WarSclerotic

WASHINGTON — The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and an Israeli minister pushed back Tuesday against Sen. Bernie Sanders for calling Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “racist.”

The pro-Israel lobby, in a tweet that did not mention the Democratic presidential hopeful by name, said it was counterproductive when American leaders used “name-calling” against their Israeli counterparts.

“The US-Israel alliance serves America’s interests,” AIPAC said Tuesday on Twitter.

“We benefit from the close bonds between the governments and peoples. Name-calling by political leaders against the democratically elected government of Israel is counterproductive to maintaining close ties and advancing peace.”

An AIPAC official confirmed that the tweet was aimed at Sanders, I-Vt., currently the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders defended his outspoken criticism of Israel in a CNN town hall on Monday broadcast from Manchester, New Hampshire, the first primary state.

“The goal must be to try to bring people together and not just support one country, which is now run by a right-wing — dare I say — racist government,” he said to applause.

Tzachi Hanegbi, a cabinet member and key Netanyahu ally, told Israel’s Channel 13 news that he condemned Sanders’ remarks, calling them “strange.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and Tzachi Hanegbi at a Likud party faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on February 22, 2016. (Miriam Alsterl/Flash90)

“The remarks deserve every condemnation. They don’t represent the general feeling of the Democratic Party even among the moderate liberal wing,” said Hanegbi, the minister for regional cooperation.

“Israel’s government is not a racist government. There isn’t a single racist minister. Sander’s should hold back on what he’s saying,” he added. “Being right wing is not forbidden. It’s strange that the Democratic party would allow one of its members to not respect the democratic choices of Israel.”

He said Jerusalem was making efforts to make sure it continued to enjoy bipartisan support in Washington, amid worries that ties between Israel’s government and Democrats were becoming increasingly strained.

Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks called Sanders’s comments “absurd and offensive.”

“We won’t let Israel become a punching bag for Democrats to score points with their radical base.”

Netanyahu, who earlier this month won re-election as prime minister, is in the midst of forming a new right-wing government expected to include the United Right-Wing Parties, which includes far-right and Kahanist politicians.

A number of Democratic candidates before the election blasted Netanyahu for brokering the URWP merger with Otzma Yehudit, a party whose extremist views were inspired by a rabbi, the late Meir Kahane, who was expelled from Israel’s parliament for “racist incitement.”

Otzma Yehudit party members Michael Ben Ari (C), Itamar Ben Gvir (R) and Baruch Marzel (L) speak during a press conference held in response to the Supreme Court decision to disqualify Michael Ben Ari’s candidacy for the upcoming Knesset elections, due to his racist incitement, in Jerusalem on March 17, 2019.(Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

AIPAC at the time of the vote-sharing deal also blasted Otzma as “racist,” although it did not explicitly fault Netanyahu for making the deal.

“AIPAC has a longstanding policy not to meet with members of this racist and reprehensible party,” it said in a February tweet, referring to the far-right party.

Sanders at the town hall also called himself “100 percent pro-Israel.”

“Israel has every right in the world to exist, and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks,” he said. “But the United States needs to deal not just with Israel, but with the Palestinian people as well.”

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The death toll from the Easter suicide bombings in Sri Lanka rose to 359 and more suspects have been arrested, police said Wednesday.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility and released images that purported to show the seven bombers who blew themselves up at three churches and three hotels Sunday in the worst violence this South Asian island nation has seen since its civil war ended a decade ago.

The government has said the attacks were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists in apparent retaliation for the New Zealand mosque massacre last month but has said the seven bombers were all Sri Lankan.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said investigators were still working to determine the extent of the bombers’ foreign links.

Security personnel stand guard in front of St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo on April 23, 2019, two days after a series of bomb blasts targeting churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka. (Jewel SAMAD / AFP)

Police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara said Wednesday morning that 18 suspects were arrested overnight, raising the total detained to 58. The prime minister had warned on Tuesday that several suspects armed with explosives were still at large.

The Islamic State group has lost all the territory it once held in Iraq and Syria and has made a series of unsupported claims of responsibility around the world.

Sri Lankan authorities have blamed a local extremist group, National Towheed Jamaar, whose leader, alternately known as Mohammed Zahran or Zahran Hashmi, became known to Muslim leaders three years ago for his incendiary speeches online.

The IS group’s Aamaq news agency released an image purported to show the leader of the attackers, standing amid seven others whose faces are covered. The group did not provide any other evidence for its claim, and the identities of those depicted in the image were not independently verified.

A photo published on the Islamic State terror groups propaganda outlet, the Amaq agency, on April 23, 2019, showing what the group says is eight bombers who carried out the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. (Amaq)

Meanwhile, in an address to Parliament, Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister of defense, said “weakness” within Sri Lanka’s security apparatus led to the failure to prevent the nine bombings.

“By now it has been established that the intelligence units were aware of this attack and a group of responsible people were informed about the impending attack,” Wijewardene said. “However, this information has been circulated among only a few officials.”

In a live address to the nation late Tuesday, Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena said he also was kept in the dark on the intelligence about the planned attacks and vowed to “take stern action” against the officials who failed to share the information. He also pledged “a complete restructuring” of the security forces.

Wijewardene said the government had evidence that the bombings were carried out “by an Islamic fundamentalist group” in retaliation for the March 15 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 50 people, although he did not disclose what the evidence was.

Sri Lankan security personnel inspect the debris of a car after it explodes when police tried to defuse a bomb near St. Anthony’s Shrine as priests look on in Colombo on April 22, 2019, a day after the series of bomb blasts targeting churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka. (Jewel SAMAD / AFP)

The office of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a statement responding to the Christchurch claim that described Sri Lanka’s investigation as “in its early stages.”

