Roman Liberov, 41, a documentary filmmaker, now living in Israel. 'I still remain within Russian culture,' he says.

 

"THE PHILOSOPHERS' PLANE"

* The term "philosophers' plane" is being heard frequently these days, a riff on the historical "philosophers' ship," referring to the expulsion, at Vladimir Lenin's directive, of intellectuals, physicians and writers from Soviet Russia in 1922. A laconic remark attributed to Leon Trotsky explains the approach: "We exiled these people because there was no cause to execute them, and no possibility of tolerating them." Those who have left Russia since February 24 feel strongly that they can no longer accept the government's actions quietly, while the government, for its part, will no longer put up with them. Thousands of them have gone to Israel.

 

"LEAVING IS QUITE TRAUMATIC FOR ME, AND IT NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF IT HADN'T BEEN URGENTLY NECESSARY"

'Directors, Designers, Advisers, They're All Here': The Russian Elites Fleeing the War to Israel
By Liza Rozovsky
Haaretz
April 15, 2022

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.TIMELINE-directors-designers-advisers-all-here-the-russian-elites-fleeing-to-israel-1.10742798

We're in a caf? in central Tel Aviv, amid the noontime hustle and bustle of a day that's getting warmer by the minute. Stanislav Belkovsky, 51, an in-demand TV and radio host and political analyst in Russia, and formerly a highly influential strategic adviser, is trying to order a caff? Americano with a glass of water on the side in a perfect British accent. But perfection can sometimes be a drawback. The accent baffles the waitress, and I have to translate his request into Hebrew.

"I never intended to leave Russia," Belkovsky asserts. "I am a Jew through my mother and a Pole through my father, which grants me the right to Polish citizenship, and my skills are convertible currency, but in Russia I created a comfortable lifestyle. Leaving is quite traumatic for me, and it never would have happened if it hadn't been urgently necessary."

About 70,000 tech professionals have fled Russia since the Ukraine invasion, alongside an exodus of figures like Belkovsky from the cultural elite: intellectuals, media persons, artists and web influencers. Many of them now find themselves in Israel. According to the Population and Immigration Authority, by the first week of April, nearly 12,600 Russian citizens had entered Israel since the start of the war. Some of them are here as tourists, others with the intention of forging a future here (one official estimated for Haaretz that more than 90 percent of them are eligible for citizenship under the Law of Return), but the majority have no idea where they will be a few months from now.

The term "philosophers' plane" is being heard frequently these days, a riff on the historical "philosophers' ship," referring to the expulsion, at Vladimir Lenin's directive, of intellectuals, physicians and writers from Soviet Russia in 1922. A laconic remark attributed to Leon Trotsky explains the approach: "We exiled these people because there was no cause to execute them, and no possibility of tolerating them." Those who have left Russia since February 24 feel strongly that they can no longer accept the government's actions quietly, while the government, for its part, will no longer put up with them. I met with a few of the leading figures among the exiles.

 

ROMAN LIBEROV, 41, DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER

(Photo at the top of this page.)

For more than a decade, Roman Liberov has been engaged in a project of making historical films about great Russian writers and poets, with the participation of Russia's finest actors. An album of music he produced and created, released in January 2021, pays homage to the eminent Russian Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam, whose texts have been adapted into songs and clips performed by some of Russia's most popular and highly regarded singers and bands in multiple styles, ranging from punk to pop and romance, from classic rock to electronic music and rap.

A week after the album's release, Liberov arrived in Israel, having arrived at the realization that he could not go on living in Russia. "My life, my heart and my head were still in Moscow," he tells me in a spacious and astonishingly quiet bar in Tel Aviv Port, which he suggested as a meeting place. "I flew [to Russia] every month, and I was supposed to travel there now, too, but on February 24, my life changed drastically, as it did for everyone, and now Moscow simply no longer exists in my thoughts. Do you understand?"

Projects he was involved in were aborted, Liberov relates. One of them consisted of readings by poets at Moscow's National Theater, with the aim of creating a cinematic archive of contemporary Russian poetry. Another project that he doesn't see himself being able to continue is a series of films on literary subjects, the last of which was to have been devoted to the absurdist poet Daniil Kharms, who died in 1942. "It's the eighth part of the great whole, which is meant to tell the story of a member of the Russian intelligentsia in an unfree country. Not being able to continue the work on him is now what is most painful to me, but I just have to accept it in the meantime."

Did he see his future in Israel when he immigrated officially last year? "More than anything, I would like to be back in Moscow without experiencing conflicts," he replies. "Because from year to year it became more and more impossible to live there, I left Moscow and came to Tel Aviv, but I didn't think the need would arise to plunge into the reality of Israel. I remained, and still remain in my life -- if it doesn't sound rife with pathos -- within Russian culture and within my Russian thoughts. But after February 24, I took a Hebrew teacher and now I'm learning Hebrew every day -- something I hadn't planned on doing, because I imagined that I would be able to continue to get along in English. That has now become impossible. After February 24, I got in touch with many cultural initiatives here, in Russian and in Hebrew. I have thought up dozens of projects that can be executed here. I came to understand that it makes no difference what I fantasize -- from here on, Tel Aviv is my principal city."

Liberov has now been in Israel for more than three consecutive months -- a record for him, he says. One reason for this is very practical: Like many others, he can't withdraw funds from his Russian accounts. "All that is left to us is to somehow organize a chain of relatives who will get the money to us," he notes, adding that Israeli banks, like banks everywhere, tend to look askance at large cash deposits, even if the amounts involved are far more modest than they could have been before the war.

"Imagine that you have an investment plan in rubles that shrank by a third, if not by half, when the stock market fell, and now you have to convert the investment into dollars -- and it shrinks by another half."

Besides his personal finances, the money was also designated to fund his projects, some of which collapsed in any case. The only way he managed to salvage any of his money at all was that he launched a rescue operation at 6 A.M. on the day of the invasion. "My mental makeup is very healthy," he says. "There is no point fighting the situation, no point getting upset. All you can do is accept it and work actively for a new life. Even our chat group -- of friends who have arrived here, like us -- is called 'It's a new life.'

