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Nitzan Spiegelstein, who attends a pre-army ‘mechina” program, tells ILTV about a race he has organized to encourage young Israelis about to enter the IDF and to help soldiers suffering from PTSD and combat fatigue.
The post WATCH: Youngsters organize race for former IDF soldiers, raising spirits appeared first on World Israel News.
“This is starting with Azerbaijan but it will not end in Azerbaijan,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said.
The post WATCH: Israel’s top diplomat touts strong economic, security ties in Azerbaijan appeared first on World Israel News.
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The decision “leads to more unnecessary hatred among us,” said Culture Minister Miki Zohar in response. A group of Israeli women will be celebrating abroad to “get away from it all.”
By World Israel News Staff
Opposition leader Yair lapid announced Wednesday that he has refused the government’s official invitation to the traditional torch-lighting ceremony and Independence Day celebration on Mount Herzl next week due to his fury over its judicial reform plans.
“We won’t pretend that we are celebrating together and that everything is OK while the government is tearing the nation apart and erasing democracy,” he declared in response to the invitation sent both to him and National Unity party head Benny Gantz by Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who is in charge of the event.
“You have left me no choice,” he wrote in his response. “I love the State of Israel with all my heart but in three months you have divided Israeli society, and no fake fireworks performance will cover that up. If national unity is so important to you, you would not be dismantling our democracy and instead you’d be going to work for Israel’s citizens.”
“We will not sit there to watch another embarrassing show of flattery for the Netanyahu family,” he added.
Regev had called earlier in the day for unity on Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims on Tuesday and the Independence Day festivities the following day.
“I know there are disputes, criticisms, I ask everyone to put everything aside for three days in the State of Israel,” she said. “At the independence ceremony we will put aside all the arguments between us and unite around our wonderful country. We can put the arguments aside and come and salute the State of Israel for our wonderful achievements.”
In answer to a reporter’s question earlier in the week, Lapid refused to call on his followers to refrain from protesting against the government during the state ceremonies, saying, “I said that first of all I want to hear a call to stop the violence against the demonstrators.”
In reaction, Culture Minister Miki Zohar (Likud) tweeted, “Lapid’s decision not to show up for the torch-lighting ceremony deepens the rift [in society] and leads to more unnecessary hatred among us.”
Some Israeli lay people have become dispirited by the intense political acrimony and disunity, especially at this time of year.
Mimi Buchsbaum, a student and mother of two, told World Israel News that she’s leaving Israel next week for a few days because of all the hate, which she says is just too depressing. She also expects to see more hateful outbursts, such as what happened on Tuesday, Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, when Likud MK Boaz Bizmuth was shouted down in Tel Aviv and prevented from speaking about the solemn occasion, despite his pleas for unity.
“I love Yom Ha’atzma’ut [Independence Day],” she said. “But never have I seen anything like this. I’m going with some friends to Milan for three nights to get away from it all.
“We’ll celebrate abroad – I can’t imagine ignoring Yom Hazikaron [Memorial Day for fallen IDF soldiers and terror victims] and Yom Ha’atzma’ut. We’ll light candles for Yom Hazikaron and talk about it. On Yom Ha’atzma’ut, we’ll try to find a celebration in the city, and if we can’t, then we’ll go out for a nice dinner and sing and dance in our hotel room.
“I love my country, but I just don’t want to see what’s going to happen here. I don’t want to see it. Neither do my friends.”
Late last month, National Unity MK Hili Tropper initiated a letter that was signed by over 90 MKs calling “to avoid bringing the political debate into the cemeteries and the days that are holy to the Israeli identity.”
Mentioning specifically Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron, the letter said that the “pain of the families…do not belong to the Right or the Left, to supporters or opposers of the government, they are everyone’s days…for all of us together. They are days that remind us for whom and for what we dream, create, and yes – sometimes fight.
“The [judicial reform] dispute is legitimate, but if we lose this beacon of Israeli partnership, if we turn off its light, the storm may drown us all,” the letter added.
