Oil chiefs to testify at congressional hearing

Top executives at ExxonMobil and other oil giants are set to testify at a landmark House hearing today (Thursday) as congressional Democrats investigate what they describe as a decades-long, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.

Top officials at four major oil companies are testifying before the House Oversight Committee, along with leaders of the industry’s top lobbying group and the US Chamber of Commerce. Company officials were expected to renew their commitment to fighting climate change.

The much-anticipated hearing comes after months of public efforts by Democrats to obtain documents and other information on the oil industry’s role in stopping climate action over multiple decades. The appearance of the four oil executives — from ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America and Shell — has drawn comparisons to a high-profile hearing in the 1990s with tobacco executives who famously testified that they didn’t believe nicotine was addictive.

 “The fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change since at least 1977. Yet for decades, the industry spread denial and doubt about the harm of its products — undermining the science and preventing meaningful action on climate change even as the global climate crisis became increasingly dire, ″ said Carolyn Maloney and Ro Khanna.

Maloney chairs the Oversight panel, while Khanna leads a subcommittee on the environment.

More recently, Exxon, Chevron and other companies have taken public stances in support of climate actions while privately working to block reforms, Maloney and Khanna charged. Oil companies frequently boast about their efforts to produce clean energy in advertisements and social media posts accompanied by sleek videos or pictures of wind turbines.

The industry “spends billions to promote climate disinformation through branding and lobbying″ that is increasingly outsourced to trade groups, “obscuring their own roles in disinformation efforts,” the lawmakers said.

Democrats have focused particular ire on Exxon, after a senior lobbyist for the company was caught in a secret video bragging that Exxon had fought climate science through “shadow groups” and had targeted influential senators in an effort to weaken President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate and social policy bill currently moving through Congress.

Keith McCoy, a former Washington-based lobbyist for Exxon, dismissed the company’s public expressions of support for a proposed carbon tax on fossil fuel emissions as a “talking point.”

McCoy’s comments were made public in June by the environmental group Greenpeace UK, which secretly recorded him and another lobbyist in Zoom interviews. McCoy no longer works for the company, an Exxon spokesperson said last month.

Darren Woods, Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, has condemned McCoy’s statements and said the company stands by its commitment to work on finding solutions to climate change.

Woods is among the chief executives set to testify Thursday, along with BP America CEO David Lawler, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth and Shell President Gretchen Watkins.

Casey Norton, an ExxonMobil spokesperson, said the company has cooperated with the Oversight panel, adding: “ExxonMobil has long acknowledged that climate change is real and poses serious risks.″

In addition to substantial investments in “next-generation technologies,” the company also advocates for responsible climate-related policies, Norton said.

“Our public statements about climate change are, and have been, truthful, fact-based, transparent and consistent with the views of the broader, mainstream scientific community at the time, ″ he said.

Maloney and Khanna compared tactics used by the oil industry to those long deployed by the tobacco industry to resist regulation “while selling products that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.″

The oil industry’s “strategies of obfuscation and distraction span decades and still continue today,″ Khanna and Maloney said in calling the hearing last month. The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies reportedly spent at least US$ one billion from 2015 to 2018 “to promote climate disinformation through ‘branding’ and lobbying,” the lawmakers said.

Bethany Aronhalt, a spokeswoman for API, said the group’s president, Mike Sommers, welcomes the opportunity to testify and “advance our priorities of pricing carbon, regulating methane and reliably producing American energy.”

Cyber attack on Israeli Defense Ministry

Reportedly, a hacker group called Moses Staff claimed that it has successfully conducted a cyber attack on the Israeli Defense Ministry, releasing files and photos obtained from the ministry's servers.

Moses Staff's website claims that the group has hacked over 165 servers and 254 websites and compiled over 11 terabytes of data, including Israel Post, the Defense Ministry, files related to Defense Minister Benny Gantz, the Electron Csillag Company and Epsilor Company.

"We've kept an eye on you for many years, at every moment and on each step," wrote the group in the announcement of the attack on their Telegram channel. "All your decisions and statements have been under our surveillance. Eventually, we will strike you while you never would have imagined."

