportunity’ For Peaceful Resolution In Ethiopia

The Global and Mail (Canada) mentions that "the United Nations secretary-general said Wednesday he was delighted to hear “there is now a demonstrable effort to make peace” in Ethiopia after more than 14 months of war, but he gave no details.

Antonio Guterres’ statement came after a call with African Union envoy Olusegun Obasanjo following the envoy’s latest visit to Addis Ababa and the capital of Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region.

Guterres said Obasanjo “expressed optimism that there is now a real opportunity for political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict.” His statement did not describe efforts by Ethiopia’s government and the rival Tigray forces.

Obasanjo’s spokesman, the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray forces spokesman didn’t immediately respond to questions.

A new U.S. envoy for the Horn of Africa, Ambassador David Satterfield, is set to meet with Ethiopian officials on Thursday.

Ethiopia’s war has killed an estimated tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. The United States says some 900,000 people in Tigray, which has been under an Ethiopian government blockade since late June, face famine conditions. The World Health Organization says medical supplies have not been allowed into the region of some 6 million people.

Despite his mention of optimism, the UN chief also warned that “ongoing military operations in some parts of Ethiopia remain a challenge to the peace process and sour the confidence-building measures that we hope are being taken by all parties in the conflict.”

Other combatants include soldiers from neighboring Eritrea who are allied with Ethiopian forces and blamed by witnesses for some of the worst atrocities in the war, as well as fighters from Ethiopia’s Amhara region who now occupy western Tigray.

Guterres called on all parties “to move rapidly towards cessation of hostilities,” and he said the UN watches the African Union-led mediation efforts with great hope."

The Tigray forces withdrew into their region last month after a drone-assisted military offensive halted their approach to Ethiopia's capital. Ethiopian forces said they wouldn't pursue them further into the region, which some in the international community saw as an opening for mediation efforts.

The article cautions however, that "several drone strikes have killed scores civilians in Tigray in recent weeks, and Ethiopia’s government has not answered questions from The Associated Press about them."

Politics: Chile President-Elect Boric Unveils Women-Majority Cabinet

Al-Jazeera (Qatar) reports that "Gabriel Boric, Chile’s left-wing president-elect, has announced his first cabinet, giving a majority of the posts to women and several to former student protest leaders.

Fourteen of the 24 new ministers announced on Friday are women, including Defence Minister Maya Fernandez — a granddaughter of socialist President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by a military coup in 1973.

The interior ministry that oversees domestic security will go to Dr Izkia Siches, who was recently head of the national medical association.

“We have formed this team with people who are prepared, with knowledge, with experience, and committed to the agenda of changes that the country needs,” Boric said.

The cabinet announcement comes after Boric, who will turn 36 before taking office on March 11, won the?presidential election last month.

He ran on a platform to modernise Chile’s public health sector, which serves 80 percent of the population, replacing the now-privately run pension system while raising benefits and increasing the minimum wage.

Social disparities in the South American nation had sparked widespread protests in 2019, lighting the fuse for the political rise of the progressive left and the redrafting of the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.

“This Cabinet’s mission is to lay the foundations for the great reforms that we have proposed in our programme,” Boric said after unveiling his ministers, adding that it would look to drive economic growth while cutting out “structural inequalities”.

“We are talking about sustainable growth accompanied by a fair redistribution of wealth,” he said.

Communist Party legislator Camila Vallejo, who like Boric rose to prominence as a student leader, will be the government spokesperson.

The finance ministry goes to Mario Marcel, whose term as Central Bank president was widely praised by financial analysts. He had earlier worked at the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and in previous centre-left Chilean governments.

Boric’s pledges during the election campaign to enact major reforms to Chile’s market-led economic model,?rattled investors, though he has moderated his tone since, boosting Chile’s markets and currency.

Boric’s cabinet includes at least six ministers under the age of 40, including those who led a wave of rallies in 2011 for improved, free education. That includes Congressman Giorgio Jackson of Boric’s own Broad Front coalition, who was named secretary-general of the presidency.

But his coalition has only 37 of the 155 seats in Congress, so to pass legislation he will have to work with other centre-left parties that he has criticised in the past for being overly accommodating to conservatives.

His term will coincide with a public referendum on a new constitution?that is being drafted by a constituent assembly, potentially changing the shape of the political system as a whole.