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz endorsed the missive’s sentiments and will be attending the torch-lighting ceremony, despite his firm opposition to the government.
The post Lapid refuses to attend state Independence Day event; Israelis dispirited by division, going abroad appeared first on World Israel News.
Loblaws CEO Galen Weston’s exorbitant pay attracted scrutiny amid rising grocery prices in Canada. (Tara Walton / Toronto Star via Getty Images)
According to the owners of wage-cutting, price-fixing Loblaw Companies Ltd, Canada’s largest food retailer, the company’s soon-to-be-former CEO Galen Weston Jr was underpaid for his performance in 2022. Evidently, it makes sense to celebrate and reward those who make a killing when regular working people everywhere are struggling. To make this sort of logic work, one must aggressively gloss over the relationship between the celebrants and the consumers who made this profit bonanza possible — that is, the working people who have had to suffer outrageous grocery bills.
Weston’s increased payout, totaling $11.7 million last year, has put Canada’s self-described “face of inflation” on the defensive — and for good reason. The scandal is a reminder that the payouts enjoyed by Weston, and all other owners of capital, do not fall from the sky; they come from exploitation. CEOs like Weston are not lapping their employees in labor and time spent on the job. Such grotesque earnings are a result of either price gouging or wage and benefit cuts.
According to Loblaw’s latest management circular, a commissioned study by Meridian Consultants, amid booming profits, the scion of Canada’s third-wealthiest family needed a raise. “The results of the 2022 review suggested that Mr. Weston’s total direct compensation was below the market median and Weston’s and Loblaw’s compensation policy objectives,” the circular claims. Upping Weston’s pay, apparently, would help the company to “compensate directors appropriately for their time” and to remain “competitive.”
With this increase, a raise of $1.2 million, Weston was able to soak up $11.7 million in compensation. In contrast, it would take the average grocery store worker multiple lifetimes to earn what Weston took just last year. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian grocery worker made $18.97 per hour in 2022. It would take a full-time worker, with annual earnings of $34,525, more than 340 years to earn Weston’s 2022 take home of $11.79 million.
But Weston’s share of the company’s stock extends well beyond this. As the same circular notes, Weston himself owns 56.3 percent of the company’s common shares, totaling roughly $12.9 billion in eligible holdings. Collectively, the board controls an enterprise worth over $40 billion.
That pool of wealth is in excess of the gross domestic product of entire Canadian provinces. It exceeds the budgets of key Canadian public programs like the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Agency, and the Ontario government’s school repair budget. This is, in short, an enormous concentration of wealth and power, beyond that of many elected officials.
Weston’s raise has done very little to bolster his claim, made to Canada’s parliament last month, that the profit of the company — which in 2022 made a record $1.9 billion — “doesn’t go to me.” Against the backdrop of such farcical denials, the financial papers say plainly what everyone knows is actually happening: Weston received this increase, as the Financial Post asserts, because the company has seen record profits. In this telling, the fact that these profits have accrued while the Canadian economy and Canadian society are experiencing a deep crisis is only further proof of Weston’s canny business acumen. It has nothing to do with price gouging or chicanery of any kind.
“Increasing executive pay as profits and share prices rise,” the Post notes, “reinforces to investors that the board is properly incentivizing executives to manage the company in an efficacious manner.” The paper further stresses,
The responsibility of the corporate executive is to act in the interests of his employer, the shareholders, and the responsibility of business in a free society is to increase its profits. In 2022, Galen Weston and Loblaw did just that: adjusted diluted net earnings per common share rose from $5.59 in 2021 to $6.82 in 2022.
But where did these profits come from?
According to Weston’s testimony, “We’re a big company and the numbers are very large, but it still translates right down to the bottom line at one dollar [of profit] per 25 dollars of groceries.”
It probably goes without saying that Galen Weston was not bagging these groceries, stocking shelves, or maintaining the deli counter. His minimum-wage workers were doing all these tasks, leaving him free, if the spirit moves him, to count his personal fortune from his family’s palatial estate in Vero Beach.
