#Palestinian Film Thursday

[akajustmerry]

In 2024, I'm watching a film from Palestine every Thursday. I've called it Palestinian Film Thursdays! I've made a list with a tentative schedule on Letterboxd. Join me, if you like! Suggestions are very welcome!

On Thursdays, We Support Palestinian Cinema / By Merry on Letterboxd

[doomdoomofdoom]

If you've been boycotting Eurovision, you may have missed out on how bad it truly was, so here are a few events in no particular order:

The opening act of the semi-finals was Eric Saade, a swedish-palestinian singer who participated in Eurovision 2011. He wore a keffiyeh, a palestinian headdress, around his arm like a wristband.

Despite not making any political statements or drawing attention to his accessory, he was reprimanded by the EBU for "compromising the non-political nature of the event".

During their semi-final performance, the Irish contestant had the word "ceasefire" in old irish runes painted on their face. They were ordered to change it for the final, as it was deemed too political.

The contestant from Israel was not allowed to mingle with the other contestants, due to supposed security risks.

During an Interview, she was asked if she felt any concerns over her participation potentially endangering the event and the people present. The host told her she did not have to answer this question. Dutch contestant 'Joost' asked "why not?"

Joost, while not openly antagonizing the Israeli contestant, has made covert critical remarks about the EBUs decision to allow Israel to participate.

On Friday, the day before the Finale, Joost was investigated by the swedish police for a supposed incident where he threatened an EBU crew member. Thursday, a female camera operator had followed him off-stage to continue filming, even though there was an agreement not to film him off-stage. After she ignored his requests to stop, he threatened her with some sort of gesture.

Joost was disqualified mere hours before the finale. He was slotted to perform just before Israel and considered a favorite and potential winner.

The show itself did not address his disqualification. The dutch entry was simply skipped with no further comment.

Israeli broadcaster KAN was confirmed to have broken EBU rules during their coverage of the Irish act in the Semifinal. The commentator spoke negatively about their act, condemning the very scary goth aesthetic, and noting their willingness to criticize Israel's actions.

Despite Irish contestant Bambie Thug lodging a complaint with the EBU, there was no penalty or other repercussion.

If you were hoping that the event itself would turn into some sort of protest, I have to disappoint you:

Despite rumors of other contestants dropping out over Joost's disqualification, all of them performed.

There was audible booing every time Israel was on-screen, including their performance, announcement of points, and every time they received points. There was equally audible cheering.

No contestant or spokesperson directly addressed the ""controversy"" (read: ongoing genocide being artwashed), although very few made covert remarks about peace, love, dignity, and equality.

The most explicit it got was the Austrian spokesperson, saying something along the lines of "It's hard to find only positive words in a time where heartlessness prevails. But we hope everyone can unite through music and show that everyone deserves to be treated equally"

No one stormed on stage or held up a palestinian flag or anything, if you were hoping for that. I certainly was.

Israel gave its 12 points (both Jury and public) to Luxembourg. The singer is half-israeli and born in Jerusalem.

Jury votes mostly ignored Israel, netting them a total of 52 points through jury votes, which put them somewhere in the middle of the scoreboard. Norway, Cyprus, and Germany awarded them 8 points each, making them the main contributors.

In contrast, Israel received 323 points from the public voting. They were second only to Croatia with 337. 15 public votings, including "rest of the world" awarded Israel their 12 points, more than any other country would receive. The only countries not to award any points to Israel in the public vote were Croatia and Ukraine.

Israel thereby placed 5th out of 25.

But hey, at least the winner (Switzerland) was nonbinary, diversity win amirite. Notably, they had to smuggle in their pride flag, since EBU guidelines only allow flags of participating countries and the rainbow flag. (This is also why palestinian flags were not allowed. It's not a new rule, but they certainly weren't going to start bending it now.)

If there's one thing to take away from this: Do not ever think the rest of the world is on your side, just because your social media is. The rest of the world has shown their allegiance, and it lies with Israel and Genocide.