The current constitution was adopted under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who led the coup against Allende."

Environment: Japan Hopes To Lead Asian Zero-Emissions Push

The China Post (Taiwan) reports that "Japan will gradually phase out coal plants over the next two decades while developing new technologies to reduce, capture and utilize carbon, Environment Minister Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi said Tuesday.

Yamaguchi said in an interview with The Associated Press that Japan hopes to lead a zero-emissions push in Asia and is preparing to introduce a carbon tax to meet its commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, creating stronger incentives to curb emissions.

“We cannot give details about what we will do with coal fired plants by 2030, but we will do our best to minimize emissions,” Yamaguchi said.?

Current efforts in Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, are focused on developing methods to burn ammonia in conventional coal-fired plants and gradually phasing out use of coal possibly sometime in the 2040s.?

Environmental groups and critics are urging Japan to focus more on promoting renewable energy, saying current policies will just prolong use of coal and hinder reductions in carbon emissions.?

Yamaguchi said Japan will speed up development of carbon capture, use and storage, or CCUS, technology as part of its support for other Asian nations.

Japan has been seen as reluctant to commit itself to banning coal power as soon as many European countries. At the COP-26 United Nation’s climate summit held in Glasgow, Scotland, late last year, it was awarded the Fossil of the Day award by an environmental organization for its stance.

Japan relied more heavily on nuclear power before the 2011 triple disasters of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which led it to idle many reactors. Some were restarted after safety upgrades, but the country still uses more gas and coal than before to fuel its economy.

Energy experts and critics say Japan currently has overly ambitious targets for nuclear energy to supply 20-22% of its energy mix by 2030. By that time, the country has promised to cut emissions to 46% of 2013 levels.

Japan last year emitted about 1.15 billion tons of greenhouse gas, down 5.1% from the previous year and 18.4% below the 2013 level, according to the latest government data.?

At the Glasgow summit, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to support cutbacks in carbon emissions by promoting use of ammonia, hydrogen and other innovative decarbonizing technologies. He did not say when Japan will end coal fired power generation.

While Japan is seen as dragging its feet in giving up coal, Yamaguchi said Tokyo should get credit for contributing to an agreement on market mechanisms — a deal that supports the transfer of emission cuts between countries while also giving incentives to companies to invest in climate-friendly solutions.

Yamaguchi said a carbon tax would help Japan contribute to other countries’ emissions cutting efforts under an “Asia zero-emissions community” vision announced Monday by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.?

Kishida on Tuesday kicked off a government-commissioned “clean energy strategy” panel of experts and officials, asking its members to study carbon pricing and provide a plan by the summer.?

The environment minister, a former diplomat who earned a doctoral degree in politics at Johns Hopkins University, said he is considering launching a framework for talks with 17 other nations on a joint carbon crediting mechanism to eventually cut emissions to zero, starting with phasing out coal-fired power plants."

International Relations: The Arab World Is Re-embracing Its Jews

The Economist (UK) writes that "the slogan?of the Houthi rebels, who control northern Yemen, is blunt. “Death to Israel, curse on the Jews,” it reads in part. So it was no shock when the group chased Jews out of its area of control.

What might be surprising is where some of those Jews ended up. Yusuf Hamdi and his extended family were rescued in a mission organized by the?UN, America, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2021. Mr Hamdi and company then passed up a chance to go to Israel, instead becoming the first Yemenite Jews to settle in the?UAE.

The?UAE offered inducements: a rent-free villa, fancy car and monthly welfare cheques. It is all part of an effort to seed new Jewish communities in the country. Since the government declared 2019 the year of tolerance, and officially recognised the existence of Jews in the?uae, new kosher restaurants and a Jewish centre have sprung up.

During the festival of Hanukkah last year the state erected large menorahs in city squares (pictured). It plans to open a state-financed synagogue later this year. “Jews are back in the Middle East,” says Edwin Shuker, an Iraqi Jew who fled to Britain, but resettled in Dubai last year.

From Morocco to the Gulf, a surprising number of Arab countries are welcoming back Jews and embracing their Jewish heritage. The reasons vary. The failures and excesses of Arab nationalism and Islamism have forced many countries to rethink chauvinist dogmas. Modernising autocrats have jettisoned communal tropes and pursued multicultural agendas. And the?Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer seen as a priority in the region.

