Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Trump’s $2,000 Checks All But Dead As GOP Senate Refuses Aid
By Carla Herreria Russo
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed loading up a relief bill with other White House priorities that appeared destined to fail.
President Donald Trump’s push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks all but died Wednesday as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed an alternative approach of loading up the bill with other White House priorities that appeared destined to fail.
The roadblock set by Senate Republicans appears unsurmountable, even as pressure builds to approve the bigger checks. Trump wants the Republican-led chamber to follow the House and increase the checks from $600 for millions of Americans. A growing number of Republicans, including two senators in runoff elections on Jan. 5 in Georgia, agree. But most GOP senators oppose more spending, even if they are also wary of bucking Trump.
Senators will be back at it after McConnell blocked a vote Tuesday, but his new bill — which includes the formation of a commission to investigate the 2020 election as well as a complicated repeal of big tech liability protections — does not have enough support to pass. No votes are scheduled.
“What we’re seeing right now is Leader McConnell trying to kill the checks — the $2,000 checks desperately needed by so many American families,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at the Capitol.
The showdown over the $2,000 checks has thrown Congress into a chaotic year-end session just days before new lawmakers are set to be sworn into office for the new year. It’s preventing action on another priority — overturning Trump’s veto on a sweeping defense bill that has been approved every year for 60 years.
Trump has berated Republican leaders for the stonewalling, finding rare common cause with the Democrats pushing them to act. Leading Republicans warned that the GOP’s refusal to provide more aid as the virus worsens will jeopardize next week’s Senate election in Georgia.
“The Senate Republicans risk throwing away two seats and control of the Senate,” said Newt Gingrich, the former congressional leader, on Fox News. He called on Senate Republicans to “get a grip and not try to play cute parliamentary games with the president’s $2,000 payment.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “These Republicans in the Senate seem to have an endless tolerance for other people’s sadness.”
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said some of the $600 payments were being sent by direct deposit to Americans’ bank accounts Tuesday night. Mnuchin tweeted that paper checks will begin to go out Wednesday.
Saying little, McConnell is trying to provide an offramp for GOP senators to avoid a tough vote. Republicans are split between those who align with Trump’s populist instincts and those who adhere to what had been more traditional conservative views against government spending.
Congress had settled on smaller $600 payments in a compromise over the big, year-end relief bill Trump reluctantly signed into law.
The GOP leader filed new legislation late Tuesday linking the president’s demand for bigger checks with two other Trump priorities — repealing protections for tech companies like Facebook or Twitter that the president complained are unfair to conservatives as well the establishment of a bipartisan commission to review the 2020 presidential election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Liberal senators led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont who support the relief aid are blocking action on the defense bill until a vote can be taken on Trump’s demand for $2,000 for most Americans.
“The working class of this country today faces more economic desperation than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” Sanders said. “Working families need help now.” He also tried to force a vote on the relief checks, but McConnell objected a second time.
The GOP blockade is causing turmoil for some as the virus crisis worsens nationwide and Trump amplifies his unexpected demands.
The two GOP senators from Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, announced Tuesday they support Trump’s plan for bigger checks as they face Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate.
Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida, among the party’s potential 2024 presidential hopefuls, also are pushing the party in the president’s direction.
Other Republicans panned the bigger checks, saying the nearly $400 billion price tag was too high, the relief is not targeted to those in need and Washington has already dispatched ample sums on COVID aid.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., tweeted that he would block the House bill. He said “blindly borrowing” billions “so we can send $2,000 checks to millions of people who haven’t lost any income is terrible policy.”
In the House, dozens of Republicans calculated it was better to link with Democrats to increase the pandemic payments rather than buck the outgoing president and constituents counting on the money. House Democrats led passage, 275-134, but 44 Republicans joined almost all Democrats on Monday for a robust two-thirds vote of approval.
No votes are scheduled in the Senate on either the House-passed measure supporting Trump’s $2,000 checks or McConnell’s new version. With time running out, it’s almost ensures neither bill will pass.
Trump’s push could fizzle out in the Senate but the debate over the size and scope of the year-end package — $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies through September — is potentially one last confrontation before the new Congress is sworn in Sunday.