Do not stop fighting for what is right.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Crown prosecutors have dropped assault and harassment charges against a woman who pulled the hijab of a protester at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Ottawa in May, saying it needed to balance the public interest in prosecution and the reasonable prospect of conviction.  As part of the reasoning given for withdrawing charges on Thursday, assistant Crown attorney Moiz Karimjee said the Crown considered a number of factors, including that the victim was chanting "From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free," which he said could be reasonably inferred to be "a call for genocide of the Jewish people." Karimjee noted Hayfa Abdelkhaleq was chanting the phrase outside Ottawa City Hall on May 14 when Lorna Bernbaum approached her and pulled her hijab. Bernbaum was on her way to a celebration of Israel's Independence Day when she encountered Abdelkhaleq, who was waving a Palestinian flag and protesting Israel's assault on Gaza. Video showed Bernbaum, 74, giving the middle finger to the camera before she pulled down Abdelkhaleq's headscarf, revealing her hair.  Abdelkhaleq responded by shouting, "Shame, shame on you," as Bernbaum walked away. Following an investigation by the Ottawa Police Service's hate crime and bias unit, Bernbaum was charged with criminal harassment by threatening conduct, assault and mischief. 

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Scenes of massive destruction and rescue efforts following an Israeli airstrike that targeted a residential home in the Al-Hasayna neighborhood, west of the Nuseirat Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, resulting in more than a dozen casualties, including women and children. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

DAY 258: ISRAELI OCCUPATION UNPREPARED FOR WAR WITH HEZBOLLAH, ESTIMATED ONLY 50 HOSTAGES STILL ALIVE IN GAZA, OCCUPATION DESTRUCTION LEAVES 67% OF INFRASTRUCTURE DESTROYED, AMERICAN FLOATING PIER TO RESUME OPERATIONS ON THURSDAY, GENOCIDE GOES ON FOR YET ANOTHER DAY

On 258th day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 4 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 35 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 130 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

"We are in a bad situation and are not ready for a real war," the CEO for Israel's government-owned Noga electric company, Shaul Goldstein said at the National Security Research Institute conference, held in Sderot in the occupied territories.

According to reporting in the Hebrew media, Goldstein was asked whether he could guarantee that their would be electricity in the Israeli entity in a future war with Hezbollah, responding that "the answer is no, but we will rely on Israeli resourcefulness. Israel is an energy island and we have to provide for ourselves - this is also our advantage, we are trained to work on the island."

"When I took office and began to investigate what the real threat is to the electricity sector, I asked - let's say a missile hits the electricity sector and there is a power outage for an hour, three hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours and so on. What happens in such a situation to Israel?" Goldstein said, throwing back his own question, answering that "The bottom line is that after 72 hours - It is impossible to live in Israel."

"People don't understand how much our lives here depend on electricity," Goldstein continued, "I have 15 inspectors across the country, if there's a power outage then after 5 hours I don't have a phone to call him. Let's say he receives a carrier pigeon after 12 hours - the same inspector arrives at a gas station but there's no gas, Not a single gas station is working, at each station there is a queue of at least 30 km, if not more."

"All our infrastructure - the optical fibers, the ports - we are in a bad state. We are not ready for a real war. We live in a fantasy world in my eyes. The good thing is that we have invested a lot in protection, a joint team with the electric company as well."

Goldstein went on to say that "If Nasrallah [of Hezbollah] wants to take down Israel's electricity grid, he only has to pick up the phone to the person in charge of Beirut's electricity system, which looks exactly like Israel's. He doesn't even need a UAV filming, he calls a second-year electrical engineer and asks him where the most critical points are in Israel. Everything is on the internet, I'm not saying it here but anyone who goes on the internet discovers it."

"The recognition of our situation has not penetrated. If the war is postponed for a year, five years, a decade - our situation will be better," Goldstein added.

In response to Goldstein's statements, the CEO of the electric company Meir Spiegler stated that "Shaul Goldstein's statement regarding the lack of resilience of the electric network is irresponsible, disconnected from reality and creates panic among the public."

Similarly, the Occupation's Energy Ministry also responded, issuing a statement stating that "the Ministry wishes to clarify that the energy economy in Israel is robust and ready to deal with all possible scenarios."

The Ministry continued by saying that "since the beginning of the war, the Ministry has worked tirelessly to ensure the supply of energy to all citizens of the country, while carefully preparing for extreme scenarios and possible disruptions in supply. These efforts are carried out in close cooperation with the security authorities, with the aim of managing electricity demand, energy surplus and fuel stocks."

