Operation Serval of the ground and the populations". Mathieu Guidère, a scholar of Islam and the Arab world at the University of Toulouse, said in an interview published in the newsmagazine Jeune Afrique, that without the French military intervention the state of Mali would have fallen. France's stated rationale for the operation is that to do otherwise would allow "a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the intervention in a phone call with French President François Hollande as "a brave step against extremist Islamic terrorism". Egypt's former President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist, criticized
Non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War W. S. Morrison as British representative. Conservative, he often adjourned meetings – to the benefit of the Italians and Germans – and the Committee was accused of an anti-Soviet bias. In Geneva, Maxim Litvinov once again confirmed Soviet support, based on the suggestion it would avoid war. However, the Soviet government remained hostile to the idea, and supported Álvarez's view that non-intervention was illegal. On 12 November 1936, significant changes were put in place to the functioning of the committee, with the ratification of plans to post observers to Spanish frontiers and ports to prevent breaches of the agreement. This