The COVID-19 portion of the bill revives a weekly pandemic jobless benefit boost — this time $300, through March 14 — as well as the popular Paycheck Protection Program of grants to businesses to keep workers on payrolls. It extends eviction protections, adding a new rental assistance fund.
Americans earning up to $75,000 will qualify for the direct $600 payments, which are phased out at higher income levels, and there’s an additional $600 payment per dependent child.
#CoronavirusStrain - Discovery of Virus Variant in Colorado and California Alarms Scientists
By Apoorva Mandavilli
A contagious variant of the coronavirus spreading through Britain has left that nation grappling with new lockdowns, curtailed air travel and a surge in infections. Now the same variant has appeared in Colorado and California, threatening to complicate what had seemed a hopeful, if halting, path to recovery from the pandemic in the United States. Scientists do not know how widely the new mutant may have spread in the United States. But the answer to that question will color virtually every aspect of the nation’s pandemic response: hospital treatment, community lockdowns, school closures and more. “The overall picture is pretty grim,” said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The arrival of the variant also makes it all the more imperative that Americans receive vaccinations in great numbers, and more quickly, scientists said. A pathogen that spreads easily is more difficult to contain, and a greater percentage of the population must be inoculated to turn back the pandemic. Yet even as the variant surfaced in the United States, officials with the Trump administration acknowledged on Wednesday that the vaccine rollout was going too slowly. Just 2.1 million people had received their first dose as of Monday morning, far short of the 20 million goal. “We agree that that number is lower than what we hoped for,” said Moncef Slaoui, scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to accelerate vaccine development and distribution.The federal government has enrolled 40,000 pharmacy locations in that program designed to accelerate vaccine distribution, Mr. Slaoui and other officials said.The new variant, called B.1.1.7, is not thought to be more deadly than previous variants, nor does it seem to cause more severe illness. Masks, physical distancing and hand hygiene are still the best ways to contain its spread. Current vaccines are likely to be effective against the variant and any others that may emerge in the short term. But given the mutant’s apparent contagiousness, scientists fear that its toehold in the United States augurs another difficult chapter in the pandemic. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced on Wednesday that a case of the new variant had been discovered in the state. Officials in San Diego County later identified the patient as a 30-year-man who had not traveled outside the United States, suggesting the virus was transmitted by someone else in the community — a sign that the variant is already spreading. A household contact of the man has developed symptoms, the officials said, and is being tested for the variant. Officials in Colorado confirmed one patient and identified a second suspected case, both men in the National Guard assigned to a nursing home in Simla, Colo., about 80 miles southeast of Denver. The confirmed patient also had not traveled.“There’s no reason to think that that community is particularly special in any way,” Dr. Hanage said. “It’s completely reasonable to think it’s in a lot of other places, but we just haven’t looked for it yet.”Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that they were working with state laboratories in California, Delaware and Maryland to analyze patient samples for infection with the new variant. Agency scientists also plan to analyze up to 3,500 viral genomes each week to detect the new mutant and other variants as they emerge. The virus’s debut in the United States underscores the need for urgent steps to tamp down transmission, experts said. If the variant is spreading in this country, it will bring not just an increase in the number of cases, but also of hospitalizations and deaths. That’s because a variant that infects more people will reach more who are vulnerable or frail, leading to more illness and fatalities even if the virus itself is not more deadly. The number of people hospitalized for Covid-19 daily has been rising relentlessly since October, totaling nearly 125,000 on Wednesday. Those numbers are expected to swell as a result of family gatherings over the holidays. “In places like the U.S. and the U.K., where the health care system is already at its breaking point, a huge surge of new cases on top of the exponential spread we’re already seeing is going to be really, really bad,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist affiliated with Georgetown University in Washington. “Not only is that going to potentially increase the number of Covid deaths, but it’s also probably going to increase the number of deaths from other causes as well.” People infected with the new variant may need different care than earlier coronavirus patients, further burdening the health care system, experts said.