Itochu Corp. suspends MoU with Israeli military technology company – Arab News

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Itochu Corp.’s Chief Financial Officer Tsuyoshi Hachimura announced that the company will end their signed agreement with Israeli military technology company Elbit Systems by the end of February.
Media reports stated that the Japanese company’s decision to end the collaboration was made in response to the possibility of international criticism, as well as the boycotts taking place around the world as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza.
In December, several groups demonstrated in front of the headquarters of Itochu in Tokyo to protest the company’s dealings with Israel. They also called for a boycott of Israel in a campaign initiated by pacifists and anti-gun collectives.
Citing Japan’s “peace constitution,” they denounced the agreement between Itochu Aviation, the Israeli company Elbit that specializes in the production of components for the defense industry, and Nippon Aircraft.
Hachimura said Itochu signed an MoU with Elbit Systems based on “a request from the Ministry of Defense” with the aim of “importing defense equipment that is necessary for Japan’s security.”
He added that he was not “involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
On Jan. 26, the International Court of Justice issued a ruling ordering Israel to take all measures to prevent genocide in Gaza.
Hachimura said: “Taking into consideration the Japanese government’s support for the role of the International Court of Justice, new activities related to the MoU have already been suspended.”
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said Tuesday that Congress will be playing into the Kremlin’s hands if it fails to renew funding for Ukraine’s fight against Russian invasion — and blamed Donald Trump for playing politics with US national security.
The “clock is ticking” for Ukraine, Biden warned.
The US president called out Trump — his expected November election rival — for pressuring Republican lawmakers not to pass a $118 billion bill that would fund Ukraine’s military in return for strict US immigration curbs, a Republican demand.
“We can’t walk away now. That’s what Putin’s betting on,” Biden said. “Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin. Opposing this bill is playing into his hands.”
The immigration portion of the bill, he said, included the “toughest set of reforms to secure the border ever.”
Despite themselves insisting on the immigration crackdown as a condition for renewing US aid to pro-Western Ukraine, Republicans have now responded to Trump’s pressure by making clear they will not help Democrats pass the huge bill.
This will sink Ukraine’s chances of getting desperately needed weaponry and ammunition as it enters the third year of resisting a full-scale Russian invasion.
It also means that the toughly negotiated measures to harden the US-Mexican border and keep out undocumented migrants will be abandoned, despite getting initial approval from senior Republican and Democratic senators.
“Most of our members feel that we’re not going to be able to make a law here,” Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in remarks to journalists Tuesday.
Biden said Trump, who is running for a return to the White House largely on his anti-immigrant platform and claims that the southern border is suffering an “invasion,” was using the crisis to boost his electoral chances.
“Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically. Therefore… even though it helps his country, he’s not for it,” Biden said. “He’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.”
“For the last 24 hours he has done nothing, I’m told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them,” Biden said. “It looks like they’re caving.”
Trump has been ramping up attacks on the bill for weeks, undermining his own party’s leaders as they inched toward compromise on the border — and thereby opening the door to Ukraine aid.
“Don’t be STUPID!!! We need a separate Border and Immigration Bill. It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape, or form!” Trump posted in one of his many warnings to Republican legislators.
Biden and Trump are campaigning on starkly divergent approaches to Ukraine, with the Democrat clear that helping the pro-Western ally repel Russia is vital to ensure a safer world while his predecessor pushes an isolationist “America First” policy.
At home, Biden has pressed for a humane immigration policy but Republicans point to statistics showing migrant apprehensions reaching a record high of 302,000 in December, a surge Trump has been wielding as a major issue in the campaign.
The deal, unveiled by senators Sunday, is a bipartisan $118 billion package of immigration restrictions that Biden has committed to signing into law. It is tied to a foreign aid package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.
UNITED NATIONS: The United States accused Russia on Tuesday of firing at least nine North Korean-supplied missiles at Ukraine, while Moscow labeled Washington a “direct accomplice” in the downing of a Russian military transport plane last month.
Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia and deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood traded the accusations at a UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine, requested by Moscow. Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine nearly two years ago.
“To date, Russia has launched DPRK-supplied ballistic missiles against Ukraine on at least nine occasions,” Wood told the 15-member Security Council, using the North Korea’s formal name: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
“Russia and the DPRK must be held accountable for their actions, which undermine long-standing obligations under UN Security Council resolutions,” he said.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the US accusations, but vowed last year to deepen military relations. Russia has stepped up ties with North Korea and other countries hostile to the United States such as Iran since the start of the war with Ukraine — relations that are a source of concern to the West.
A Russian Air Force Il-76 fell from the skies on Jan. 24. Russia said all 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers en route to be swapped for Russian prisoners of war, were killed, and blamed Kyiv for downing the plane.
“We possess irrefutable evidence that a Patriot surface-to-air missile was used to carry out the strike, which leaves no doubt the Washington is a direct accomplice in this crime as well,” Nebenzia told the Security Council.
Russian investigators said last week that they had evidence showing that Ukraine’s military shot down the military transport plane with US-made Patriot surface-to-air missiles.
Russia asked the council to meet on Tuesday after it said Ukraine killed at least 28 people when it used Western-supplied rockets to strike a bakery and restaurant on Saturday in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine.
Senior Ukrainian UN diplomat Serhii Dvornyk accused Russia of misusing the Security Council “for disseminating fakes.”
Wood said the US was unable to independently verify the information — blaming an absence of independent media reporting — but laments all civilian casualties. He added: “To be clear, Russia is the only aggressor in this war, and the only one that could end this war today.”
 