"It's unbelievable who's here now, you can't imagine" Liberov continues avidly. "I went into a restaurant in Tel Aviv and I had the feeling I was in Mansurovsky Lane, at House 12 [a Moscow restaurant where Russian cultural figures hang out] at the peak hour on Friday. They were the exact same faces. All of them! Directors, theater designers, activists, advisers. Simply unbelievable. Like in Moscow, only not in Moscow. Who knows when I will see my city and the street I live on again?"

 

Kira Dolinina: 'I realized there is no longer a home'

 

KIRA DOLININA, 52, ART LECTURER

Kira Dolinina teaches at the European University, in St. Petersburg, and is a veteran art critic and commentator for the daily newspaper Kommersant. At the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, Kommersant was a role model and object of yearning for every journalist who wrote in Russian. The paper, whose target audience is the successful class, was known for its well-honed, sarcastic style, an unlimited approach to sources, and absolute freedom of form, content and range of subjects.

Kommersant began as a private initiative of the editor and publisher Vladimir Yakovlev (himself now an Israeli resident). It was sold over the years several times to different oligarchs (among them the late Boris Berezovsky, who in the 1990s had a hand in everything). Finally, in 2008, it came into the possession of the billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who is considered very close to President Vladimir Putin and has been sanctioned in the United States, Britain and Europe. In contrast to Berevosky, who consciously distanced himself from editorial matters, Dolinina notes, Usmanov did not hesitate to intervene in content, and the newspaper gradually lost its independence and its brilliant chutzpah.

Dolinina arrived in Israel with her husband and their son on February 26, two days after the start of the war. The immediate reason was not the invasion itself, but a sudden powerful headache that struck their 14-year-old son, Gabriel. He suffered from brain cancer in infancy, and Israel was the only country in which his parents found an immediate and appropriate medical response. At first they paid for the surgery and treatments via crowdfunding, and afterward, when it became apparent that Gabriel would require treatment, supervision and medical intervention for many years to come, they became naturalized citizens. In fact, the family has been flying back and forth between St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv for almost 14 years -- Dolinina is endlessly grateful to Israel for the "security umbrella" it has given them. But this, she says, is the first time she has understood that "there is no more home."

Since the start of the war and her arrival in Israel, Dolinina has written only two columns for Kommersant. "It was very difficult for me to write those two articles," she notes, "even though no one told me what it was forbidden to write, other than the lawmakers" -- referring to the new censorship laws prohibiting vilification of the armed forces. "But even though I write about culture, those laws are enough to make you feel nauseous from the start to the finish of writing the article. The whole time you feel that you should be writing better, more trenchantly and more clearly, no matter what the subject. It's intolerable.

"Now I'm on vacation," she continues, "and I don't know what will happen when it ends -- whether I'll be able to continue or will have to resign. For example, I can't write about the new exhibition that opened at the State Historical Museum in Red Square, because much of it is devoted to old snuffboxes." (In Russian culture, a snuffbox has become a symbol of a palace coup, because, according to one version, Czar Paul I was assassinated in 1801 by being struck in the head with a snuffbox.)

The start of Dolinina's career coincided with the early years following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and she affiliates herself with what she refers to as "1990s people." "There was a situation then in which intellectuals could invent themselves and invent work for themselves," she recalls. "If I like modern art, I'll become a gallerist. There are no galleries? So I'll be the first to open one. And so it was. If I am fond of ancient art, but I'm getting paid pennies in the museum, I'll become an expert who works with antiquities dealers. If I'm an architect but there is no work, because there wasn't a lot of construction at the beginning of the 1990s, I will become an architecture critic, a profession that was nonexistent until then."

The 1990s people, Dolinina says, and others too, now have a mission: to pass the baton of freedom to the generation now growing up in Russia -- the free air they were able to breathe fully into their lungs, if only for a single decade. But after all, that generation also bears responsibility for the fact that that air is being sucked out of Russia fast. "That's also something I think about all the time: finding the point where we went wrong -- everyone apparently has to do that for themselves."

 

STANISLAV BELKOVSKY, 51, POLITICAL ANALYST

Stanislav Belkovsky, 51, political analyst: 'I supported Putin in the past, and I don't regret it'

In contrast to many in the intelligentsia, a group who live (or did until recently) in Russia's big cities, Stanislav Belkovsky, a strategic analyst and adviser, does not define himself as a liberal. "In the battle between Putin and [the now-exiled businessman Mikhail] Khodorovsky, I supported Putin without a doubt, and I'm not sorry about it. The very act of positing big capital in opposition to government, and the identification of big capital with liberal-humanistic values seemed to me to be mistaken. There is no connection between Russian capital and those values," Belkovsky says.

Today, that might sound like a routine critique of the oligarchs' seizure of Russia's resources and many levers of power in the country during the 1990s. Voiced by Belkovsky, it bears greater weight and deeper significance. He was responsible for a report titled "The State and the Oligarchy," published in May 2003. The report, which categorized the political system in Russia as an oligarchy, maintained that Khodorovsky, who headed the giant petroleum concern Yukos, was planning to change the official system of government. Circles close to Khodorovsky, it was claimed, were planning to transform Russia into a presidential-parliamentary republic with broad powers to accrue to the parliament and the presidency, to be assumed by Khodorovsky himself. He was arrested about two months after the report appeared.

Do you think your report had an influence on the persecution of Khodorovsky?

Belkovsky: "In the final analysis, no. It influenced the media situation in regard to the persecution, but the persecution itself was a matter that had already been decided on. It was the result of a frontal clash between Putin and Khodorovsky, which I couldn't influence. I didn't consider Khodorovsky, 2003 model, an angel of light and the embodiment of good. I thought, and I still think, that the state should be separate from capital; but Putin's state was never separated from capital, at least until the tragic events of February 24."

You were an adviser to Boris Berezovsky, who until the early 2000s was considered one of the most influential oligarchs in Russia, was close to President Boris Yeltsin and controlled the powerful federal TV Channel One. How is that consistent with your critique of big capital?

"I started to work with Berezovsky at the end of the 1990s. Some of the things I did I regret, others I don't. I wouldn't do them today. But anyway, I have a warm spot for the late Berezovsky, who really was a monster, but toward me was a good monster. A monster who wanted to benefit me and helped me realize my personal potential. In that sense, he undoubtedly played a positive role in my life. I thank him personally, but I deplore many of the things I did for him."