"The energy sector is organized according to the national reference scenario established by the National Emergency Authority (Rachel). There are several scenarios and the Alta scenario, where over 60% of households may be left without electricity for up to 72 hours, is an extreme scenario and the probability of this is low. However, the ministry is constantly working to reduce the likelihood of the scenario materializing and to prepare for an exit as quickly as possible from the Alta situation, should it indeed materialize," the Energy Ministry said.

"All the relevant bodies, including the Noga company and the electric company, are acting in accordance with the emergency scenario of Rahel and the professional guidelines of the ministry. The Ministry of Energy calls on the citizens of Israel to prepare in accordance with the directives of the Home Front Command, including equipping themselves with batteries, water and portable chargers, in order to ensure maximum preparedness in emergency situations," the Energy Ministry concluded.

In other news today, Thursday, June 20th, an American official, speaking with the Wall Street Journal, told the newspaper that the number of Israeli hostages still alive in the Gaza Strip is considerably less than the official estimates given in "Israel".

According to the official, whose conclusion is based upon Israeli intelligence, suggests the number of hostages still held alive in Gaza now numbers about 50, out of an original approximation of 120 hostages, suggesting that as many as 70 of the hostages have already died.

This number contradicts the data officially published by the Zionist entity, which suggests that just 43 abductees have been killed while in captivity.

So far, the bodies of 19 hostages have been returned to "Israel" in special operations, including 8 over the last three months.

In the meantime, in other news, two US officials spoke with Reuters today, telling the news organization that the floating dock built by the Americans is expected to resume operations to unload Humanitarian aid for starving and desperate Palestinians on Thursday.

The two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the pier had been reconstructed on Wednesday after being temporarily dismantled last Friday due to poor sea conditions.

Humanitarian aid began arriving through the US-built pier on May 17th, while the United Nations said it had transported 137 truckloads of aid to its warehouses in Gaza, equivalent to about 900 tons of aid.

The Americans have also previously received criticism for supposedly allowing the Israeli occupation army to use the pier during its recent rescue operation to recover four Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, an operation in which the occupation army hid its soldiers using humanitarian aid trucks and which led to the deaths of 274 Palestinians and wounded another 698.

In further news, on Wednesday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) said that the Zionist entity has now destroyed 67% of the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip since the start of the Occupation's war of genocide, including roads, bridges, public facilities, parks, sewage systems and water wells.

The organization also noted that the Israeli occupation has completely destroyed all water wells and sewage pumps, and that the process of pumping sewage has been halted entirely for 8 months as a result of the Occupation's destruction of Gaza's infrastructure and the depletion of fuel, causing large areas of the Palestinian enclave to become flooded with sewage.

Further, the Palestinian refugee organization also mentioned that all areas of Gaza are without water following the Israeli occupation's destruction of 90% of the enclave's water wells by bombing, shelling and a lack of fuel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation continues its random bombing and shelling of Gaza, leaving dozens of casualties across multiple sectors of the Strip.

According to local reporting, medical sources in Gaza told Palestinian media outlets that two female civilians were killed, and 12 others wounded, after Zionist warplanes bombed a house belonging to the Jadallah family, in the Al-Hasayna neighborhood of the Nuseirat Camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

Occupation artillery shelling also targeted neighborhoods east of the Bureij Camp, along with the Al-Maghazi Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, while also targeting central and western neighborhoods of the city of Rafah and east of Khan Yunis, in the south of Gaza.

Speaking with the local media, Mayor of Rafah, Ahmed Al-Sufi, said the Israeli occupation's destruction of the Rafah border crossing aimed to make the Gaza Strip unfit for life, further pointing out that the occupation forces continue to destroy entire residential squares in the Saudi neighborhood, and that the occupation has also destroyed more than 70% of Rafah's infrastructure.

The Zionist army also bombed a gathering of merchants and aid protection committees on Salah al-Din Street, east of the city of Rafah, killing at least 11 Palestinians and wounding up to 30 others, some of whom remain in critical condition.

Further Occupation artillery shelling targeted the vicinity of the Al-Alam roundabout, west of Rafah, killing two Palestinians and bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the city today to 23.

The Israeli occupation forces are also continuing to advance with reinforcements towards the west of Rafah, while destroying entire residential blocks nearly constantly.

North of Gaza, the occupation army bombed a gathering of civilians in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, killing one Palestinian and wounding at least five others.

