Issued on: 13/03/2024 – 17:06

2 min

The legislation is a major setback for the video-sharing app, which has surged in popularity across the world while causing nervousness about its Chinese ownership and its potential subservience to the Communist Party in Beijing.

The lawmakers voted 352 in favor of the proposed law and 65 against, in a rare moment of unity in politically divided Washington.

“Today’s bipartisan vote demonstrates Congress’ opposition to Communist China’s attempts to spy on and manipulate Americans, and signals our resolve to deter our enemies,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said after the vote.

“I urge the Senate to pass this bill and send it to the President so he can sign it into law,” he added.

But the fate of the bill is uncertain in the more cautious Senate, where some key figures are apprehensive of making such a drastic move against an app that has 170 million US users.

President Joe Biden will sign the bill, known officially as the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, into law if it came to his desk, the White House has said.

“This process was secret and the bill was jammed through for one reason: it’s a ban,” said a spokesperson for TikTok in a statement.

“We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use our service,” the spokesperson added.

The measure, which only gained momentum in the past few days, requires TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell the app within 180 days or see it barred from the Apple and Google app stores in the United States.

It also gives the president power to designate other applications to be a national security threat if they are under the control of a country considered adversarial to the US.

The renewed campaign against TikTok came out of the blue to the company, the Wall Street Journal reported, with TikTok executives reassured when Biden joined the app last month as part of his campaign for a second term.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is in Washington, trying to stop progress on the bill.                  

The Trump factor

China warned on Wednesday that the move will “inevitably come back to bite the United States.”

“Although the United States has never found evidence that TikTok threatens US national security, it has not stopped suppressing TikTok,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, condemning it as “bullying behavior.”

Republican lawmakers approved the bill, in an unusual act of defiance against Donald Trump.

In a turnaround from his earlier stance, Trump on Monday said he was against a ban, mainly because it would strengthen Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, which he called an “enemy of the people.”

When Trump was president, he attempted to wrest control of Tiktok from ByteDance, but was blocked by US courts.

“I think it will die in the Senate,” said representative Nancy Mace, a Trump ally. “This is not our job to do this.”

Other efforts to ban TikTok have failed, with a bill proposed a year ago getting nowhere largely over free speech concerns.

Similarly, a state law passed in Montana banning the platform was suspended by a federal court on the suspicion that it violated constitutional free speech rights.

TikTok staunchly denies any ties to the Chinese government and has restructured the company so the data of US users stays in the country with independent oversight, the company says.

(AFP)

Issued on: 13/03/2024 – 16:38

2 min

Philippe de Gaulle, who was a significant military figure in his own right, heeded his father’s call to join Free French forces in the fight against Nazism in World War II.

He later had a successful naval career, rising to the rank of admiral, and also became a senator.

Despite a striking physical resemblance, he was a more low-key figure than his father but devoted himself to preserving the memory of Charles de Gaulle, notably through numerous books including the successful work “De Gaulle, my father”.

His son Yves de Gaulle told AFP that he died overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in the Invalides in central Paris, the French military institution where he had lived for two years.

“Philippe de Gaulle anticipated his father’s call to join the Resistance,” President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a tribute on X.

“Sailor, admiral, senator, he never came up short when courage and honour were required. A century of French bravery.”

Macron opened a cabinet meeting Wednesday with a tribute to Philippe de Gaulle and would hold a national memorial ceremony at the Invalides next week in his memory, government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said.

Eric Ciotti, head of the right-wing Republicans party that sees itself as the inheritor of de Gaulle’s political mantle, described Philippe de Gaulle as a “pillar” of France.

“His life dedicated to the service of France, in the navy and in the Senate, was a living example for the Republic,” he wrote on X.

“France was in his heart until the end,” added Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.              

‘Not easy’  

He joined the Free French Naval Forces in 1940 and fought in the North Atlantic until 1944, then in France itself when the Resistance joined the Allies in pushing the Nazis out of France, taking part in the Normandy Landings of D-Day.

After the war, he saw action during post-colonial conflicts in Indochina (modern day Cambodia, Laos and parts of Vietnam and China), Morocco and Algeria.

Charles de Gaulle was wary of the slightest hint of nepotism and never helped his son win a post, nor did he decorate him with the Order of Liberation after the war.

The upbringing of Charles de Gaulle’s three children was austere, with their mother Yvonne said to only kiss Philippe and his two sisters on their birthday and December 31.

The eldest of the sisters, Elisabeth died in 2013 while the youngest of the children Anne, who suffered from Down Syndrome, died in 1948 aged just 20.

“I know everything, my boy. Your position has never been easy. It’s not nothing to be the son of General de Gaulle,” he was told on one occasion by his father.

“But your attitude has always been the one I expected of you,” said Charles de Gaulle.