Belkovsky says he is a great advocate of a "second start," referring to big plans for his new life outside Putin's Russia. One of his ideas is to establish an international social network that would connect Russian-speaking migrants and help them to fulfill themselves and earn a living in their new geographic location. In the meantime, though, he needs to earn a living himself -- he too is cut off from his bank in Russia. On April 23, he will hold a "performance-lecture" in Russian in Beit Hahayal in Tel Aviv, titled "Nuclear Strike." Despite the apocalyptic frame, he intends to present an optimistic viewpoint, at least for the long term.

Belkovsky is a believing Christian, and feels compelled to acknowledge this, though he fears it will prevent his receiving Israeli citizenship. "My point of view is religious, so I think the decision to eradicate the world hasn't been made [on high]. There will not be a large-scale nuclear war with the use of strategic weapons. What we are seeing today is the last twitch of the Enlightenment era, ahead of the advent of a new era, which I call the 'period of the return.' The central thesis of this period will involve eliminating the boundary that the period of the Enlightenment delineated between religion and scientific knowledge."

The divide between religion and a progressive philosophical approach that advocates, among other tenets, equality between people and tolerance, will also be eliminated in the wonderful new period on the brink of which we are poised, Belkovsky believes. But until then, humanity can anticipate an unmediated encounter with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: plague, war, famine and death. We have already encountered two of them recently, he observes, and there are two more to come.

 

Dmitry Chernyshev, the third-most widely read blogger on the LiveJournal platform.

 

DMITRY CHERNYSHEV, 56, BLOGGER

Dmitry Chernyshev is the third-most widely read blogger on the LiveJournal platform. To Hebrew (and English) speakers that might won't mean much, but for Russian speakers worldwide LiveJournal is the legendary (and relatively intellectual) social network with which everything started in the first decade of the 2000s. LiveJournal still continues to wield influence, despite a decline in its popularity, following the mass transition to Facebook, Twitter and Telegram. Its protagonists -- the most widely read bloggers -- enjoy esteem and influence on other platforms as well.

Chernyshev, who is known by the alias mi3ch (pronounced "Mitrich"), gained fame as an "enlightenment blogger," writing about a wide range of topics related to society, science and history, providing his followers with amusing items of trivia, intriguing riddles and surprising photographs. In recent years his blog has become increasingly political. For years he was also creative director of an advertising agency.

"In 2014, when everyone was delighted by the annexation of Crimea, I wrote that it was the advent of fascism," he tells me when we meet in the apartment of friends of his in Jaffa, where he is presently staying with his family. The friends have retired to their rooms, his wife is working on the computer in the living room, and we enter a small study where we can talk without being disturbed.

"Ahead of the 2018 [Russian] election, I declared a personal war on Putin," Chernyshev says. "I wrote a series of posts about him. The threat of criminal persecution had long hung over me. I took part in every demonstration. Last year, after demonstrations in support of [Russian opposition leader Alexei] Navalny, four police officers led by a colonel came to arrest me. I spent two weeks in a detention facility. I never kept quiet. When the war started, I barely slept. I wrote about it all the time."

The result was his rearrest, on March 4. This time he was taken for a conversation at FSB (Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB) headquarters in Moscow's famed Lubyanka Square, and got transparent hints about the future of his four daughters, the youngest of whom is 13. He was forced to sign a commitment to desist from his web activity. Following 12 days of social media silence, he resurfaced, now in Jaffa. In a long post he described his arrest and interrogation, then summed up his subsequent activity: "And then everything as usual. Passports, visas, tickets that can't be had. You sell everything possible for pennies. You leave friends. You leave your beloved city. Your whole life is squeezed into a suitcase and a thin packet of dollars. You have to start everything from scratch. Now Tel Aviv -- afterward, we'll see."

Losing no time, the day after his arrival, Chernyshev announced the establishment of a "resistance movement" and the need to "prepare for the toppling of Putin's criminal regime." Between an urgent search for an apartment for his family and uneasy thoughts about his prospects of being able to earn a respectable living (one plan he has, as the author of a book about thought processes, is to conduct creative thinking workshops), he is busy with operational plans. They range from making public the names of the pilots who are bombing Ukrainian cities and of the commanders who are managing the ground invasion, to "foiling the spring draft" of new military recruits. The question, of course, is how effective such activity is when done from exile.

"Perhaps I, like the others, am thinking more about myself -- that I won't be ashamed to look at myself in the mirror when I shave in the morning, so I won't be ashamed to look into the eyes of my children, that I try to do something, at least. But if there are a lot of people like me, a great change will occur. We're all trying to do things and it seems not to have the slightest effect. The metaphor I've come up with is sawing a huge tree trunk. You saw and saw, and the wood only grows thicker toward the middle, and the sawing seems to become more difficult, and every movement brings no results -- you only see chips falling. And then, in one moment, the trunk snaps with a loud noise."

 

DAVID FRANKEL, 30, JOURNALIST

'It was clear we had to escape'

David Frankel, a journalist for the Mediazona website -- which in recent years has been considered one of the most militant and trenchant media outlets that monitor human rights violations in Russia -- was also compelled to flee urgently. "From the start of the war we knew it wasn't safe to be in Russia, but when a few days later a law was passed prohibiting the vilification of the Russian military forces, it became clear to all of us that we had to escape. We called the war a 'war,' and we received a warning ahead of being blocked."

By now, all of Mediazona's journalists have left Russia; most are in Georgia. The chief editor, Sergey Smirnov, is in Lithuania, while Frankel, the site's correspondent in St. Petersburg, has been compelled to locate himself in Israel for the time being.

"My wife is a jurist who belongs to the Agora group [lawyers who deal with human rights violations in Russia and assist demonstrators who have been arrested and now also draft resisters], so in a certain sense we are in double danger. But we have pets, and with them it was impossible to buy plane tickets -- everything was already bought. Our plan was to put the cats in the car -- we have a big car -- and cross the only land border where you don't need a visa: into Georgia. We spent a few days dismantling the apartment. We gave away whatever we could. Half a day I was busy with that, and in the other half I ran around photographing the antiwar demonstrations and the never-ending arrests. It's more than a thousand people every day, and hundreds of detainees, a real assembly line.