“We’re still learning how these variants might respond to drugs and other Covid-19 treatments, including monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma,” Dr. Henry Walke, the C.D.C.’s incident manager for Covid response, said at the news briefing. The arrival of the variant also ramps up the urgency to get Americans vaccinated because it raises the threshold for so-called herd immunity — the percentage of people who must be inoculated to contain the threat. That threshold may be 90 percent now, versus the 70 percent experts previously estimated.At least two million Americans must be vaccinated each week to prevent the health care system from buckling even under the current surge, experts estimate, let alone an increase brought on by the new variant. The mutant virus seems to spread in the same ways that the coronavirus always has, suggesting that well-known precautions — shutting down nonessential businesses and instituting mask mandates and physical distancing — will hold the virus at bay. “It’s not like this variant suddenly has new capabilities, or that it can suddenly cross over large distances outdoors,” Dr. Rasmussen said. But the ease with which the new variant spreads implies that even more stringent restrictions may be needed, scientists said. “This variant was not stopped by the stronger interventions that were put in place in the U.K. in November,” Dr. Hanage said. “And that means that we need more.” That is likely to prove difficult at a time when many Americans are already defying restrictions. On Wednesday, about a quarter of the shoppers going into the Simla Food Store in Colorado left their faces uncovered, only half a block from the nursing home where the mutant virus is believed to have surfaced. “They chew us out because they don’t think all this is real,” said Cené Kurtchi, 71, who runs a cafe in town and requires patrons to wear masks. “I think part of it is politics, part of it is denial. People don’t want to admit even a little place like Simla is at risk.” British authorities first detected the mutant virus in September. They reported earlier this month that the variant quickly became the predominant type, accounting for more than 60 percent of new cases in London and surrounding areas. “I would expect a similar trajectory” in the United States, said Trevor Bedford, an evolutionary biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. The variant probably accounts for fewer than 1 percent of cases now, he estimated, but might constitute the majority of cases by March. The variant has 23 mutations, compared with the original virus discovered in Wuhan, China. Seventeen mutations appeared since the virus diverged from its most recent ancestor, said Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and a scientific adviser to the British government. The speed with which the virus acquired so many alterations worries scientists, who had expected the coronavirus to evolve far more slowly. Current vaccine candidates should continue to protect people from illness, several experts said. But the appearance of the new variant, which contains at least one mutation that weakens the body’s immune protection, makes it likely that vaccines may need regular adjustment, much as they do to remain effective against the influenza virus. Scientists are still unsure how much more easily the mutant spreads. Initial estimates were around 70 percent greater transmissibility, but the figure has since been revised to 56 percent and may dip even lower, Dr. Cevik said.But with every new person it infects, the coronavirus also has more chances to mutate, and therefore more chances to happen upon mutations that give it an advantage — by making it more transmissible, for example, or less susceptible to the immune system.“If you have enough of that going on, huge amounts of virus replication throughout the world, then you are going to get many different variants,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “If a virus essentially is better adapted to the human host, then it will quite rapidly overtake the global population.” Dr. Cevik offered one nugget of optimism. Early reports from Britain hinted that the new variant spreads more readily among young children. But those suggestions were based on trends in older teenagers, who respond to the virus much as adults do, and can be explained by clusters in high schools, Dr. Cevik said. “It was really early speculation and caused a lot of distress,” she said. “There is no evidence to suggest this new variant was more common in certain age groups.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/health/coronavirus-mutant-colorado.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
A more contagious version of the coronavirus may alter the course of the pandemic in the United States, researchers said.