Zionist fighter jets also bombed residential buildings on Kashko Street in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of three civilians from the Aslim family.

Occupation warplanes also bombed in the vicinity of Jabal al-Rayes, east of the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, while two civilians were killed when an Israeli drone fired a missile at them.

According to medical sources with Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital said they'd received the bodies of two martyrs after being targeted by a missile from an Israeli drone on Al-Sikka Street, in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

Meanwhile, in another attack, a Zionist reconnaissance drone fired a missile towards a gathering of civilians in the city of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, killing one Palestinian and wounding a number of others.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 37'431 Palestinians killed, including over 15'000 children and upwards of 10'000 women, while another 85'653 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 20th, 2024

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#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[vague-humanoid]

Charges dropped against woman filmed pulling Pro-Palestinian protester's hijab | CBC News

As part of the reasoning given for withdrawing charges on Thursday, assistant Crown attorney Moiz Karimjee said the Crown considered a number of factors, including that the victim was chanting "From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free," which he said could be reasonably inferred to be "a call for genocide of the Jewish people."

[mariacallous]

A new documentary about Benjamin Netanyahu premiered at a major film festival this week, at a moment when he is facing intense global scrutiny. But filmgoers in the Israeli prime minister’s own country may never get to see it.

That’s because “The Bibi Files,” produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, makes extensive use of leaked police interrogation tapes from Netanyahu’s ongoing, years-long corruption scandals — footage that is illegal to screen in Israel. But it’s still causing controversy in Israel and testing its restrictive media laws. 

In an attempt to block the film’s release, Netanyahu this week sued the state of Israel and Raviv Drucker, an Israeli journalist he has long seen as a thorn in his side and who serves as a producer on the film. The suit claimed that the film violated Israeli law by making use of unapproved interrogation footage. It claimed that Drucker, a credited producer on the film who has published damning investigations of Netanyahu, was the leaker (which the filmmakers deny).

But a judge dismissed his case, because it was filed hours before the film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday. The version that premiered in Toronto was a work-in-progress cut of “The Bibi Files,” and had been added to the festival schedule only days before. 

Those in attendance described a searing indictment of its subject, with some issuing a plea for the film to make its way, somehow, to Israeli audiences. (Transcripts of the interrogations themselves have previously leaked to the press.)

​​“Take this film and airdrop it over Israel,” one supportive audience member said, according to a Deadline account. “Because otherwise, I’m afraid people won’t be able to see it there.”

The film currently has a sales agent but no distributor. Bloom told the Toronto crowd she was still working on figuring out the ending. The film festival’s opening night was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, who said the Royal Bank of Canada — a main sponsor of the festival that has also been targeted by Canada’s Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement for its dealings in Israel — “funds genocide.”

Earlier this week, thousands of Israelis thought they would be able to watch the film after all, via a channel on the social media platform Telegram that promised a “complete and exclusive copy” of the movie. Those who joined the channel reportedly included former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who appears in the doc (and was himself convicted and imprisoned on corruption charges).

But according to Israeli media, the founder of the channel backtracked on that promise after uploading a few clips (including one where Netanyahu reportedly says, “Liars!” and bangs on the table), citing “a legal restriction at the moment in Israel, by agreement with the source.”

The film has become the latest flashpoint in an Israeli media climate that, according to the World Press Freedom Index, has only gotten more restrictive since the outbreak of war with Hamas. Israeli officials in recent months have briefly confiscated Associated Press equipment and shut down Al-Jazeera’s operations in the country, in both cases claiming the organizations were publishing information that supported Hamas or endangered Israeli troops. On Thursday, Israel announced it would revoke the press credentials of individual Al-Jazeera journalists. 

Additionally, analyses of Israeli media reporting on the war in Gaza have shown that Israelis rarely see footage of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military. (Palestinian news sources, by contrast, have shown little of Israeli suffering on Oct. 7, 2023, or afterward.)