Moses Staff claimed in the announcement to have access to confidential documents, including reports, operational maps, information about soldiers and units, and letters and correspondence. "We are going to publish this information to aware [sic] all the world about the Israeli authorities’ crimes," warned the group.

The files leaked included photos of Gantz and IDF soldiers and a 2010 letter from Gantz to the Deputy Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Intelligence in the Jordian Armed Forces. The leaked files also included Excel files allegedly containing the names, ID numbers, emails, addresses, phone numbers and even socioeconomic status of soldiers, mechina pre-military students and individuals connected to the Defense Ministry.

The group stated on its website that it is targeting the same people who "didn't tolerate" the legitimacy of Moses, seemingly the reason for the name Moses Staff.

The group's description states that it will not forget "the soldiers whose blood is shed due to wrong policies and fruitless wars, the mothers mourning for their children, and all the cruelty and injustice were [were] done to the people of this nation." The group did not clarify in its description which soldiers it was referring to.

It is as of yet unclear if the group is acting independently or is backed by a state.

Moses Staff leaked identifying information, addresses and information about packages from an attack it says it conducted on the Israel Post. The group also leaked pictures of identity cards from a number of companies it claims it attacked.

The group's website also has a contact form for those interested in joining the group.

The National Cyber Directorate stated in response to the leaks that it has repeatedly warned that hackers are exploiting vulnerability on the Exchange email service in order to attack organizations.

The Directorate once again calls on organizations to implement in their systems the latest critical updates that Microsoft has released for this vulnerability – a simple and free update that can reduce the chance of this attack.

"Over the past few years we have heard a great deal about exposure of soldiers' details and military information at various levels of classification as a result of information security failures on various websites and applications," said cyber security consultant Einat Meyron, adding that while most of the exposures were seemingly innocent, this incident shows that there are anonymous hacker groups systematically collecting such information.

Meyron stressed that attackers aiming to impact the image of Israel, a country that sees itself as a defense and cyber security power, are patient and don't reveal all their cards at once. The cyber security consultant urged companies to take information security seriously, adding that many companies can often protect themselves with tools they already have as long as they have a correct understanding of the risks and their consequences.

The attack is the latest in a long series of cyber attacks on Israel in recent years. Earlier this month, the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera was targeted by a ransomware attack that affected its computer systems.

Cybereason also revealed earlier this month that MalKamak, an Iranian state-supported hacker group, was running a highly targeted cyber-espionage operation against global aerospace and telecommunications companies, stealing sensitive information from targets around Israel and the Middle East, as well as in the United States, Russia and Europe. The threat posed by MalKamak is still active.

Last month, a hacker group called Deus leaked data it claims it obtained in a cyber attack on the Israeli call center service company Voicenter from the company’s customers, including 10bis, CMTrading, Mobileye, eToro, Gett and My Heritage. The data leaked so far include security camera and webcam footage, ID cards, photos, WhatsApp messages and emails, as well as recordings of phone calls.

A series of cyber attacks has plagued Israeli businesses and institutions in the past two years, including Israel Aerospace Industries, the Shirbit insurance company and the Amital software company.

The National Cyber Directorate reported that it handled more than 11,000 inquiries on its 119 hotline in 2020, some 30% more than it handled in 2019. The directorate made about 5,000 requests to entities to handle vulnerabilities exposing them to attacks and was in contact with about 1,400 entities concerning attempted or successful attacks.

First public Israeli flight lands in Saudi Arabia

According to The Jerusalem Post an Israeli private jet landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday morning, marking the first time a public flight from Israel has ever landed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The news comes just a day after the first flight from Saudi Arabia landed in Israel, as an Emirati 737 Royal Jet landed in Ben-Gurion airport Monday evening.

This is the latest among improving regional ties for Israel, agreements to normalize ties with four nations — UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — have been realized since the 2020 Abraham Accords.

While there remain no commercial flights between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as the two states share no official relations, the flights are a considerable advancement in Saudi-Israeli relations, as both nations finally opened their airspaces to each other just last year.

Surrounded by nations that have clashed with Israel in the past, free air travel is not something that is taken for granted in Israel.

Along the 2020 normalization of ties with Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco and the UAE was the opening of airspaces to Israeli flights, along with announcements of direct flights to Dubai, Morocco, and Bahrain.