“New Zealand has not yet seen any intelligence upon which such an assessment might be based,” it said. An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was arrested in the Christchurch shootings.

Word from international intelligence agencies that National Towheed Jamaar was planning attacks apparently didn’t reach the prime minister’s office until after the massacre, exposing continuing turmoil in Sri Lanka’s government.

A block on most social media since the attacks has left a vacuum of information, fueling confusion and giving little reassurance the danger had passed.

Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremesinghe gestures as he answers questions from a journalist during a press conference in Colombo on April 23, 2019. (Mohd RASFAN / AFP)

Wickremesinghe said he feared the massacre could unleash instability and he vowed to “vest all necessary powers with the defense forces” to act against those responsible.

The history of Buddhist-majority Sri Lanka, a country of 21 million including large Hindu, Muslim and Christian minorities, is rife with ethnic and sectarian conflict.

In the nation’s 26-year civil war, the Tamil Tigers, a powerful rebel army known for using suicide bombers, had little history of targeting Christians and was crushed by the government in 2009. Anti-Muslim bigotry fed by Buddhist nationalists has swept the country recently.

In March 2018, Buddhist mobs ransacked businesses and set houses on fire in Muslim neighborhoods around Kandy, a city in central Sri Lanka that is popular with tourists.

After the mob attacks, Sri Lanka’s government also blocked some social media sites, hoping to slow the spread of false information or threats that could incite more violence.

Sri Lanka has no history of Islamic militancy. Its small Christian community has seen only scattered incidents of harassment.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AFP) — The Islamic State group on Tuesday said it was behind a devastating string of suicide attacks against churches and hotels in Sri Lanka that killed at least 321 people on Easter Sunday.

The claim emerged more than 48 hours after the near-simultaneous blasts tore through three high-end hotels popular with foreigners and three churches packed with Christians marking Easter.

It came after Sri Lanka’s government said initial investigations suggested the attack had been carried out as “retaliation” for shootings at two mosques in New Zealand last month that killed 50 people.

The Sri Lankan government had already pointed the figure at a little-known local Islamic extremist group called National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ), but said it was investigating whether they had international support.

“Those that carried out the attack that targeted members of the US-led coalition and Christians in Sri Lanka the day before yesterday are Islamic State group fighters,” a statement released by the group’s propaganda agency Amaq said.

It presented no immediate evidence for the claim, or further details on the attackers.

But police sources in Sri Lanka told AFP that the attackers who targeted two of the hotels hit Sunday were Muslim brothers, sons of a wealthy Colombo spice trader.

Their names were not immediately revealed, but they were said to be in their twenties.

Guests were queuing for breakfast at the Shangri-La and Cinnamon Spice hotels when the two men detonated their bombs.

A fourth attack against a hotel on Sunday failed, sources also told AFP, though it was not immediately clear if the bomber’s explosives had failed or he had chosen not to detonate them.

He later blew himself up when police tracked him to a lodging in the capital.

Police have detained at least 40 people as they investigate the worst act of violence in Sri Lanka since a civil war ended a decade ago.

‘Hard to bear’

On Tuesday, grieving Sri Lankans began to bury their dead and the country observed a day of national mourning.

Three minutes of silence were marked nationwide from 8:30 a.m. (0300 GMT), the time the first suicide bomber struck on Sunday, unleashing carnage.

Flags were lowered to half mast on government buildings, and liquor shops were ordered closed for the day.

Hours earlier, the government imposed a state of emergency giving police and the military special powers including the ability to arrest suspects without a court order.

More than a thousand people gathered Tuesday at St Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, north of the capital, which was among those devastated in the blasts, to pay tribute to the dead.

An elderly man wept uncontrollably by the coffin bearing the body of his wife, while relatives of other victims stood aghast and silent.

Coffins were carried into the church grounds one by one for services, and then to a newly established cemetery on church land.

“It’s beyond words,” said Father Suranga Warnakulasuriya, who had come from another parish to help conduct funerals. “It’s very hard to bear. For me it is very difficult, so imagine how hard it is for the loved ones.”

The attacks were the worst ever against the country’s small Christian minority, who make up just seven percent of the 21 million population.

45 children killed

Officials are investigating why more precautions were not taken after an April 11 warning from Sri Lanka’s police that a “foreign intelligence agency” had reported the NTJ planned suicide attacks on churches.

Government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said the warning was not passed on to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe or other top ministers.

More details have begun to emerge about some of the foreigners killed in the blasts.

The United States reported at least four Americans killed — including a child — and the Netherlands raised their toll to three.

A Danish billionaire lost three of his children in the attacks, a spokesman for his company said.

Eight Britons, ten Indians and nationals from Turkey, Australia, France, Japan and Portugal, were also killed, according to Sri Lankan officials and foreign governments.

The United Nations said at least 45 children, Sri Lankans and foreigners, were among those killed.

The suicide bombers hit three Colombo luxury hotels popular with foreign tourists — the Cinnamon Grand, the Shangri-La and the Kingsbury — and three churches: two in the Colombo region and one in the eastern city of Batticaloa.

Two additional blasts were triggered as security forces carried out raids searching for suspects.

Interpol said it was deploying investigators and specialists to Sri Lanka, and the US State Department warned of possible further attacks in a travel advisory.

Ethnic and religious violence has plagued Sri Lanka for decades, with a 37-year conflict with Tamil rebels followed by an upswing in recent years of clashes between the Buddhist majority and Muslims.

The attacks have sparked local and international outrage, and have been condemned by Sri Lankan Muslim groups.