"Apparently the police didn't have the free time to deal with us, but there was a feeling that soon there would be an end to the demonstrators and they would turn to the journalists. And once I had left, that was really what happened: They ran out of demonstrators and filled a entire bus with detained journalists. But when I was there it was still relatively calm, there was even a feeling of a kind of show: 'Here, photograph the way we are beating them. Photograph, photograph. We will do it as toughly as we can, and you will photograph. We won't touch you.' It's not always like that. They have different modes -- there were cases when they pulled me off a bus when I was on the way to cover a protest, there were times when I was arrested on the morning of a demonstration. This time it was a case of, 'Respected journalists, take pictures so that others will see and learn a lesson.'"

Frankel relates that he and his wife, fearing that a state of war would be declared in Russia, drove almost nonstop for 30 hours to the Georgian border. But when they got there they were informed that the crossing point was closed temporarily because of an avalanche. In the city of Vladikavkaz, adjacent to the border, they were barely able to find a vacancy in a small hotel ("Everyone there was like us, the whole city was packed with people who had pets; everyone who didn't have one could board a plane and go just like that"). They only tried to cross the border two days later, joining a line of dozens of cars.

"It took us eight hours to cross to the Georgian part of the border crossing," Frankel relates. But as would soon become apparent, these were minor problems: When they reached the checkpoint, he was separated from his wife and the cats, and had to wait long hours for his fate to be decided. At one stage his wife, who had crossed the border, was allowed to return and join him in waiting. The wait lasted 14 hours, at the end of which Frankel was informed that he was being denied entry to Georgia, without any explanation. The plan fell apart. He was forced to buy a ticket for an urgent flight to Moscow, and from there to Dubai and Tel Aviv. His wife continued on into Georgia with the cats. Because the car wasn't registered in her name, she was forced to abandon it.

"Israel looked like a type of 'safe space,' because here they would give us citizenship, there are friends here, relatives, there's a place to sleep," he says. "It's a place where I certainly won't be told at the border: 'You are denied entry, and we can't tell you why.' Now my wife is stuck in Tbilisi with the cats, making the rounds between veterinarians and waiting for all their tests to be completed so she can fly here. But for us to be able to make aliya together, we apparently need to meet outside Israel. In other words, I'll have to fly to meet her and then we'll enter Israel together. This has been going on for a month already." [By mid-April, Frenkel's wife had arrived in Israel.]

 

Bozhena Rynska, 47, journalist: 'Moscow has emptied out, there are no more traffic jams'

 

BOZHENA RYNSKA, 47, JOURNALIST

Bozhena Rynska gained fame through the sardonic column she wrote about the Russian high society she covered for the newspaper Izvestia. She then went on to become a web personality and an object of coverage herself. She received Israeli citizenship a few years ago, and in recent weeks has been trying to obtain an Israeli passport for her daughter, who was born in a surrogacy procedure. That's the main reason she's still in Moscow, and she can attest to what's happening next to the Israeli embassy and in the city overall.

"The consular officials of Nativ [the agency responsible for issuing aliya visas in post-Soviet territory] are working like mad, they are far more polite than in the past and I don't have any complaints about them," Rynska says. She likens the Nativ personnel to Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust by issuing visas in rapid succession over months, continued to issue them from the car of the train that evacuated him from the country.

"Security [from the embassy] are the ones who are behaving horribly, disgustingly and coarsely. What they are doing is abuse and lack of humanity," she asserts, proceeding to describe how she and a few dozen others stood for four hours in zero degrees Celsius opposite the embassy building without even being allowed into the foyer.

Whereas the lines around the embassy building on Bolshaya Ordynka Street are only getting longer, Moscow is projecting business as usual, at least outwardly.

"Nothing has changed in the streets," Rynska says. "What's sad is that there is no feeling of shared trouble, of dread and depression. People go to restaurants, eat and drink, go shopping. There are cars in the streets, the sky isn't falling into the Moskva River, the sun hasn't gone out. People don't yet understand what kind of nightmare they're in. One thing, though -- there are fewer traffic jams, it's easier to get around by car. The feeling is that at least a fifth of the city has fled. Moscow has emptied out. It used to take me two hours to get home from the city center; now it takes an hour."

Prices have soared in Russia, Rynska adds. "Everything that is imported is more expensive," she says. "If my average bill in Globus [a German supermarket chain that operates in Russia] used to be 4,500 rubles, now it's 6,500 (about 250 shekels, or $78). Coffee has gone up in price, tomatoes are more expensive. Suddenly I realized I have begun to look at prices. In the past that wasn't a question. If there was delicious cheese or ham, you had to buy it. Just because something you like is expensive, that was no reason not to buy it. And now things are so expensive that I'm starting to think: 'I won't get this, that's too much, that one bites.' I didn't think we would arrive at a moment when I needed to think about what to eat."

But the truth is that the prices aren't what's bothering Rynska. She knows that in Israel the cost of living is higher. In the meantime, with many of her friends already abroad and others having fallen silent or restricted the distribution of their pages on the social networks to friends only, Rynska, who's known for her militant character, continues to speak strongly and clearly.

During the past few weeks, her Instagram page has been a simultaneously grating and touching combination of announcements of the sale of luxury items belonging to Rynska (two handbags, by Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen, for $700 and $1,300, respectively), war photographs (a weeping elderly woman whose wrinkled face resembles a loaf of bread, standing next to a house that has been shelled) and poems that cry out in the voices of past and present Russian poets against war.,

When we corresponded, you said that you are living in a state of terror, but on your Instagram you publish very clear antiwar messages. Aren't you afraid?

"Of course I'm afraid. It's a risk, but I can't be silent. I feel that if I keep silent, I'll explode. I need to do it, come what may. You know, I'm not throwing Molotov cocktails at the Kremlin, so I try to walk on the edge. To do less I can't."

 

* You can also find other items that are not in these dispatches if you "like" this page on Facebook www.facebook.com/TomGrossMedia

Israeli forces in search of a terrorist on the rampage in central Tel Aviv last night

 

Hamas' espionage campaign against Israelis shows "new levels of sophistication" according to Israeli intelligence. Above: a fake Facebook profile set up by Hamas-linked hackers to entice Israeli soldiers

 

TEL AVIV TERROR, REFUSING TO SEAL ISRAEL'S SEPARATION BARRIER, & CHOOSING BABIES' SEX IN THE WEST BANK

[Note by Tom Gross]

Palestinians in Jenin chanted "Allah is great" and handed out sweets to "celebrate" the shooting dead of young Israelis on a night out in central Tel Aviv yesterday evening, the end of the Israeli workweek.