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has no immunity from prosecution as a former president and can be tried on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, a federal appeals court said Tuesday in a landmark ruling.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal liability for actions he took while in the White House is “unsupported by precedent, history or the text and structure of the Constitution.”
“Former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches,” the judges said in a unanimous opinion. “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”
The ruling is a major legal setback for Trump, 77, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and the first ex-president to be criminally indicted, and a spokesman said he plans to file another appeal.
Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, slammed the ruling and said it means “a President will be afraid to act for fear of the opposite Party’s Vicious Retribution after leaving Office.”
“A President of the United States must have Full Immunity in order to properly function and do what has to be done for the good of our Country,” he said. “A Nation-destroying ruling like this cannot be allowed to stand.”
The appeals court put the immunity ruling on hold until Monday to give Trump the opportunity to appeal to the US Supreme Court, which can decide whether to take the case or allow the lower court’s ruling to stand.
Trump had been set to go on trial in Washington on March 4 on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
But District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, was forced to postpone it pending a ruling by the appeals court on the immunity claim, which she had rejected in December.
The three appellate court judges who heard Trump’s appeal last month were also unconvinced by his arguments.
“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” they said.
“But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”
Special Counsel Jack Smith filed the election conspiracy case against Trump in August and had been pushing hard for the March start date for his trial.
Lawyers for the former president have sought repeatedly to delay the trial until after the November presidential election, when Trump could potentially have all of the federal cases against him dropped if he wins the White House again.
Trump also faces 2020 election interference state charges in Georgia, and has been federally indicted in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified information.
He was impeached twice by the Democratically controlled House of Representatives while in office — once for inciting an insurrection — but acquitted both times by the Senate.
During arguments last month before the appeals court, Trump’s attorney John Sauer claimed that a president can only be prosecuted for actions taken while in the White House if first impeached and convicted by Congress.
“To authorize the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open a Pandora’s Box from which this nation may never recover,” Sauer said.
The appeals court judges disagreed.
“Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review,” they wrote.
The Supreme Court is already scheduled to hear another important election-related case this week.
The Colorado Supreme Court barred Trump in December from appearing on the Republican presidential primary ballot in the state because of his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.
Trump appealed the Colorado ruling and the conservative-majority Supreme Court, which includes three justices appointed by the former president, is to hear oral arguments in the case on Thursday.
LONDON: British police failed to record the racial identity of nearly two-thirds of people referred to the Prevent counter-extremism program amid concerns that it discriminates against Muslims, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Between 2015 and 2023, 51,204 people in England and Wales were referred to the program, according to government figures.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council found that the racial or ethnic backgrounds of 33,116 of those referrals could not be accessed.
Prevent, which mandates public entities like schools and police to preemptively identify individuals at risk of adopting extremist ideologies and intervene, has come under close scrutiny and criticism since a review into its procedures by William Shawcross.
Serving as an independent reviewer, Shawcross concluded that Prevent was “not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism” and “has a double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism.”
On the other hand, human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, said the program and its practices had exhibited racist and discriminatory biases, especially against Muslims living in the UK.
Rights & Security International sought to uncover racial data on Prevent referrals through freedom of information requests to the Home Office, NPCC, and the Metropolitan Police, but was met with resistance from the agencies.
Sarah St Vincent, executive director of the RSI, said police failures to log the ethnicity of those referred meant it was impossible to properly assess if particular communities had faced discrimination.
A subsequent complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office led to the admission from the NPCC in December that the ethnicity of 33,116 referrals from the requested time frame had not been recorded.
The ICO ruled that ethnicity was not one of the markers it needed to track.
“Ethnicity is not a mandatory field within the Prevent referral, which means that the ethnicity field within the Prevent case management tracker database can be left blank,” an ICO statement said.
TEXAS, USA: Police in Austin, Texas, said on Tuesday that they were investigating a reported stabbing of a Palestinian-American man over the weekend by a white suspect as a “bias-motivated incident” and that a hate-crime panel would review the case.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advocacy group said a group of Muslim Americans were driving home from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday when the suspect attacked their vehicle at a stop sign.
The suspect, identified by police as Bert James Baker, shouted obscenities, attempted to rip a “Free Palestine” flag from their car and stabbed a 23-year-old Palestinian-American in the chest, CAIR said.
Police provided no details about the victim. His father, Niza Doar, identified him as Zacharia Doar. The father told a CAIR-hosted press conference on Tuesday his son was trying to subdue Baker when he was stabbed and suffered a broken rib.
Zacharia Doar underwent surgery and was recovering at the hospital on Tuesday, the father said.
Baker was arrested on Sunday evening, booked into county jail and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said on Tuesday. Baker could not immediately be reached for comment. It was unclear whether he had legal representation.
“Based on the information we received, we believe the February 4, 2024 incident to be bias-motivated and will be reviewed by the Hate Crimes Review Committee,” a police statement said.
Human rights advocates cite a rise in Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism in the US that began with a Palestinian Hamas attack on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel has responded with a ground and air attack on Hamas-ruled Gaza, killing more than 27,000 people, according to the local health ministry.
At the CAIR press conference livestreamed from Austin, the victim’s father said his son blamed President Joe Biden for the attack, citing a message from his son to the president saying: “’If you would have called for a ceasefire three months ago, this would have never happened.’“
Previous US incidents include a November shooting of three students of Palestinian descent in Vermont and the fatal October stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American in Illinois.
Separately on Tuesday, the Muslim Legal Fund of America said the US Department of Education was investigating accusations Harvard University failed to protect pro-Palestinian students from threats. A similar probe is under way into a complaint on behalf of Jewish students.

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