“The Arab world has too many problems to still care about Palestine,” says Kamal Alam, an expert on Syria and its Jewish diaspora. “Instead they begrudgingly look at Israel and Jews as models for running a successful country that feeds itself without oil.”

Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, more Jews lived in the rest of the Arab world than in Palestine. At least a quarter of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. So was Iraq’s beauty queen in 1947. But after the creation of Israel and its displacement of Palestinians, Arab rulers turned on their Jewish subjects.

Many were stripped of their citizenship and their property. State media and school textbooks promoted anti-Semitism, and the sermons of Muslim preachers fanned the flames. Arab states chased away all but a few thousand of the region’s non-Israeli Jews.

In recent years, though, the mood has drastically changed. Most Arabs have no memory of the big Arab-Israeli wars of last century. Milder opinions have been encouraged by leaders who see the Jewish state as a?potential trade partner and ally against Iran, and who seek more acceptance in the West.

The rulers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the?UAE, for example, host multicultural gatherings and often muzzle clerics who step out of line. Sympathetic portrayals of Jews have appeared in Arab films and?tv?shows; documentaries have explored the region’s Jewish roots.

Some Arab universities have opened departments of Jewish history. Such is the change in attitude that when four Arab countries—Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the?UAE—agreed to normalize relations with Israel in 2020, there were no big protests.

Saudi Arabia has not formally made peace with Israel. But the kingdom—once one of the world’s most closed and intolerant countries—now welcomes Jews, even Israelis (if they are travelling on foreign passports). Hebrew can be heard at fairs and festivals. An Israeli psychic performed at a recent royal party. Anti-Jewish calumnies have been culled from Saudi textbooks."

The Economist adds that "to the consternation of some, an Israeli rabbi called Jacob Herzog is a frequent visitor to Riyadh, the capital. He sits in cafés wearing ultra-Orthodox garb and distributes prayer books. Sometimes he posts pictures of himself dancing with merchants in the bazaar. “Jews used to be afraid of saying they were Jews in the kingdom,” says Mr Herzog, who calls himself the chief rabbi of Saudi Arabia. “Now we’re getting embedded.”

This goes hand in hand with Muhammad bin Salman’s push to attract?tourists and investments. The crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia has defied the clerics by sponsoring archaeological digs of Jewish sites in the hopes of one day attracting Jewish sightseers.

In November an Israeli opened Habitas, a luxury hotel in Al Ula, an ancient rock city. Prince Muhammad has located one of his pet projects, a planned $500bn high-tech city called Neom, on the kingdom’s north-west coast—the better to attract Israeli expertise, say his advisers. “Saudis are becoming closer to Jews than to Palestinians and Lebanese,” says Sultan al-Mousa, the author of a bestselling Saudi novel about a Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire.

In Egypt the government of Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is renovating Jewish cemeteries and what was once the biggest synagogue in the Middle East. This may, in part, be an effort to charm America, which gives Egypt heaps of aid. Elsewhere, the motives are clearer.

The blood-soaked regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is restoring synagogues and has reached out to the many Syrian Jews in New York, hosting a delegation of them in Damascus.

Mizrahi Jews from Israel are also driving change in the region. With roots in the Middle East, many of them feel marginalised in Israel, where schools tend to focus on European Jewish history.

Large numbers of Mizrahim have gone to?Morocco, some hoping to build a new housing complex for Jews in Marrakech. Others pack dozens of flights each week between Tel Aviv and Dubai.

Those who stay put are more open about their heritage. In contrast to their grandparents, who listened to Umm Kulthum, an Egyptian diva, in secret, young Mizrahim blast Arabic music in public.

In 2015 three sisters of Yemenite origin released Israel’s first Arabic chart-topper. “Coldness is turning to curiosity about the region,” says Liel Maghen, who runs the Centre for Regional Initiatives, a think-tank in Jerusalem. “There’s an Arabisation of Israeli culture.”

Some take a cynical view of all the bonhomie. “I’ll imprison you [Palestinians] at checkpoints. And then take a selfie in [Dubai’s] towers,” croons Noam Shuster-Eliassi, an Israeli comedienne, in her satirical song “Dubai, Dubai” (which is in Arabic).

Others fear Jews could be targeted in the event of a popular backlash against the region’s despots. But the trajectory of Morocco suggests that the improvement in relations could endure.