Video here.

There were similar scenes in other Palestinian cities, where shots were fired in celebration.

The attack took place in Dizengoff Street, a popular area filled with restaurants and bars in Israel's most cosmopolitan city. Many hours after the attack, the gunman was still on the loose and Israeli security forces - including at least 1,000 police officers and additional IDF soldiers, and Fauda-style undercover units - were searching the area going house to house in case he was holding people hostage.

I attach five articles below. Since the first article below was published, the terrorist was killed in a shootout with Israeli police in Jaffa early this morning.

Both the Israelis killed were in their 20s, as was the Palestinian gunman (Raad Hazem, 28), whose father was a senior figure in western-funded Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Several young Israelis remain injured in critical condition as doctors try to save them.

Update: A third victim of the Tel Aviv attack has died of his wounds. He is father of 3, Barak Lufan, 35, who represented Israel as a kayaker at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic games.

 

CONTENTS

1. Israel Shooting in Tel Aviv Leaves at Least Two Dead, the Fourth Attack in Recent Weeks (Wall Street Journal)
2. Gunman in Tel Aviv Bar Attack Is Shot and Killed (New York Times)
3. Exposed: Hamas espionage campaign against Israelis shows 'new levels of sophistication' (Haaretz)
4. Why nobody wants to seal Israel's West Bank separation barrier (Haaretz)
5. Arab-Israelis flock to West Bank to choose babies' sex (AFP)

 

ARTICLES

ISRAEL SHOOTING IN TEL AVIV LEAVES AT LEAST TWO DEAD, THE FOURTH ATTACK IN RECENT WEEKS

Israel Shooting in Tel Aviv Leaves at Least Two Dead, the Fourth Attack in Recent Weeks
The attack in Tel Aviv comes after a wave of terrorist incidents in the past few weeks that have put security forces on high alert
By Dov Lieber
Wall Street Journal
Published April 7, 2022 6:42 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shooting-in-tel-aviv-leaves-six-people-in-serious-condition-11649358191

At least two people were killed and eight others injured after a gunman opened fire at pub goers in central Tel Aviv, in what appears to be Israel's fourth terrorist attack in a little over two weeks.

The attack occurred on the popular Dizengoff Street, where bars and cafes were packed at the start of the Israeli weekend, which begins on Thursday night.

"This incident is still happening...Do not come to the scene," police spokesman Eli Levi said in a live interview on Israel's Kan News Channel. The live footage showed the streets full of what officials said is more than 1,000 members of Israeli security forces, including police, regular and special military forces, who ran from scene to scene looking for the gunman.

"It was packed in the businesses," Mr. Levi said. "We are going from business to businesses, home to home to check if any terrorist is hiding."

Police said they are investigating whether the incident is terrorism-related, and haven't yet identified the shooter. "The first signs indicate we are talking about a terror attack," said Tel Aviv District Commander Amichai Eshed, in a televised press conference at the scene of the attack.

Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv said it is treating four people with serious injuries from the attack, as well as two injured moderately and two lightly.

Israel has been hit by a wave of terrorist attacks in which 11 people have been killed since March 22. Israeli security forces were already on high alert in response to two attacks in recent days by Arab citizens of Israel who were inspired by Islamic State, according to Israeli security officials and one Palestinian from the West Bank. The attacks, though they occurred in the span of a week, weren't connected, but possibly inspired by each other, the officials said.

Israel's police and military had significantly boosted their presence in Tel Aviv due to the previous attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett traveled to the country's military headquarters in central Tel Aviv to follow the situation, his office said.

Sirens blared in central Tel Aviv as police and ambulances raced to the scene of the attacks, and soldiers and police could be seen running with guns drawn. Videos posted to social media showed people in the streets calling out to bystanders to draw their weapons. Mr. Bennett told Israelis to carry weapons after the terrorist attacks in the past few weeks.

Israeli security officials have worried that tension could boil over in Jerusalem, where tens of thousands of Palestinians are expected to travel to the Aqsa Mosque for the first Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan.

Israel earlier this week said it would allow all Palestinian women, children and men over age 50 to go to the Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, but said the approval would depend on the security situation.

 

GUNMAN IN TEL AVIV BAR ATTACK IS SHOT AND KILLED

Gunman in Tel Aviv Bar Attack Is Shot and Killed
By Patrick Kingsley
The New York Times
Published April 8, 2022, 1:00 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/world/middleeast/israel-tel-aviv-shooting.html

JERUSALEM - Israeli security forces on Friday morning shot dead a Palestinian gunman who had fled the night before after killing two people and wounding 13 others outside a busy bar in central Tel Aviv. The gunman's attack was the latest in the deadliest wave of terrorism in Israel since 2016.

The police said the shootings in Tel Aviv had occurred just after 9 on the last night of the Israeli workweek, outside a bar filled with people enjoying the start of the weekend. The gunman initially escaped, prompting security forces to embark on a nine-hour manhunt. They ordered residents to stay home as they combed the city in search of the gunman, effectively placing central Tel Aviv under a lockdown.

At 6 a.m. Friday, Israel's internal security service, the Shin Bet, said police forces had killed the gunman in a shootout near a mosque in Jaffa, the southernmost district of the Tel Aviv municipality. The Shin Bet later said the gunman was a 28-year-old from the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since capturing it from Jordan in 1967.

The shooting outside the bar was the fourth lethal attack in Israel in less than three weeks, and brought the total death toll since March 22 to 13. The assault heightened fears of an even more intense surge of violence over the next 10 days, when the rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter is expected to raise tensions further between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ten casualties were taken to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, two of whom later died and four of whom were in critical condition, the hospital said. Five others were either physically or psychologically hurt, the police said.

Video from the scene showed a man wearing dark clothing approaching a seating area outside Ilka Bar on Dizengoff Street, and then opening fire with what appeared to be a handgun before escaping.

The attack set off surreal chaos in the heart of Israel's most cosmopolitan city, as crowds ran to take shelter in nearby apartment buildings, bar basements and elevators, some of them knocking on the doors of strangers to find shelter. Many were stuck there overnight.

