الكاتب: kafej

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were the longest-married presidential couple, having wed in 1946 when he was 21 and she was 18.

Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady of the United States and the closest adviser to Jimmy Carter during his one term as president, has died at age 96.

The Carter Center on Sunday said she “died peacefully, with family by her side” at her rural Georgia home of Plains after living with dementia and suffering many months of declining health.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Carter said in a statement.

“She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were the longest-married presidential couple, having wed in 1946 when he was 21 and she was 18.

After his term ended in 1981, he also enjoyed more post-White House years than any president before him and she played an instrumental role during those years, including as part of the nonprofit Carter Center and the Habitat for Humanity charity.

She was seen as unassuming and quiet before coming to Washington in 1977 but developed into an eloquent speaker, campaigner and activist.

Her abiding passion, which carried far beyond her White House years, was for those living with mental illness, not because of any personal connection but because of a strong feeling that advocacy was needed.

Before Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, Roslynn was largely unknown outside of Georgia, where her husband had been a peanut farmer-turned-governor.

A Democrat, he served one four-year term, losing his 1980 re-election bid to Ronald Reagan, a Republican former California governor and Hollywood actor.

In Washington, DC, the Carters were a team, with the president calling her “an extension of myself” and “my closest adviser”. She was often invited to sit in as an observer at Cabinet meetings and political strategy discussions.

In a 1978 interview with magazine editors, Carter said he shared almost everything with his wife except top-secret material. “I think she understands the consciousness of the American people and their attitudes perhaps better than do I,” he said.

The first lady also was sent on important official missions to Latin America and was part of the unsuccessful campaign for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution to ensure equal treatment of women under the law.

The Iranian hostage crisis – in which American diplomats and others were held captive in Tehran after the Islamic revolution – occurred when Carter was seeking re-election. The crisis contributed to the downfall of his presidency as he refrained from campaigning while trying to resolve the standoff.

During that time, Rosalynn Carter sought to support her husband by speaking in 112 cities in 34 states during a 44-day tour.

Her speeches and forays into crowds were credited with helping Carter defeat Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries, although he went on to lose overwhelmingly to Reagan in the general election.

Her interest in mental health issues stemmed from the early 1970s when she began to realise the depth of the problem in Georgia and the reluctance of people to talk about it.

As first lady of Georgia, she was a member of a governor’s commission to improve services for the mentally ill.

The Israeli army claims it has uncovered a tunnel shaft under the beleaguered al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza.

In a statement on Sunday, the army said it found a 55-metre-long (180 ft), 10-metre-deep (32 ft) tunnel under Gaza’s largest medical facility, which has been under siege by Israeli troops for several days.

The army published a video on its official Telegram channel showing a soldier lowering himself into the tunnel. The footage was shot with two separate cameras on November 17, it said.

The videos show a staircase leading to an arched concrete passage that ends in what appears to be a door. The army says it is the entrance of the tunnel shaft with “a blast-proof door and a firing hole”.

According to the statement, the tunnel was found “in the area of the hospital underneath a shed alongside a vehicle containing numerous weapons including RPGs, explosives, and Kalashnikov rifles”.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters the entrance was uncovered when a military bulldozer knocked down the outside wall of the hospital complex and found a fortified shaft with a spiral staircase descending 10 metres.

“It’s a huge one which has metal [spiral] stairs, then it goes along for 55 metres… and reaches a blast door,” said Hagari, indicating that troops had not yet tried to open the door for fear it would be booby-trapped.

Beyond the door, intelligence suggested either the tunnel would split or there would be “a big room for command and control”, he added, saying troops would continue searching the area as there could be access shafts from nearby houses.

Israel has made al-Shifa Hospital a focal point of its operations since the army entered it on Wednesday, claiming it harbours a Hamas command centre – a claim Hamas as well as staff working at the hospital have denied.

“It’s probably one out of dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of tunnels. We all know there are tunnels in Gaza,” Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said.

“The problem is not finding a tunnel. The problem is the Israeli excuse – and their supporters in London and Washington too – that there was ‘a city under a city’.”

Israeli occupation forces breached the surgical department of Al Shifa Hospital today, staying for over 5 hours.
Medical staff and patients endured an unwarranted investigation, resulting in humiliation. One patient was arrested. Urgently calling on the @UN United Nations and…

— Ahmed El Mokhallalati (@AMokhallalati) November 19, 2023

The Israeli army on Sunday also said that a captive soldier was executed and two foreign captives held at al-Shifa Hospital. The army is searching for some 240 people Hamas kidnapped to Gaza after the October 7 cross-border assault.