Prior to the opening of Saudi airspace, El Al’s planes had to follow a long, winding route to Mumbai in order to avoid Saudi airspace, adding roughly two hours to the trip from Tel Aviv and putting the Israeli carrier at a huge disadvantage to competitors, who are allowed to fly direct.

Similar examples make flights to some locales out of Ben-Gurion difficult to navigate and potentially dangerous.

Airspace has always been a point of contention amongst Israel and its adversaries. The following countries continue to ban both direct flights and overflying traffic to/from Israel: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

Israel allows entry of Lebanese workers for olive harvest

Israeli army announced on Tuesday that as a gesture of goodwill, it had allowed Lebanese agricultural workers to enter the country in order to harvest olive trees. The workers from Lebanese border towns have been allowed to enter Israeli territory under supervision.

"In light of the economic situation in Lebanon, and as a gesture of goodwill to the Lebanese people, the IDF opened the border to agricultural workers from Al Jabal, Itaron and Balida."

"The IDF allowed the workers to cross the Blue Line, to a certain extent, allowing them to harvest olive trees in Israeli territory. This gesture was reported to the Lebanese side by UNIFIL."

The move came just two days after IDF soldiers and Israel Police foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons and drugs across Israel’s border with Lebanon.

The economic crisis leaves the IDF concerned that there may be an increase of drug smuggling and infiltration of migrant workers and refugees along the northern border.

Lebanon and Israel are also in dispute over the delineation of their territorial waters. Negotiations between the old foes could lead to Lebanon being able to unlock valuable gas reserves amid its financial crisis.

Some two million tons of olives harvested annually worldwide, most of which is used for making olive oil. In commercial terms, olives are one of the most important fruits grown in Israel, with olive plantations in the mountains of the Galilee, on the coastal plain, in the mountains of Samaria and Ephraim.

 

Amateurish act of Israeli Defense Minister

US State Department spokesman Ned Price gave credence to American criticism of Israel’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terror organizations, saying Washington did not get a heads-up about the move.

According to a report, United States was not alone. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who signed the order, did not give Prime Minister Naftali Bennett or Foreign Minister Yair Lapid any advance warning either.

If the State Department was upset at being blindsided (defense officials were later cited as saying the US was in fact informed), diplomats at Foggy Bottom can only imagine how Bennett and Lapid must feel.

That Gantz took this decision without informing Bennett or Lapid – two men who now have to deal with diplomatic fallout from the move – bespeaks of a government not working as it should.

That is a serious problem, considering it’s the government’s calling card, “Even though we are ideologically diverse, the component parts work well together for the benefit of the country.”

Gantz’s failure to let others in on his NGO decision came just three weeks after Bennett dropped a bombshell announcement during his speech to the opening of the Knesset’s winter session that the Mossad recently carried out a daring operation to recover information about missing Airman Ron Arad.

Though, Bennett briefed Lapid beforehand on what he would say, he only informed Gantz moments before he began his speech, giving the defense minister no time to object. Gantz was miffed, as evident in the briefings defense officials gave reporters, saying that the mission was a failure.

Could it be that Gantz did not brief Bennett or Lapid in advance of the NGO announcement as a tit-for-tat? One shudders at the very thought.

But something is obviously amiss. This is not the way to run a government, or to instill confidence in a politically shell-shocked nation. That the prime minister and the foreign minister did not know of this move in advance is evidence of amateurism seeping into critical government decisions.

What message does it send that the prime minister does not know what the defense minister is up to, and vice versa?

This came up at a meeting of coalition heads before Sunday’s cabinet meeting, where Meretz head Nitzan Horowitz and Labor leader Meirav Michaeli reportedly demanded of Bennett that he stop being surprised by key decisions begin made by his ministers.

At the cabinet meeting itself, Bennett – in an apparent effort to lighten the mood – told how in the middle of his meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Construction and Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin – who was acting as a translator between the leaders, turning Bennett’s Hebrew into Russian – dozed off, eliciting a wake-up elbow from the prime minister.

The Russian president, Bennett said, laughed and cracked a joke, as did – it is safe to assume – those around the cabinet table hearing the story for the first time.