Each year, 1,000 Pakistani girls forcibly converted to Islam
By KATHY GANNONRights groups say each year in Pakistan, as many as 1,000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam, often after being abducted or tricked. Neha loved the hymns that filled her church with music. But she lost the chance to sing them last year when, at the age of 14, she was forcibly converted from Christianity to Islam and married to a 45-year-old man with children twice her age.She tells her story in a voice so low it occasionally fades away. She all but disappears as she wraps a blue scarf tightly around her face and head. Neha’s husband is in jail now facing charges of rape for the underage marriage, but she is in hiding, afraid after security guards confiscated a pistol from his brother in court. “He brought the gun to shoot me,” said Neha, whose last name The Associated Press is not using for her safety. Neha is one of nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan each year, largely to pave the way for marriages that are under the legal age and non-consensual. Human rights activists say the practice has accelerated during lockdowns against the coronavirus, when girls are out of school and more visible, bride traffickers are more active on the Internet and families are more in debt. The U.S. State Department this month declared Pakistan “a country of particular concern” for violations of religious freedoms — a designation the Pakistani government rejects. The declaration was based in part on an appraisal by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that underage girls in the minority Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities were “kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam… forcibly married and subjected to rape.” While most of the converted girls are impoverished Hindus from southern Sindh province, two new cases involving Christians, including Neha’s, have roiled the country in recent months. The girls generally are kidnapped by complicit acquaintances and relatives or men looking for brides. Sometimes they are taken by powerful landlords as payment for outstanding debts by their farmhand parents, and police often look the other way. Once converted, the girls are quickly married off, often to older men or to their abductors, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Forced conversions thrive unchecked on a money-making web that involves Islamic clerics who solemnize the marriages, magistrates who legalize the unions and corrupt local police who aid the culprits by refusing to investigate or sabotaging investigations, say child protection activists. One activist, Jibran Nasir, called the network a “mafia” that preys on non-Muslim girls because they are the most vulnerable and the easiest targets “for older men with pedophilia urges.” The goal is to secure virginal brides rather than to seek new converts to Islam. Minorities make up just 3.6 percent of Pakistan’s 220 million people and often are the target of discrimination. Those who report forced conversions, for example, can be targeted with charges of blasphemy. In the feudal Kashmore region of southern Sindh province, 13-year-old Sonia Kumari was kidnapped, and a day later police told her parents she had converted from Hinduism to Islam. Her mother pleaded for her return in a video widely viewed on the internet: “For the sake of God, the Quran, whatever you believe, please return my daughter, she was forcibly taken from our home.” But a Hindu activist, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of repercussions from powerful landlords, said she received a letter that the family was forced to write. The letter claimed the 13-year-old had willingly converted and wed a 36-year-old who was already married with two children. The parents have given up. Arzoo Raja was 13 when she disappeared from her home in central Karachi. The Christian girl’s parents reported her missing and pleaded with police to find her. Two days later, officers reported back that she had been converted to Islam and was married to their 40-year-old Muslim neighbor. In Sindh province, the age of consent for marriage is 18 years old. Arzoo’s marriage certificate said she was 19. The cleric who performed Arzoo’s marriage, Qasi Ahmed Mufti Jaan Raheemi, was later implicated in at least three other underage marriages. Despite facing an outstanding arrest warrant for solemnizing Arzoo’s marriage, he continued his practice in his ramshackle office above a wholesale rice market in downtown Karachi. When an Associated Press reporter arrived at his office, Raheemi fled down a side stair, according to a fellow cleric, Mullah Kaifat Ullah, one of a half-dozen clerics who also performs marriages in the complex. He said another cleric is already in jail for marrying children. While Ullah said he only marries girls 18 and above, he argued that “under Islamic law a girl’s wedding at the age of 14 or 15 is fine.” Arzoo’s mother, Rita Raja, said police ignored the family’s appeals until one day she was videotaped outside the court sobbing and pleading for her daughter to be returned. The video went viral, creating a social media storm in Pakistan and prompting the authorities to step in. “For 10 days, the parents were languishing between the police station and government authorities and different political parties,” Nasir, the activist, said. “They were not being given any time… until it went viral. That is the real unfortunate thing over