In the mayhem, one wounded man, Mark Malfeyev, said he initially had not realized he was hurt. After hearing the shots outside the bar and seeing its window shatter, he started sprinting for shelter, unaware he had been shot in the back. "Then I saw a lot of blood," Mr. Malfeyev said in a video filmed from his hospital bed and broadcast by Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster.

Soldiers in full combat gear then ran through the city center searching for the suspect, many of them filmed live by journalists who jogged beside them. Other video showed soldiers going from apartment to apartment, knocking on doors as they searched for the gunman.

Medics at the scene said it summoned memories of past attacks in Israel, including a wave of violence between 2000 and 2005, known as the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, that killed at least 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians.

"It's been like this since I was born," said Shragi Kirschenbaum, a medic for United Hatzalah, an emergency medical service that treated victims at the scene. "I am 37 years old -- I don't think I had a year without a war or some kind of terror attack."

Yisrael Weingarten, a paramedic with Magen David Adom, another emergency medical group, treated some of the victims, and said he witnessed "a large commotion at the scene, with dozens of people running in the streets," and saw six people "lying on the sidewalk."

The attack on Thursday occurred 10 days after a gun attack in Bnei Brak, a city just east of Tel Aviv, in which a Palestinian attacker killed three Israelis and two Ukrainians.

That episode came just two days after a gun attack in which two Arab citizens of Israel, armed with heavy automatic weapons, fatally shot two police officers in Hadera, a coastal city in northern Israel.

The string of deadly attacks began March 22, when an assailant stabbed three people and rammed another with his car in a city in southern Israel, killing all four. Before the March 22 assault, there had also been two other nonlethal stabbing attacks in the space of a week in Jerusalem.

THE RECENT RISE IN TERRORIST ATTACKS IN ISRAEL

A rash of violence. The recent wave of terrorism across Israel has become one of the deadliest periods in the country in several years. A shooting on April 7 was the fourth lethal attack since March 22, and brought the total death toll in recent weeks to at least 13 people.

Concerns of more attacks. The violence has heightened fears of more attacks this month, when the rare convergence of Ramadan, Passover and Easter is expected to raise tensions further between Israelis and Palestinians.

Why these attacks are different. Before this, recent violence in Israel was generally carried out with knives, so this current surge in the use of firearms has been of particular concern to security officials, because it implies a different level of forethought and resources.

Most attacks in recent years have been carried out with knives, so the surge in the use of firearms has been of particular concern to security officials, because it implies an unusual level of forethought and resources.

At the time of the attack, the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, was visiting the Israeli Army headquarters in a nearby district of Tel Aviv, and was briefed there about the assault.

The backgrounds of the recent attackers have varied. Three of the attackers have been Arab citizens of Israel who were believed to support the Islamic State, the extremist group that is not part of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Two gunmen in Tel Aviv and Bnei Brak were Palestinians from the Jenin area in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

One of them, the shooter in Tel Aviv, had no history of militant activity, Israeli officials said. The gunman in Bnei Brak had previously served 30 months in an Israeli jail for conspiracy to commit manslaughter and for throwing objects at vehicles.

No Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility for any of the attacks, but some groups, including Hamas, the Islamist militant group based in the Gaza Strip, praised them and said that they were a natural response to the Israeli occupation. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and, with Egypt, has maintained a blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007.

While the Palestinian Authority manages about 40 percent of the West Bank, the Israeli Army still conducts daily raids even in areas run by the authority, and Israel operates a two-tier justice system in the territory -- one for Israeli settlers and one for Palestinians.

Mr. Kirschenbaum, the medic, said he took heart from the presence of both Arab and Jewish emergency responders at the scene. "We're all working together against terror, to save lives," he said. "Jews and Arabs together," he added.

(Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.)

 

EXPOSED: HAMAS ESPIONAGE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ISRAELIS SHOWS 'NEW LEVELS OF SOPHISTICATION'

Exposed: Hamas espionage campaign against Israelis shows 'new levels of sophistication'
By Omer Benjakob
Haaretz
April 8, 2022

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/tech-news/.premium-exposed-hamas-espionage-campaign-shows-new-levels-of-sophistication-1.10727577

Hackers affiliated with Hamas have targeted Israelis through a complex cyber espionage campaign over the past six months, making use of fake Facebook accounts, social engineering techniques and advanced malware to hack into Israeli soldiers and police officers' phones and computers, Israeli cyberdefense firm Cybereason revealed Wednesday, describing it as a "new level of sophistication" for Hamas.

Cybereason's research team has long followed Hamas-linked hackers. Over the past six months, they found that one of the two main hacking units belonging to the group was involved in an "elaborate campaign that targeted Israeli individuals and officials. The campaign is characterized as an espionage campaign aiming to steal sensitive information from PCs and mobile devices belonging to a chosen target group of Israeli individuals working for law enforcement, military and emergency services."

According to their findings, which they shared with both Facebook and Israel's defense establishment, the hackers use social engineering techniques to find their victims and lure them, as well as fake Facebook profiles "to trick specific individuals into downloading trojanized direct message applications for Android and PC, which granted them access to the victims' devices."

The so-called trojan horse program that was downloaded to their devices, researchers say, is much more advanced than malware software deployed by the group in the past, targeting both computers and mobile devices. The spyware provided hackers with full access to the computers or phones, including their microphones and camera, and even included "operational security" mechanisms intended to prevent detection and automatically updated itself, one researcher explained.

After reviewing the report, Facebook took down all of the accounts.

TINDER TRICKS

This is not the first time Hamas has made use of catfishing techniques for cyber needs: In 2017 and 2018, Hamas hackers were revealed to be posing as young women to try to lure Israeli soldiers to chat with them on dating apps like Tinder. Once in communication with their targets, the hackers would infect their phones.

Since then, Hamas' has learned how to make more believable fake accounts, one Cybereason researcher explained. "They set up fake accounts, but while usually such accounts are quite easy to spot, in this case they would seem very real to an untrained eye."

The fake accounts, all of which pretended to be Israeli women, were set up months in advance. "They were extremely active accounts, they were very well versed in Israeli politics and current events, they chatted with their victims and posted in perfect Hebrew, with none of the tell-tale signs of fake foreign accounts.

"After gaining the victim's trust, the operator of the fake account suggests migrating the conversation from Facebook over to WhatsApp. By doing so, the operator quickly obtains the target's mobile number. In many cases, the content of the chat revolves around sexual themes, and the operators often suggest to the victims that they should use a 'safer' and more 'discrete' means of communication, suggesting a designated app for Android." For example, some targets were asked to download a fake messaging app called "Wink Wink Chat."