As with the financial press’s unguarded acknowledgment that Weston’s raise is simply how the game works, Loblaw’s parent company has been very clear about how profits are generated. The company sees potential “profit improvements” in wage cuts or — to use the business speak — in “variable cost” reductions.
Former CEO Richard Currie was quite transparent about deploying such strategies. As he said in a 1994 address to the Ivey Business School, the company will achieve “profit improvements” through “bottom-line cost reductions” and “lowered breakeven points.” Because fixed costs — for material, buildings, and supplies — are set from outside, Currie candidly noted, “labor costs” are key to keeping outlays low. Labor costs, “the next largest cost in the food retailing business,” Currie notes, represent the overhead that can be cut.
Since Currie’s tenure, Loblaws has engaged in lockouts and union-busting work across its enterprise. To this day, the company lists potential union drives and “living wage campaigns” as potential risks to its profit margins. Meanwhile, Weston’s company has been denounced for gouging many of those same workers and the broader working class with rising grocery prices — charging nearly $40 for a package of chicken breasts, $41 for olive oil, almost $30 for detergent, and more.
On Twitter, the company has claimed that while it is “the face of inflation,” it is not the cause, and that its association with spiraling food bills is a case of scapegoating. Nonetheless, by its own account, its fourth quarter earnings in 2022, a net income of over $529 million, were 10 percent higher than the previous year. At the same time, more Canadians were forced to turn to food banks than ever before.
Every dollar that goes to Loblaw Companies is a dollar that does not go to workers. It’s value that is extracted from workers collectively — either in the workplace or in their regular food purchases.
According to the Financial Post, Weston’s exorbitant payout should be shielded from criticism — these are his “earnings,” and he supposedly “deserves,” it. As the headline reads, “Galen Weston deserves his raise, which is Loblaw’s business not anyone else’s.”
But Weston has done nothing to earn his payout or his wealth. Galen Weston does not work on the floor of his own grocery stores or warehouses. He does not bag groceries for impatient customers, operate a forklift in one of his warehouses, or, more generally, contribute anything of value to ordinary people. If decisions at Loblaw’s were made by workers rather than shareholders, it’s a sure bet that his remuneration would be closer to his actual contribution — and rigorously cut down in size. Weston’s exorbitant payout is a result of his position, which, in turn, is a knock-on effect of his inherited wealth. He possesses a share of the value produced by Loblaws’ workers and a monopoly over an essential good — purchased by many of those same workers.
The Post claims that
society functions best when businessmen behave as businessmen instead of as politicians, and businesses function as businesses. . . . Having fulfilled his responsibility with considerable success, there is no good reason for anyone to begrudge [Weston] his raise.
It might be true that this — with millions dependent on food banks and many more condemned to poverty wages and unemployment amid rising prices — is the best possible world that the capitalist system has on offer. If so, then by all indications, there is an undeniable and urgent need for radical improvement. We don’t have to live in a world where people like Weston have the power to cut wages and benefits and hike food prices beyond what ordinary people can pay.
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Two left-wing Israeli groups file petition with Supreme Court calling to overturn Defense Minister’s decision not to grant entry permits to Palestinian Arabs for alternative Memorial Day event in Tel Aviv.
By World Israel News Staff
Two left-wing Israeli groups have filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, demanding that Israel allow Palestinian Arabs to enter the country in order to attend a bi-national Memorial Day ceremony in Tel Aviv.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant decided not to allow Palestinians to enter the country due to security concerns, citing the general closure of Judea and Samaria during the holidays and the recent string of terror attacks.
The two groups, Combatants for Peace and The Parents Circle-Families Forum, argued in their petition that Gallant’s decision violates freedom of expression and democratic values, as it denies families the right to express their grief and impedes the goal of facilitating peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
The 18th annual joint ceremony, titled “Sharing sorrow, Bringing hope,” is set to be held at Ganei Yehoshua Park in Tel Aviv on the eve of Yom Hazikaron – Israel’s memorial day for fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terror.