Meanwhile, a pro-Netanyahu influence effort has allegedly proffered false Israeli intelligence to international news outlets as part of an influence campaign to justify his wartime leadership. The Jewish Chronicle, a British Jewish newspaper that initially reported on the false intelligence, said on Thursday that it was investigating the credentials of a reporter who covered the purported intelligence.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has faced mounting street protests drawing hundreds of thousands of Israelis who are opposed to what they see as his recalcitrance in ending the war and bringing Israeli hostages home. But the nearly year-old war isn’t the focus of “The Bibi Files.” Instead, the film covers another Netanyahu scandal that has received far less attention abroad and has faded even in the minds of Israelis: his multiple trials for corruption, which have been ongoing for years. 

In the film, director Alexis Bloom focuses on the corruption cases that long predate the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. The police footage comes from interrogations of Netanyahu conducted between 2016 and 2018 and focuses on the extensive allegations that he engaged in bribery and political favors during earlier stints as prime minister. 

“You could see this pattern of democratic backsliding going on worldwide,” Bloom told the audience following the screening. “You see parallels with what’s going on in Israel, in Hungary, in Russia, with this sort of strongman syndrome. That’s what interested me.”

Bloom could not immediately be reached for comment, while requests for comment to Gibney’s production company were not returned. Gibney’s extensive filmography includes previous explorations of Israeli state secrets: his 2016 documentary “Zero Days” was an investigation of the American-Israeli malware program Stuxnet, which targeted Iran’s nuclear program.

To Bloom, whose previous films include documentaries about Roger Ailes and WikiLeaks, the interrogation footage was a key part of the portrait of Netanyahu in wartime. 

“Those recordings shed light on Netanyahu’s character in a way that is unprecedented and extraordinary,” she told Variety ahead of the film’s screening. “They are powerful evidence of his venal and corrupt character and how that led us to where we are at right now.””

And it’s not just Bibi himself in the footage. Other Netanyahu family members and allies are also interrogated. Netanyahu’s wife Sara and son Yair, outspoken figures in Israeli discourse who are seen as villains by many of Netayahu’s critics, feature in the film; so do pro-Israel Republican megadonors Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon, as well as Israeli billionaire and Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan, who is central to the corruption allegations. 

Bloom, whose father is Jewish and who was born in South Africa but is now based in the United States, uses the footage to paint Netanyahu as craven and power-hungry. She links his attempts to evade his corruption charges to his handling of the war in Gaza. The film also links Netanyahu’s fight against the corruption charges to his other heavily scrutinized decisions in the lead-up to the attacks — including his alliances with far-right parties in his governing coalition, and his endorsement of a controversial and so far unsuccessful plan to weaken the Israeli court system.

She and Gibney said that the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack motivated them to finish as much of the film as they could, hoping to turn public tide against Netanyahu and push him out of power.

“We felt it was important, and frankly, our duty as world citizens to make our story known as soon as possible because people are dying every day,” Gibney told Variety.

[eretzyisrael]

An Israeli Air Force strike in Gaza City on July 31 killed Ismail al-Ghoul, a senior Hamas operative who took part in the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 invasion, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Thursday.

Al-Ghoul, who doubled as a journalist for Qatar’s Al Jazeera, participated in the murderous onslaught and instructed other terrorists on how to record and distribute videos of their attacks, the IDF said.

The statement stressed that the activities of al-Ghoul, a member of Hamas’s elite Nukba Force that led the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israeli communities, were a “vital part” of the Islamist movement’s terrorist actions.

“The IDF and Shin Bet will continue to operate to eliminate terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre,” the army said.

The IDF clarification came after the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Israel to explain the deaths of the Al Jazeera reporter and cameraman Ramy El-Rify as they were en route to film near a house belonging to slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran this week.

While combat operations in the Strip have largely winded down amid increasing threats on Israel’s border with Lebanon, IDF troops continue to operate against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Published: Oct 14, 2023

I was raised to curse Israel and pray for the destruction of Jews, writes AYAAN HIRSI ALI... That's why I know all too well Hamas is another ISIS - whatever useful idiots in the West say

All across the West, there is no shortage of people blaming the horrors in Israel on Israel itself — and openly supporting the perpetrators.

The head of policy at the Community Security Trust, which monitors hate crimes committed against British Jews, has said: 'Anti-Semites are getting excited by the sight of dead Jews... Hamas murdering Israeli civilians has exhilarated them... We've had reports of people driving past synagogues shouting 'Kill the Jews'.'

Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain are currently three times higher than they were this time last year, the charity adds.