"In addition, they also entice the victims to open a .rar file containing a video that supposedly contains explicit sexual content. However, when the users open the video they are infected with malware," Cybereason's report explains. According to the researchers, the victims were specifically targeted during their work hours with the hopes of infecting their work computers.

At the end of 2020, Cybereason revealed what was then the most sophisticated cyber espionage operation carried out by Hamas. The hackers behind that operation were Molerats, a group also known as The Gaza Cybergang, that has historically targeted Israelis, but has also gone after the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world. But this time around, it remains unclear which of Hamas' cyber units are behind the latest campaign.

According to Cybereason, Hamas' revamped toolset and playbook was made most clear by the fact that they targeted Israelis as opposed to their usual Arabic-speaking targets in places like Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

This week also marks OpIsrael, an annual cyberattack on Israel by pro-Palestinians hacktivists. Industry sources say that while the annual attack can cause some damage -- for example, websites targeted by so-called denial of service attacks may incur financial losses -- generally speaking the Hamas operation is of a different magnitude and poses a much more severe threat.

In response to this report, Israel's cyber authority referred Haaretz to the IDF's spokesperson unit, that said that "no substantial damage" was caused as a result of the operation, which they said "did not manage to penetrate the IDF's system." The army spokesperson added that, said "Hamas' cyber units are under constant surveillance and preventive actions are taken against their efforts in cyberspace." They further said Hamas' cyber forces have only "basic technological abilities which are limited to creating fake profiles on social media platforms."

 

WHY NOBODY WANTS TO SEAL ISRAEL'S WEST BANK SEPARATION BARRIER

Why nobody wants to seal Israel's West Bank separation barrier
By Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
April 6, 2022

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-palestinians-breach-separation-barrier-daily-but-idf-isn-t-worried-1.10722792

The well-known breaches along the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank, and the ease with which Palestinians can enter Israel without permits, have become a familiar recurring subject of debate and rancor following terrorist attacks. But defense officials say the situation is being carefully managed -- and that it is not the result of any security failure, as has been widely represented.

Defense officials say the situation involves risk assessments, setting priorities for resources and maintaining a balance between security tensions within the Palestinian Authority.

"At an early stage, since the building of the barrier, the IDF and Shin Bet [security service] came to realize that it was impossible to control every breach in the barrier or chase every [pemitless] Palestinian. So they decided that if we can't control the situation, let's manage it in a controlled manner," said a security official who until recently participated in decision-making in security forums on illegal entry.

Following last week's deadly terrorist attack in Bnei Brak, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi visited the place where the gunman crossed into Israel from the West Bank and said the IDF is bolstering intelligence efforts, reinforcing military units in the West Bank and along the "seam line" between it and Israel, and boosting aid to police.

"We will continue and we will act in every way in order to stop the terrorist attacks. That is our mission." But Kochavi did not mention upgrading the barrier or preventing illegal entry.

Security officials told Haaretz that it is no accident that the political and security leadership is not committing to hermetically sealing the movement of people entering Israel illegally from the West Bank. While public-facing statements from senior security and political leaders following attacks say the breaches must be sealed, behind the scenes and in meetings defense officials believe it would be a mistake to consequently prevent the entry of some 50,000 workers into Israel. They consider the situation to be under control.

"This fence, even when it was first being built, was not meant to prevent the movement of terrorists who were planning on carrying out an attack in Israel. Whoever wants to leave will succeed," said a defense official involved in decision-making on how forces along the separation barrier operate.

"We thwart terrorists through intelligence from the Shin Bet, with the hope that their arrest will come even before they reach the fence," he said.

MANAGING THE BREACHES

Defense officials said the main goal of constructing the separation barrier was to make it possible to control the area after the Second Intifada terror attacks; to stop the theft of cars; and to make it difficult for the many workers without permits to freely leave from the point closest to their homes.

"We realized very quickly that it wasn't possible to make the fence impenetrable. A large part of the fence is quite basic in construction and can be cut with simple pliers."

Until a few years ago, defense officials would diligently chase after every breach, but with a barrier that is over 500 kilometers (310 miles) long, the IDF found itself dealing with a problem that diverted its resources, troops and attention from more important missions, said the official.

"Every time we closed a breach in the fence, the next day there was a breach 100 or 200 meters away. The more cuts there were, the weaker and more ineffective the fence became," said the defense official.

This early realization led the defense establishment to decide that, since the existing infrastructure and budget made it impossible to completely control illegal entry from the West Bank into Israel, it would be better to ensure security forces could manage the problem, even if only partially. This is all with the understanding that tens of thousands of illegal workers would enter Israel daily without work permits, added the official.

The official said this means assuming control at the points where there are breaches, as well as "to know, even if it's not precise, how many illegal workers pass through, where, and how many came back." He added that it also means "you are leaving agricultural gates open. There are almost no fences around them and it is possible to leave easily."

But, he added, "At the same time, you decide which breaches you are able and willing to contain."

The official said this is not an official position that will be stated in public -- only in private meetings in which officials are required to present their positions on the issue.

"The army and the Shin Bet know where the problematic areas are where they will not allow Palestinians to cross," the official said. "Last year, it was decided to prevent passage in the Bat Hefer region, where people entered illegally with criminal intent -- breaking into houses, stealing cars, harassing women in nearby communities."

"The fear was that a criminal incident would become nationalistic. So they reinforced troop presence there," he said.

Contrary to the view that the breaches are not under control and that any Palestinian who wants to cross into Israel simply cuts the fence somewhere near their home, defense officials argue that on the other side of the barrier things are much more organized than the Israeli public is aware of.

"Every day, tens of thousands of Palestinians go to work through these holes without permits," an official said. "There are hundreds of kilometers of separation barrier. The breaches are not everywhere and still those tens of thousands of workers know how to reach the passageway they need. They arrive in organized rides from inside the West Bank, and waiting on the other side are taxis, buses and private drivers who pick them up."

"Even when the breach is closed, the next day everyone knows how to get to a new point has been opened," he said. "I can't say if this is coordinated by a particular person, but it is much more orderly and organized than what is commonly thought."

The commander of the district brigade is ultimately responsible for preventing Palestinians without permits from entering Israel.