Both organizations claim that a great deal of time and resources have been invested in the ceremony, which is based on the participation of Palestinians, and that without their involvement, the program would be effectively nullified.
“Although there were those who painted him as the hero of democracy, we see that Gallant continues the line of the extreme government in disdain for the High Court and freedom of expression,” Combatants for Peace said Wednesday.
“It’s a shame that this decision touches on the eve of Memorial Day, in a year when so many of us hope and aspire to unite with the memory of all those who were lost without the involvement of politicians, and at the expense of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families who are holding a ceremony whose entire purpose is to spread hope and change.”
In their petition Wednesday, the two groups noted that the court intervened in 2018 and 2019 to prevent restrictions barring Palestinian Authority residents from being allowed into the country for the ceremony.
“The High Court’s decision is wrong and disappointing,” PM Netanyahu said in a statement in 2019. “There is no place for a memorial service that compares blood between us and the blood of terrorists. I therefore refused to allow the participants to enter the ceremony, and I believe that there was no room for the High Court’s intervention in this decision.”
Tzachi Wachsman, the brother of Sgt. Nachshon Wachsman who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and murdered during a failed rescue attempt in 1994, wrote in 2019 that the court’s decision doubled his grief.
“I am shocked by the holding of an alternative memorial ceremony, with the encouragement of the Supreme Court, in memory of terrorists with the participation of their families,” he posted on Facebook. “This decision makes me feel doubly sad and grieved on the day of remembrance for our holy fallen. I feel frustrated and humiliated that this is my country.”
No ceremony was held in 2017 due to security threats, and the ceremony was held virtually in 2020, 2021, and 2022 due to the COVID pandemic.
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Hamas-Riyadh rapprochement talks look to be in the cards.
By JNS
Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on Tuesday.
The Fatah leader’s visit comes at the same time that a delegation from rival political faction and terrorist group Hamas is also in the country.
According to the P.A.-controlled Wafa news agency, Abbas and the prince discussed “the latest political developments of the Palestinian cause and the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the PLO Executive Committee, and Maj. Gen. Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, also represented the Palestinian side at the meeting.
The Saudi side included Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and Director General of the General Intelligence Directorate Khalid bin Ali Al Humaidan.
Abbas arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday for the visit where he was also scheduled to meet with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and participate in an Iftar Ramadan break-fast meal.
Senior Hamas officials were seen making the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca on Tuesday. Video posted to social media shows Hamas political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh, Haniyeh’s predecessor Khaled Mashaal and other officials circling the Kaaba inside the Great Mosque of Mecca.
The Mecca pilgrimage comes ahead of talks expected in Riyadh between Hamas and Saudi officials aiming at rapprochement.
It is the first visit by an official Hamas delegation to Saudi Arabia since 2015, and the first since the Saudis agreed in March to reestablish diplomatic relations with Iran.
Relations between Riyadh and Hamas were strained after the Saudis blamed the terrorist group for the failure of the 2007 Mecca Agreement, which was a Saudi attempt to facilitate reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.
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This aerial photo taken on April 13, 2023, shows an industrial site after a fire in Richmond, Indiana. (Shi Lei / Xinhua via Getty Images)
As concerns mount over an April 11 plastics recycling plant fire that spewed toxins and caused mass evacuations in Richmond, Indiana, the Biden administration has failed to take action on regulations proposed in the wake of the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that could prevent similar chemical infernos from occurring in the future.
By refusing to challenge the plastics industry, advocates say the White House is overlooking the dangers of mass production and processing of plastics, beyond just how they contribute to water and land pollution. Only by preventing the creation of plastic waste at the front end, experts say — by reducing the types of production that contributed to the February train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — can the type of fire that occurred at the Richmond warehouse be averted.
The plastic recycling facility in Richmond had been cited numerous times by city and state officials over the years, but the central cause of the waste buildup was a decision by the Chinese government to stop most imports of plastic waste in 2017, local officials told Indianapolis’s NBC affiliate. Shortly thereafter, additional waste began to build up at the 175,000-square-foot facility.