'Free Palestine' graffiti has been scrawled on a railway bridge in Golders Green, a Jewish area of north London, while in Oxford Street, one young woman — who may well have been radicalised in England — was filmed ripping down posters that pleaded for the safe return of the babies taken hostage by Hamas. 'Free Palestine, f*** you!' she screamed at an onlooker who dared to remonstrate with her.

On Thursday night in Paris, police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse hundreds of people at a pro-Palestine rally, in which protesters chanted 'Israel murderer [sic]' and 'End the siege of Gaza.'

Outside the Sydney Opera House, about 1,000 protesters lit flares and waved Palestinian flags — and some were filmed chanting: 'Gas the Jews.'

In the U.S., meanwhile, 31 student groups at Harvard signed an open letter claiming that the 'Israeli regime' was 'entirely responsible for all unfolding violence', while California's Stanford University displayed a banner declaring that Palestine would be made free 'by any means necessary' — a sinister slogan that tacitly justifies Hamas's slaughter of children in pursuit of its aims.

Not to be outdone, the Chicago 'chapter' of the Black Lives Matter movement posted an image of a paraglider alongside the slogan 'I stand with Palestine'. The reference, of course, was to Hamas paragliders who descended on Israel's Supernova music festival last Saturday to rape and butcher at least 260 young people.

In short, anti-Semites the world over have been emboldened by this crisis, and Jews are once again being blamed for their own massacre. And I am not remotely surprised. In my childhood, I was steeped in the Islamist movement's noxious anti-Semitism — which has been on such ugly display this week.

Born in Mogadishu, Somalia, I spent my early years escaping political strife after my father was imprisoned for being an anti-government activist. We moved between countries before settling in Kenya.

The worst insult in the Somali community was to be called a 'Jew', not that any of us actually knew one. To be called a 'Jew' was so abhorrent, some felt justified in killing anyone who so dishonoured them with this 'slur'.

As a teenager in Nairobi in the 1980s, I joined the Muslim Brotherhood — the strict Sunni Islamist movement, founded in Egypt in 1928, from which Hamas ultimately descends.

I vividly remember sitting with my female fellows in mosques, cursing Israel and praying to Allah to destroy the Jews. We were certainly not interested in a peaceful 'two-state solution': we were taught to want to see Israel wiped off the map.

When I was 16, my school's teacher of religion was Sister Aziza. She read to us the Koran's lurid descriptions of the everlasting fire that burns flesh and dissolves skin — the place reserved for Jews.

Sister Aziza described Jews as physically monstrous, with horns coming from their heads, out of which flew devils that would corrupt the world. Jews controlled everything, she told us, and it was the duty of Muslims to destroy them.

It was a lot to take in for a teenager who read Western romance novels in secret, but I believed every word.

When the fatwa was issued against the British writer Salman Rushdie in 1989, a small crowd gathered in a Nairobi car park to burn a copy of his novel The Satanic Verses.

Sister Aziza urged us to join in the condemnations of Rushdie and I am ashamed to say I took part in the book-burning. I was certain Rushdie should be killed, but the scene nevertheless made me uncomfortable.

That seed of doubt grew over the next few years as I questioned why, if Allah was so just, women were treated as mere chattels in some Muslim families.

Over time, my questions turned into open rebellion against the Muslim Brotherhood, Islam and, ultimately, my family. 

My father sent me to relatives in Germany in 1992 so I could go from there to Canada to join the distant cousin he had married me off to. I ran away from that marriage and travelled to the Netherlands where I sought asylum.

Eventually, I became a member of the Dutch parliament, and later settled in America.

I abandoned my religion, but I have never lost my clear-sighted understanding, forged in my childhood, of Islamism's pathological hatred of Jews, as well as Muslims considered as heretics and non-Muslims in general.

The former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi — a one-time leader of the Muslim Brotherhood — declared that Muslims should 'nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred' of Jews. His organisation has done just that — and the despicable sentiment is the underlying context to Hamas's most recent attacks.

The truth, however, is that Hamas is no more a friend of the Palestinians than it is a friend of Israel.

Those who see the conflict as a simple territorial dispute between a colonial state and a dispossessed minority fail to recognise Hamas for what it really is: a gang of genocidal Islamist thugs backed by a theocratic, anti-Semitic regime in Iran.

Useful idiots on the far-Left in Western countries, who blindly support Hamas because they see it as a freedom-fighting group, harm the very people they claim to defend.