One of the hostages was a 19-year-old Israeli army conscript, Noa Marciano, whose body was recovered near al-Shifa last week. Hamas said she died in an Israeli air strike and issued a video that appeared to show her corpse, unmarked except for a head wound.

The Israeli military said a forensic examination found she had sustained non-life-threatening injuries from such a strike.

“According to intelligence information – solid intelligence information – Noa was taken by Hamas terrorists inside the walls of Shifa hospital. There, she was murdered by a Hamas terrorist,” Hagari said without elaborating.

In his televised briefing, Hagari said Hamas attackers had also brought a Nepalese and a Thai captive, among foreign workers seized in the October 7 raid, to al-Shifa. He did not name the two hostages.

Hamas did not immediately comment on Hagari’s statements. It previously said it took some hostages to hospitals for treatment.

At least 13,000 Palestinians, 5,500 of them children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its air and ground assault, the Gaza health ministry said.

The siege of al-Shifa Hospital, the focal point of the six-week “genocide”, has sparked international outcry, with the World Health Organization describing it as a “death zone” when its team visited the facility on Saturday.

More than 7,000 people, including patients in critical condition and newborn babies fighting for their lives, were sheltered inside al-Shifa before those who were able to move were forced out this weekend.

Thirty-one premature babies were evacuated on Sunday and taken to the European and Nasser hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip.

According to reports from medical staff inside al-Shifa, some patients remain at the hospital and were interrogated earlier on Sunday.

As Israel steps up its bombardment of Gaza, military and political support from the United States remains steadfast.

But could this war – which has caused such a humanitarian catastrophe – lead to wider regional instability?

Has that been the intention? And what role does Washington play?

Presenter: Sami Zeidan

Guests:

Daniel Levy – President of the US/Middle East Project and former adviser in the office of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak

Nicholas Noe – Director of the Exchange Foundation in Beirut

HA Hellyer – Senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London and nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC

An Israeli-linked cargo ship in a crucial Red Sea shipping route has been seized by Houthi rebels, according to Israel – which claims Iran was behind the move.

The capture of the vessel, which may be owned by a company belonging to one of Israel‘s richest men, raises fears that tensions from the Israel-Hamas war are spreading to a new maritime front.

The Tehran-backed Houthis had earlier threatened to target Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea.

Follow latest: Babies evacuated from Gaza hospital ‘to be taken to Egypt’

NBC News, Sky News’ US partner network, cited three US officials as saying the group had used a helicopter to seize the ship.

They have been firing long-range missile and drone salvoes at Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas since war with Israel flared up on 7 October.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s office said 25 crew members of various nationalities, including Bulgarians, Filipinos, Mexicans and Ukrainians but no Israelis, were on board the hijacked Bahamas-flagged ship.

“All ships belonging to the Israeli enemy or that deal with it will become legitimate targets,” the Houthis said.

Netanyahu’s office called the seizure of the vehicle carrier, Galaxy Leader, an “Iranian act of terror.” The Israeli military called the hijacking a “very grave incident of global consequence”.

Israeli officials said the ship was British-owned and Japanese-operated.

But according to details in public shipping databases, the ship’s ownership is associated with Ray Car Carriers, which was founded by Abraham “Rami” Ungar, one of the richest men in Israel.

Mr Ungar told The Associated Press (AP) news agency that he had been informed of the incident but could not comment until further detail was available.

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which provides warnings to sailors in the Persian Gulf and the wider region, put the hijacking as having occurred 90 miles off the coast of Yemen’s port city of Hodeida, near the coast of Eritrea.

The ship’s Automatic Identification System tracker (AIS) had been switched off, according to analysis by AP of satellite tracking data on MarineTraffic.com.

For safety reasons, ships are supposed to keep their AIS active. But crews might turn the AIS off in some instances, such as if they fear they might be targeted.

The Red Sea, stretching from Egypt’s Suez Canal to the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, is a key trade route for global shipping.

The US Navy has stationed multiple ships in the sea since 7 October.

Former US first lady Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96.

She died peacefully with her family by her side at her home in Plains, Georgia, according to the Carter Center, a not for profit organisation founded by her husband and former president Jimmy Carter, 99.

They were married for 77 years.

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Mr Carter said.

“She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

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