here.” Authorities have stepped in and arrested Arzoo’s husband, but her mother said her daughter still refuses to come home. Raja said she is afraid of her husband’s family. The girl who loved hymns, Neha, said she was tricked into the marriage by a favorite aunt, who told Neha to accompany her to the hospital to see her sick son. Her aunt, Sandas Baloch, had converted to Islam years before and lived with her husband in the same apartment building as Neha’s family. “All Mama asked when we left was ’when will you be back?’” remembered Neha. Instead of going to the hospital, she was taken to the home of her aunt’s in-laws and told she would marry her aunt’s 45-year-old brother-in-law. “I told her I can’t, I am too young and I don’t want to. He is old,” Neha said. “She slapped me and locked me up in a room.” Neha told of being taken before two men, one who was to be her husband and the other who recorded her marriage. They said she was 19. She said she was too frightened to speak because her aunt threatened to harm her two-year-old brother if she refused to marry. She learned of her conversion only when she was told to sign the marriage certificate with her new name — Fatima. For a week she was locked in one room. Her new husband came to her on the first night. Tears stained her blue scarf as she remembered it: “I screamed and cried all night. I have images in my mind I can’t scratch out,” said Neha. “I hate him.” His elder daughter brought her food each day, and Neha begged for help to escape. Although the woman was frightened of her father, she relented a week after the marriage, bringing the underage bride a burqa — the all-covering garment worn by some Muslim women — and 500 rupees (about $3). Neha fled. But when she arrived home, Neha found her family had turned against her. “I went home and I cried to my Mama about my aunt, what she said and the threats. But she didn’t want me anymore,” said Neha. Her parents feared what her new husband might do to them, Neha said. Further, the prospects of marriage for a girl in conservative Pakistan who has been raped or married before are slim, and human rights activists say they often are seen as a burden. Neha’s family, including her aunt, all refused to talk to the AP. Her husband’s lawyer, Mohammad Saleem, insisted that she married and converted voluntarily. Neha found protection at a Christian church in Karachi, living on the compound with the pastor’s family, who say the girl still wakes screaming in the night. She hopes to go back to school one day but is still distraught. “At the beginning my nightmares were every night, but now it is just sometimes when I remember and inside I am shaking,” she said. “Before I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I don’t know what I will do. Even my mama doesn’t want me now.” https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/year-1000-pakistani-girls-forcibly-converted-islam-74930532
Hindu temple destroyed, set on fire by mob in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province
A mob of over hundred people led by local Muslim clerics reportedly destroyed and set on fire a Hindu temple in Karak district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
A video clip is going viral on social media, in which a violent mob is seen destroying the walls and roof of the temple. The act against Hindu minority community is widely condemned by human rights activists based in Pakistan and other parts of the world.
Mubashir Zaidi (@Xadeejournalist), a journalist based in Karachi tweeted, "#BREAKING...A mob led by local clerics destroyed Hindu temple in Karak district of KP. Hindus obtained permission from the administration to extend the temple but local clerics arranged a mob to destroy the temple. Police & administration remained silent spectators @ImranKhanPTI"
Shama Junejo (@ShamaJunejo), a London-based human rights activist tweeted, "This is new Pakistan! A Hindu Temple was destroyed today in Karak, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, governed by PTI Govt. Police or forces didn't stop the mob because they were chanting Allah-o-Akbar. A shameful day, Beyond condemnation indeed!"
Rabia Mehmood (@Rabail26), a researcher and journalist also condemned the attack on religious sites. She tweeted, "2020 in Pakistan: Hindu temple in Karak, KP brutally vandalized and demolished by a violent mob. While the Pakistan government is fixated on the rise of hindutva in India, the fascists at home continue attacking non Muslim Pakistanis with impunity".
Ihtesham Afghan (@IhteshamAfghan), a human rights activist tweeted, "A hindu temple was demolished by religious extremists in karak today. It is a very shameful moment for us because it reflects the way we treat minorities in our country. You can't run a federation unless and until the rights of minorities are protected. Strongly condemnable".
According to Daily Times, a rally was organised by Jamiat Ulema-e Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), a Sunni Deobandi political party in Pakistan nearby where speakers delivered fiery speeches after which the charged crowd stormed the temple, set it ablaze and razed it to the ground.
It quoted JUI-F KP Amir Maulana Ataur Rahman who said his party has nothing to do with the burning down of the temple as it happened after their party's rally.
https://in.news.yahoo.com/hindu-temple-destroyed-set-fire-131525708.html
Why Are Pakistani Leaders Revealing Their Secret Visits to Israel Now?