They say they want peace —and perhaps many of them do. But real peace talks based on the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab countries have made painstaking but undeniable progress despite the efforts of Hamas.

Until Hamas's recent attacks, Saudi Arabia and Israel had looked set to normalise relations. This murderous incursion was an attempt to derail such talks — and thus ruin any chance of lasting peace.

Ordinary Palestinians want to build a prosperous, functioning society. Hamas, in its obsession with annihilating Israel, doesn't care about that. It wishes only to bring about a genocidal Islamist dystopia.

It is Hamas, after all, that holds Palestinians hostage in Gaza, setting up military installations in — and launching rockets from — civilian areas in the full knowledge that counterstrikes will kill innocent people.

It is Hamas that impoverishes Palestinians by stealing humanitarian aid to fund its terror. This is what 'by any means necessary' truly signifies: supreme callousness towards Palestinian life.

If you genuinely want to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or more generally between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East, then Hamas should be your enemy.

And even if — like many in the West, as we can now see — you don't care at all about Israeli or Jewish lives, even if you care only about the lives of Palestinians, Hamas is still your enemy. After all, Hamas ruthlessly persecutes any Palestinians who disagree with it: a 2022 U.S. State Department report found that, among other abuses, Hamas detained and assaulted critical journalists.

It is especially hostile to public figures associated with its rival Fatah, the Palestinian party voted out of office in Gaza in 2006, but which still runs the West Bank.

Hamas harasses its own dissidents, and has invaded the home of at least one young critical activist, telling his parents to keep their son under control — or else.

As a Dutch MP in 2004 and 2005, I travelled to the West Bank and met Palestinians.

In public, they spouted all the usual lines about Israel being their 'oppressor'. But once the cameras were switched off, they spoke more truthfully.

They complained bitterly about their treatment by Hamas and other radical groups, and told me how money meant to feed the people was being taken to fund those organisations' activities and their leaders' luxurious lifestyles. Arabs and Palestinians alike told me how fed up they were with conflict, and how ready they were for peace.

Hamas, like other Islamist groups, has done its best over the course of decades to stomp all over those wishes.

And it has been successful. The shocking rise in anti-Semitism in the West owes much to the entrenched Islamist networks that have spent years stirring up this ancient hatred.

Europe must now wake up to these fifth columnists who shamelessly celebrate violence and bigotry, promoting hatred of the Jewish minority in Europe.

The West must also wake up to the moral corruption of its own Hamas supporters, from Left-wing university students to flag-waving street thugs.

Meanwhile, elite human-rights organisations need to do far more to name terrorism when they see it.

It is horrifying to see Amnesty International claiming that one of the 'root causes' of the crisis is 'Israel's system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians'.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, should do more than merely equivocating in its insistence that no injustice can justify another.

This is not to argue that Israel should be immune from criticism. My point is that much of the criticism is at best misguided and at worst thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

Hamas, like Lebanon's Hezbollah, Isis in Syria and Iraq, Nigeria's Boko Haram, Somalia's Al-Shabaab and several other groups, are fighting not for the liberty and prosperity of Muslims but, ultimately, for the annihilation of Israel and the imposition of an Islamic state.

If Palestinians and other Muslims have to suffer for that aim, then so be it.

Well-meaning celebrities and broadcasters who, out of wilful ignorance and good intentions, hesitate to condemn Hamas as terrorists need to recognise this truth.

These are dark times for Israel and for the world, but there are some reasons to be hopeful.

This week's strong statement by America, Britain, France, Italy and Germany condemning Hamas while recognising the 'legitimate aspirations' of the Palestinians is a good sign.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer's condemnation of Hamas is particularly welcome, given that, until recently, his party was led by a man who called these butchers his 'friends'.

And if Israel and the Arab states do not allow their worst instincts to rule them, talks may continue — and might just secure peace in the longer term.

Hamas is another Isis. They are the enemies of Israel; they are the enemies of all Jews; they are the enemies of Palestinians; they are the enemies of peace and freedom. They are the enemies of Western civilisation itself.

It is about time they were recognised as such.

To achieve a two-state solution — with free and prosperous Palestinians and a safe Israel — the first, fundamental step is for people to stop chanting slogans in support of terrorists and murderers, and for everyone to cry in unison: 'Down with Hamas!'