Nicolas Lacroix, the president of the Charles de Gaulle memorial in the eastern town of Colombey-les-deux-Eglises where de Gaulle lived before World War II and died in 1970, said Philippe de Gaulle would be buried opposite his father in the local cemetery and alongside his wife Henriette, his mother Yvonne and sister Anne.

“Our country has lost one of its great defenders. Gaullism has lost one of its greatest ambassadors,” he said, adding the French flag would be at half mast at the memorial until the burial takes place.

(AFP)

More than 100 people gathered on February 29 to hold a “resettlement protest” in the Israeli city of Sderot. At least that’s where the protest began. Sderot is located just a few kilometres from Gaza and the protesters, who want to reestablish Israeli settlements in Gaza, said their aim was to “protest inside Gaza”. 

The march reached the Erez border crossing, which marks the dividing line between Israel and Gaza. Videos showed that, in spite of the soldiers present, a number of people managed to enter the Israeli military zone on the border. This zone is demarcated by a barrier and then a wall, which separate Israel from Gaza. 

A small number of the protesters slipped past the soldiers and made it some 500 metres into Gaza. “We will all soon return here,” one of the protesters is heard saying in an amateur video as soldiers with the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) herd them back to the border. “Even the soldiers evacuating us want to be here,” he adds.

At one point, the man filming the video refers to Gush Katif, a bloc of former Israeli settlements in Gaza that was dismantled back in 2005 as part of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza. Now, however, a number of settler movements want to bring Gush Katif back.

The IDF published a statement that night, recognising that about 20 protesters “violently broke through an IDF checkpoint manned by soldiers” and had “crossed into Gazan territory”. 

‘To establish a Jewish settlement’ 

The protesters were decked in bright orange t-shirts – the same colour worn by people who opposed the Israeli disengagement plan back in 2005. Other protesters managed to stay in the military zone between the wall and barrier for several hours, long enough to build several wooden structures along the wall that separates Gaza from Israel. The army did not stop them erecting the structures. 

The structures put together by the protesters were prefabricated, built to look like the outposts common in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In a video showing the protesters building these structures, the person filming says “Gaza belongs to the Israeli people”.

Before the protest began, our team spoke to an organiser of the protest, Yair Ben Baruch, and asked him about its objectives. 

“Our aim is to march to the Gaza Strip and even enter it, demanding Jewish settlement,” he said. 

Ben Baruch, who said that he grew up in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, said that he ran an organisation called “Shavei Aza” [Editor’s note: “Those who return to Gaza”], whose aim is to “establish a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip”. 

The protesters who entered Gaza were taken into custody by the police according to the IDF, but were then released without charges. The IDF did not explain how so many protesters were able to stay in the military zone for several hours. 

Tractors at the border

This is not an isolated incident. On February 22, a group of farmers from the Golan Heights who call themselves the “Portrait of Victory” also tried to enter the Gaza Strip. 

Under the slogan “Where the plow passes, that’s where the border will be set”, farmers called on others to seize fields in Gaza by simply moving in and beginning to plough them. 

Several videos of their protests, which were supposedly supervised by the IDF, show farmers driving alongside the border fence and then crossing into the no-go military zone. 

Some posts on Telegram and Twitter claimed that the tractors entered Gaza and then ploughed fields within the territory. 

When our team spoke to the IDF, however, they said that the protesters “at no point” entered Gaza. However, they did say that the farmers’ tractors entered the no-go Israeli military zone and were just a few steps from the separation between Gaza and Israel, “contrary to instructions”. 

‘The idea of resettling Gaza isn’t new’

Ori Givati, advocacy director for the NGO Breaking the Silence, an organisation of Israeli veterans who want to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, says that many of Israel’s politicians support these protests – and resettlement in general. 

“These groups are new, but this idea is not a new idea, as we’ve always heard of people willing to resettle in Gaza. What is new is the legitimization given to it by the government, by Knesset members and maybe worst of all, by a lot of Israeli society”. 

Eleven ministers from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government took part in a conference on January 28, calling for the return of Israeli settlements in Gaza and the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians. 

“It would be a shame to wait another 15 years to go back to Gush Katif. This is the time to return to home, to build settlements, for the death penalty for terrorists and the time for victory,” said far-right Israeli politician and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir in his speech at the conference.

During this event, a map of Gaza set up in the reception showed different locations in the Strip where these politicians want settlements. 

Positions like these directly oppose the plan for Israeli disengagement adopted by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, which closed down the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza and rehoused the 8,000 displaced settlers. 

This led to a number of clashes between Israeli forces and the displaced population, some of whom still want to return to the settlements.

“In 2005 we did the disengagement plan and many are now using this fact to say that because of that the 7th of October happened”, Ori Givati says. “They are exploiting the 7th of October for their own needs in order to justify resettlement and put, of course, Palestinians in danger, and also Israelis and soldiers in danger, just to fulfill their messianic goals.”