"There is a directive from the Central Command to prevent workers without permits from entering Israel," said a defense official. "Each brigade commander interprets this request differently. One may decide that the operations along the fence will leach large forces away from areas with higher security tensions. Another may decide that preventing the entry of Palestinians from an area under his command would lead to confrontations with IDF forces."

GAZA AND THE NORTH FIRST

"Strengthening the fence in a way that doesn't allow anyone to cross it means manpower that the IDF doesn't have -- and the IDF is busy with much more significant threats," said a senior security official. "Replacing this fence, manning it with soldiers and technology -- this demands a budget of hundreds of millions, if not more. When we assess where best to put each shekel, construction of the barriers in Gaza and on the northern border are far more urgent."

For defense officials, this isn't just a matter of money or operational priorities. Behind closed doors, they say that preventing these 50,000 Palestinians a day from working in Israel could create even worse security problems in the long run.

"Palestinians in the West Bank are fed up with terror," one said. "What interests a Palestinian from Ramallah, Jenin, Qalqilyah or Tul Karm today is earning a living ... Religious, nationalist issues no longer manage to bring the masses into the streets, and certainly not confrontations and armed struggle against the IDF."

"If a third intifada develops, it will be due to economic distress, a situation where they don't have food in the refrigerator for their children and don't have anything to get up for in the morning," he added.

Palestinians working in Israel illegally earn 1.5 billion shekels ($470 million) a year, defense officials say, and this money has a major impact on the entire Palestinian economy. If this money were taken away, a senior official who has contact with Palestinian officials said, the Palestinian Authority could collapse economically, and all the Palestinians who used to work in Israel "would be in the streets with no hope."

"Since 2018, the Palestinian public has taken to the streets to protest mainly over issues of funding, salaries, the cost of living," he added. "That's also what preoccupies Hamas in Gaza nowadays."

As a result of the Bnei Brak attack, permitless workers were barred from Israel on the eve of Ramadan, which badly hurt both the workers and the merchants they would otherwise have patronized, he said. "When I speak with merchants and PA officials, they tell me very clearly that this attack hurt them. Very few people will support this attack openly."

 

ARAB-ISRAELIS FLOCK TO WEST BANK TO CHOOSE BABIES' SEX

Arab-Israelis flock to West Bank to choose babies' sex

Israeli laws strictly regulate selecting a child's sex, and Israeli women must have had four children of the same sex in order to implant embryos; 'we are barely asked anything in the West Bank,' the couple says

Palestinian doctors and technicians work at the IVF laboratory at the Razan Center fertility clinic in Nablus, and in other clinics in the West Bank

AFP
April 7, 2022

https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/b1vyoyhq9

Palestinian fertility clinics in the West Bank are a magnet for would-be Arab Israeli parents seeking boys -- even when risky procedures can endanger the lives of both mother and child.

Israeli laws strictly regulate selecting a child's sex. So the couple drove three hours from their home in the suburbs of Jerusalem to a clinic in Nablus on the West Bank.

In the waiting room of the Dima Center, Yasmine, 27, glanced nervously at baby portraits on the wall, momentoes from grateful families who successfully conceived through the clinic's in-vitro fertilization (IVF) program.

British-trained clinic director Amani Marmash estimated she holds about 20 consultations a day, half with Palestinians from the West Bank.

The other half are, like Yasmine, Arab citizens of Israel, whose forebears remained in what became Israel after 1948, while others fled or were driven out.

Doctors said that most of their patients sought boys to carry on the family name and provide financial support.

"We are looking for a brother for our two daughters," said Jacki, 34. Both he and his wife provided pseudonyms because the subject of IVF remains taboo in their culture.

Israel has the highest rate of IVF per capita in the world and offers the treatment free of charge to women citizens up to the age of 45. Women undergoing IVF take hormones before having eggs surgically removed and fertilized outside the womb. The resulting embryos are then implanted in the uterus.

In Israel, as in many other countries, the process is strictly regulated. Israeli women must have had four daughters in order to implant only male embryos. In the West Bank, "we are barely asked anything," says Yasmine.

THREE TO FIVE EMBRYOS AT A TIME

On its Facebook page, the Dima Center highlights a 99.9 percent chance of success in gender selection, without saying that the overall success rate of conception by IVF is much lower.

"Select your baby's gender with the Dima Center and, God willing, your family will be completed with a boy and a girl," reads one post.

IVF has a 60 to 65 percent success rate, in the best cases, Marmash told AFP. To make up for this, two to three "embryos are transferred into the uterus", said doctor Salam Atabeh, who also works at the clinic.

This practice contradicts international recommendations for just one or two embryos to be implanted, with the exception of three in women aged 40 and older.

A 2019 report on private clinics in the West Bank by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) found doctors implant three to five embryos in 70 percent of cases, a practice that presents health risks for both mother and child.

Yasmine chose to implant three embryos to lift her chances after a first-round failed. Should the second attempt fail too, Yasmine said she would not hesitate to try a third time.

The operation can cost between 10,000 and 15,000 shekels (2,700 and 4,100 euros), a fortune for many Palestinians. The high cost encourages them to maximize the chances of pregnancy with each attempt.

Dr. Atabeh said he takes care to inform his patients of the risks: ovarian hyperstimulation, premature labor, multiple births, as well as potential dangers for the child.

One gynecologist told AFP she sees a dozen patients a month in an Israeli hospital for complications related to IVF procedures performed in the West Bank.

Although rare, ovarian hyperstimulation can lead to hospitalization of the patient for breathing difficulties, nausea, or kidney failure, the doctor said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

And after a multiple-birth pregnancy, common when more than two embryos are transferred, newborns can spend weeks in intensive care.

"Some babies are handicapped for their whole lives," she said, citing blindness, deafness, and flaws in brain development.

"When women come back with triplets and complications, Israel pays for it, not the clinics in the West Bank," she said.

In Ramallah, Hadeel Masri, who heads the women's health and gynecology unit at the Palestinian health ministry, said the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority's inability to fund a public IVF option had left the sector entirely in private hands. "We're just exposing women to these risks," she said.

Bassem Abu Hamad, professor of public health at Al-Quds University and a co-author of the UNFPA report said the clinics implant up to five embryos because they "need better results to make more money, it's business," he said.

 

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