The kingdom began reaching out decades ago. Jews of Moroccan origin are able to reclaim their citizenship. The country has a Jewish museum and a new Jewish study centre and has restored dozens of old Jewish sites, notes Avraham Moyal, a rabbi of Moroccan descent. “We’ve smashed the taboo.”?

Humanitarian Assistance: A Viral Photo Helps Bring Syrian Refugee Family To Italy

The New York Times (US) reports that "the award-winning photograph — of a man who had lost a leg in a bomb attack in Syria, hoisting into the air his son, born without limbs, another casualty of the country’s civil war — went viral last year in Italy.

On Friday, Munzir El Nezzel, the man in the picture, and his son Mustafa arrived in Italy after a remarkable effort by the organizers of the?Siena International Photo Awards (link provided below), to bring them and their family from Turkey, where they had fled after Syria.

“We are coming, thank you,” the 6-year-old Mustafa said, smiling broadly, in a video message recorded before he and his family — father, mother and his two sisters ages 1 and 4 — boarded a plane in Ankara on Thursday to fly to Italy. “We love Italia,” he added.

The picture of Mustafa and his father, both with loving smiles, which was taken in January 2021 by the Turkish photographer Mehmet Aslan, and called “Hardship of Life,” was declared photo of the year at the Siena awards last year.

The emotional and shocking picture made headlines in Italy, and spread internationally on social media, spurring the festival’s organizers to take action and start a?fund-raising drive to get treatment for father and son.

The festival’s organizers contacted diplomats, hospitals, rehabilitation centers and the Catholic diocese in Siena to host the Syrian family, so that Mustafa and his father could get treatment and prosthetics.

“The picture was beyond all imagination,” said Luca Venturi, an engineer who founded the Siena photography festival, which bestowed the award, about six years ago. “We thought we could also go beyond our fear of not being able to do anything for this family.”

Like all countries, Italy can issue visas for humanitarian reasons, but refugees need to be sponsored by a local organization that handles paperwork and provides financial support.

Motivated by the success of the crowdfunding effort, the nonprofit that organizes the photography festival decided to sponsor the Syrian family.

As Mr. Venturi worked his connections in Italy, trying to get permission to bring the family from Turkey, he kept regular contact with Mr. El Nezzel via WhatsApp, using Google translate to communicate in Arabic with the 33-year-old father of three.

Mr. Venturi also sent aerial shots of Siena’s walled medieval city center to explain to the family, who had lived without a television for a decade, where they were going to move.

Mr. El Nezzel responded with exclamation points.

When the family was told this month that their visas had come through, “they were in disbelief,” Mr. Venturi said, adding that in a video, Mustafa did somersaults and laughed, shouting “I love you” to him.

Mustafa was born with a congenital disorder that resulted from medications that his mother had to take while pregnant with him, after she was sickened by nerve gas released during the war in Syria. He will need long-term treatment to be able to walk or live more independently. His parents currently carry him around and one of his two sisters also helps him around the house.

Prosthetics experts in Italy will meet with Mustafa and his father in coming weeks to design new artificial limbs. Mr. El Nezzel’s treatment is likely to be easier because he is an adult. Working with a 6-year-old will be more challenging, according to the doctors and engineers of Italy’s leading rehabilitation and prosthetics center.

Gregorio Teti, the director of the facility, the Centro Protesi Inail, in Vigorso di Budrio in northern Italy, said that the father could recover most of his mobility in a few weeks.

For Mustafa, the process could be longer, starting with simple prosthetics on his upper limbs that are usually easier to accept and get accustomed to. Later, engineers will design artificial limbs around Mustafa’s hips.

As Mustafa grows, his prosthetics will have to be adjusted to his changing body. “As a child, he has time on his side,” Mr. Teti said. “Research will probably allow him to drive a car and get to work autonomously when he is older.”

But he will also be facing the challenges of migrating to a foreign country, learning a different language and creating a new life.

“Leaving your home country is always an enormous jump, but we hope to help them find a new home here,” said Anna Ferretti, who is in charge of the city’s branch of Caritas, a Catholic aid association that is offering the El Nezzels an apartment on the outskirts of Siena and will cover their daily financial needs for a year.

“This is a small city and the solidarity network is strong,” she said. “Together, we are going to make it.”

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*please note that certain articles may have been summarized or modified to fit the format of the newsletter.

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