The owner may have been waiting on a bill sitting on Indiana Republican governor Eric Holcomb’s desk that would make it far easier to incinerate plastic waste in the state.
Meanwhile, days after the February 3 train accident — in which half of the thirty-eight cars that derailed were carrying materials related to plastics production — Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pushing for the agency to create new national targets for reducing single-use plastics production, actions they argued “can be implemented by EPA now, without further congressional action.”
Rather than acting on these lawmakers’ recommendations, on February 13, the Biden administration submitted a proposal for a potential United Nations treaty on plastics pollution that failed to address any of the lawmakers’ major concerns about plastics production. Instead, according to InsideClimateNews, the proposal took “positions similar to recommendations from the chemical and plastics industries,” by making the focus on reuse and recycling instead of binding cuts to plastic production.
Veena Singla, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council says that logic doesn’t address the core problem with plastic pollution: production.
“The train derailment in Ohio was carrying chemicals to make plastics. Now we have this toxic fire that showcases the end of the life cycle with plastic waste, which demonstrates the toxic life cycle of plastic from beginning to end,” she said. “The most effective way to manage plastic waste is to not make it in the first place. We need to reduce and eliminate single-use and PVC plastics; it’s a really good starting place to deal with the plastic waste problem.”
Democratic lawmakers’ proposed regulations, which were initially included in the Protecting Communities from Plastics Act last year, have been fiercely opposed by the main lobbyists for the plastics industry.
“I’m disappointed but not surprised by the continued hyperbole contained in this legislation, which only causes divisiveness in the efforts to come to real solutions to the environmental challenges we face,” said Matt Seaholm, a former Koch network operative who now runs the Plastics Industry Association, about the 2022 legislation in a December statement.
Joshua Baca, the vice president for plastics at the American Chemistry Council, called the bill “a raw deal for America.”
The American Chemistry Council was the country’s ninth-highest spender on federal lobbying in 2022, spending $20 million, which represented a nearly 20 percent increase from the year before. The organization’s Washington roster includes Democratic superlobbyist Heather Podesta’s firm Invariant, which it paid $320,000 last year.
Federal records show that the American Chemistry Council lobbied against tighter regulation of plastics, including the Protecting Communities From Plastics Act.
Along with opposing new safety regulations, the plastics industry is aggressively lobbying to remove plastic waste from federal solid waste regulations so companies can engage in so-called “chemical recycling” — the incineration of plastic waste. The February letter sent by Democratic lawmakers highlighted this move, urging the EPA to “Affirm the Agency’s treatment of plastic waste as ‘waste.’”
The bill sitting on Holcomb’s desk would allow Indiana facilities to use heat and chemical processes to break down plastic waste as part of a process it calls “advanced recycling.” (Holcomb has not announced whether or not he will sign the bill.)
At least twenty-three states have now passed similar bills, which have been backed by the American Chemistry Council.
But Singla at the Natural Resources Defense Council says the Richmond fire is further proof that the Biden administration and state legislatures shouldn’t adjust regulations to make plastic incineration easier.
“The plastics and chemical industry has been looking to change the classification of plastic waste from solid waste so it’s no longer considered solid waste by the EPA,” she said:
This fire really points to why that’s a terrible idea. We need it to be classsified as waste and handled as waste. You can still see that accidents happen under current regulations, but we absolutely don’t need it to be less regulated.
Julie Teel-Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, agrees that the Biden administration should take immediate action to crack down on the $97 billion plastics industry.
“This toxic fire should be the last plastics disaster communities have to suffer,” she said. “It’s long past time for the federal government to crack down on this harmful underregulated industry.” She continued:
There’s so much the Biden administration can do right now under existing law, including denying permits to polluters and making them pay for accidents like the Richmond fire. We have to stop coddling these corporations and start dramatically reducing plastic production. Recycling isn’t the solution and shouldn’t be used to prop up this fossil fuel–based toxic industry.
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