Pakistanis love to hate Israel, but their state has had relations with the country for decades.Over the last few weeks, the debate over recognizing Israel has picked up in Pakistan. The debate is not necessarily news, but this is perhaps the first time we’ve gotten a deeper look at the degree of contact between the two countries. The first question that comes to mind is why has the debate picked up now? Prime Minister Imran Khan and other senior government officials have denied on several occasions that Pakistan is planning on establishing ties with Israel. In one recent interview, Khan explicitly said that the United States and other countries have ramped up pressure on Pakistan following Israel’s deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. When questioned if Muslim countries were among those applying pressure on Pakistan, Khan said: “There are things we cannot say. We have good relations with them.” “I have no second thought about recognizing Israel unless there is a just settlement, which satisfies Palestine,” he added. It is possible that Pakistan may have come under pressure from countries like Saudi Arabia, its allies in the Gulf region, and the United States to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. “Riyadh has been arm-twisting Islamabad for months, because Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to ‘normalize normalization,’ before Saudi Arabia makes a formal move towards Israel,” an article published in Haartz claimed, citing Pakistani government sources.While Pakistan has been quick to reject any such claims publicly, new evidence suggests that it may have been Islamabad that is eager to normalize ties rather than the other way around. Put bluntly, Israel never had a problem with establishing a working relationship with Pakistan. It is Pakistan that has never been able to decide whether it wants to be friends with Israel or oppose it under an illusory policy of protecting the Muslim ummah’s global interests. The question of Israel presents Pakistan’s foreign policy with a dilemma: Islamabad is not clear if it wants Islam in its foreign policy or a foreign policy that is formulated more realistically to achieve national objectives in the international environment. What is unfortunate is that Pakistan has stabbed itself in the foot by assuming, for decades, that the Saudis and their Arab affiliates would love to hate Israel forever. Pakistan’s leaders should have understood after the partition that foreign governments, including majority Muslim countries, were not interested in its so-called efforts to unite the Muslim ummah or project itself as the leader of it. Pakistan’s so-called championship of the cause of the Muslim world annoyed many Muslim countries with much stronger historical and civilizational roots. The situation is best explained by a joke made by Egypt’s King Farooq: “Don’t you know that the Islam was born on 14 August 1947,” he said, pointing to Pakistan’s founding and its leaders’ efforts to centralize their role as defenders of the Muslim world’s interests. The Pakistani leadership, for decades, normalized hatred against the Jewish state through its Islamization efforts domestically. Meanwhile, the country’s leaders have covertly dealt with Israel and also sent and perhaps received delegations to explore options to normalize ties. Recently, a leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Ajmal Qadri, claimed that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had sent a delegation of Muslim scholars, including him, to Israel. “I found him [Nawaz] very passionate to develop a relationship with the Jewish state but domestic politics prevented him from moving ahead on the issue,” said Qadri in an interview. He further added that after concluding the Israel tour, his advice to Nawaz Sharif was that “Pakistan’s parliament should be consulted or national dialogue be held to take a decision in this regard” with a view that he himself didn’t oppose recognizing Israel. A few days ago, another prominent religious leader and member of the JUI-F Muhammad Khan Sherani said that he supports the normalization of ties with Israel. “This is an international issue, I support recognition of Israel,” Sherani said. “Educated Muslims need to understand that the Quran and history prove to us that the Land of Israel belongs only to the Jews. King David built the house of God in Jerusalem for the Israelis and not for the Palestinians.” At this point, it is unclear whether Pakistan’s current civil-military leadership has realized the bizarre nature of the country’s foreign policy choices and is making efforts to shape public opinion to prepare for the normalization of ties with Israel in the long run. What is clear is that part of these revelations on covert ties with and acceptance of Israel has come from people who are part of the opposition’s alliance against the government. On Friday, the head of the JUI-F, Fazlur Rehman, who also leads the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), expelled Sherani from the party for expressing support for Israel’s recognition. The revelation of Ajmal Qadri, who was also a leader of Rehman’s party, placed the responsibility of the visit to Israel on Nawaz Sharif, who has been storming the civil-military leadership with his speeches for more months now. It appears that Pakistan’s current leadership is looking to score two kills with the recent revelations on covert ties with Israel. First, revelations on secret visits to Israel during the Sharif administration harms Sharif and Rehman’s legitimacy in assailing the government for exploring options to normalize ties with Israel. Second, for the civil-military leadership, it achieves the very purpose of testing public opinion for such an eventuality in the long run. More exciting times are ahead for Pakistan and Israel’s secret bilateral relationship. https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/why-are-pakistani-leaders-revealing-their-secret-visits-to-israel-now/
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