But this is not very amusing. The Russian president is probably one of the canniest, shrewdest and cunningest leaders in the world, who thinks numerous steps ahead on the chessboard. Israelis officials meeting him on life-and-death issues like Syria and Iran need to be keenly alert, not drowsy.

To get tired is human, but to fall asleep while translating a key diplomatic meeting – one that could have serious ramifications for Israel’s security – is inexcusable. If Elkin was sleep-deprived going in and didn’t feel he could serve as a translator, someone else should have been sent to do the job.

This scene makes Israel look not like a world power but a shtetl, where tired senior officials fall asleep after a long journey to appeal to the czar.

The lack of coordination between Gantz, Bennett and Lapid also smacks of amateurism, something one might expect, say, when residents of an apartment building – some of whom are miffed and not talking to their neighbors – do not inform one another of key decisions affecting the whole building.

None of this makes the government look serious – and not the image it wants to project domestically or overseas.

Ayatollah Khamenei urges reversal of progress in Arab Israeli relations

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that the Arab nations who have improved ties with Israel have “sinned” and must reverse course. Four nations, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, agreed to normalize ties in 2020 under the “Abraham Accords” .

This led to Israel’s first treaties with Arab nations since reaching an agreement with Jordan in 1994. Jordan and Egypt were the only Arab nations to have existing diplomatic ties with Israel before the 2020 agreements.

“Some governments have unfortunately made big errors and have sinned in normalizing their relations with the usurping and oppressive Zionist regime,” Khamenei said. “It is an act against Islamic unity; they must return from this path and make up for this big mistake.”

Iran has positioned itself as a strong defender of the Palestinian cause since Ayatollah Khameini took power in the midst of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. “If the unity of Muslims is achieved, the Palestinian question would definitely be resolved in the best fashion,” Khamenei said.

Tensions between Iran and Israel continue to escalate as the former builds out its nuclear program, which Israel accuses of being a nuclear weapons program designed to inflict as much harm as possible. Iran has repeatedly accused Israel of sabotaging and targeting its nuclear facilities.

In response to last Monday’s reports that NIS 5 billion had been approved to prepare the military for a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani pledged to inflict “many billions of dollars” worth of damage if Israel strikes Tehran’s nuclear program.

Need to condemn BJP leader urging India to invade Bangladesh

Reportedly, Subramanian Swamy, member of ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) has urged India to invade Bangladesh and take over it if the torture over Hindus is not stopped. He made this statement while speaking to reporters at Agartala, the capital city of the northeast Indian state of Tripura on Sunday.

The outspoken BJP leader said, India will continue to support Bangladesh, but its Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina should be warned to stop those mad people from demolishing Hindu temples, converting Hindu temples into mosques and converting Hindus to Muslims.

He also urged, if Bangladesh authorities do not stop torturing Hindus, I would recommend that Indian government to invade Bangladesh.

Swamy’s frequent rhetorical outbursts on Bangladesh are often far beyond diplomatic codes. In October, 2012 Swamy first recommended invading Bangladesh. He said, “Bangladesh was created for Muslims on the premise that they cannot live with Hindus. But since Muslims from Bangladesh have entered into India and living with Hindus then the reason for the existence of a separate Muslim country doesn’t exist.”

He demanded, Bangladesh should return land in proportion to the Muslims that have immigrated into India or, India should invade Bangladesh to occupy the land.

In April 2014 he had suggested Bangladesh should compensate India with land for what he said was “the influx of its citizens” to the neighbouring country. “If Bangladesh does not agree to take back its people, then the country should compensate by giving land to India,” Swamy said.

It is necessary to remind all the civilized countries that the violence against Muslims in India, which has now become pan Indian, may also be seen with the violence and vendetta against Christians. Ironically both the Indian and western media tend to ignore the violence against Christian.

Human rights groups which monitor atrocities against Christians in India have been recording regularly the cases of violence against Christians by Hindutva groups from all states, but these have largely been unnoticed in the media or even in the human right circles.

Recent attacks on churches especially in Uttar Pradesh which is one of the most populated states of India must not be ignored.

Attacks and hate speech against Christians are common in other parts of India, particularly Chhattisgarh and Karnataka.

Let me ask Swamy a question, should the countries having faith in Christianity also attack and occupy India because of the state sponsored terrorism in India against Christians?