==

Remember two years ago when everyone was arguing about whether the terrorist assault and takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban was Trump's fault or Biden's fault? Today, people are scolding us not to call the same thing terrorism. It's "liberation" and "decolonization."

Remember in 2014 when Boko Haram kidnapped the children and everyone was campaigning for their safe return because it was an unconscionable act of terrorism? Now kidnapping and murdering children is an act of legitimate revolution.

Remember when kids rushed to support ISIS the instant they rose, and people were appalled and argued over how could it could be possible to support a terrorist state that seized illegitimate power? Online radicalization was blamed, and many didn't want to believe that indoctrination had primed it well in advance. Now, if your Gender and Postcolonial Studies haven't activated you to support a terrorist state that has seized illegitimate power in the region, you're a bigot.

Remember when we cheered on the Iranians for finally fighting back against the regime of terror that hung over them, hoping for them to finally win the war against the regime? Now, Israel has to simply take whatever assaults of terrorism are dealt at them; it is, as Douglas Murray said, is the only country which is not allowed to win a war.

Remember when certain people liked to call everyone who disagreed with them "Nazis" and that punching them was the right thing to do? Now the extermination of all the Jews is the "Be Kind" position.

How morally confused do you have to be, after all this, to side with the terrorists?

Hamas is to Palestine as ISIS is to Syria and the Taliban is to Afghanistan.

As I've posted about before, Islam is a supremacist ideology. Its goal is world domination. They tell us that. Loudly.

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-4/Book-52/Hadith-196

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah 's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight with the people till they say, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' and whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,' his life and property will be saved by me except for Islamic law, and his accounts will be with Allah, (either to punish him or to forgive him.)"

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Bukhari/USC-MSA/Volume-1/Book-8/Hadith-387

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah."

Narrated Maimun bin Siyah that he asked Anas bin Malik, "O Abu Hamza! What makes the life and property of a person sacred?" He replied, "Whoever says, 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah', faces our Qibla during the prayers, prays like us and eats our slaughtered animal, then he is a Muslim, and has got the same rights and obligations as other Muslims have."

https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/USC-MSA/Book-41/Hadith-6985

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.

It has successfully weaponized intersectional shibboleths to trick useful idiots into thinking that the supremacist is the oppressed victim.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

Columbia University professor Shai Davidai, a Jewish Israeli, defended his right to condemn Hamas’ atrocities on Thursday after learning that an anonymous group of graduate students has accused him of anti-Palestinian racism and demanded a professional association of which he is a member publicly censure him.

Anti-Zionist TikTok influencer Jessica Burbank first reported the accusations the graduate students lodged in a letter to the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), an organization founded in 1974 to promote the social psychology field and its usefulness to society. Comprising over 7,500 student and faculty members, it provides invaluable funding and networking opportunities.

Accusing Davidai of “targeting individuals — especially Palestinians and students of color,” the students’ letter describes his efforts to hold pro-Hamas student groups accountable for harassing Jewish students and defending terror as “decolonization” as “blatant dereliction of duty with respect to his responsibilities and ethical standards as a professor and faculty member of SPSP.” The students additionally accused him of promoting “doxxing” and “misrepresenting” the views of pro-Hamas groups, all of whom have defended Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 while calling for a ceasefire, a strategy they have employed to portray themselves as a pro-peace movement.

On Thursday, Professor Davidai told The Algemeiner that the man depicted in the letter is not someone his community, students, and peers would recognize, and he accepts that enduring assaults on his character is a consequence of defending the Jewish people wherever they are, be it Israel or New York City.

“Look, I’m speaking up against evil, and against the support of evil,” he said. “I’m willing to take the reputational hits because people that won’t like me for saying what I’m saying — I don’t need them to like me. This isn’t about the performative virtue signaling that is en vogue right now. This is about having a moral compass and standing up for what’s right.”

Davidai went on to express concern that his colleagues in the field have not defended him, a silence which suggests that incriminating pro-Israel activists with baseless accusations will not be denounced or resisted even by moderates holding nuanced views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel’s war against Hamas.

“If I have to pay the price, I’ll pay the price. Thousands and thousands of Jews and non-Jews contact me to say that calling out pro-Hamas support on US college campuses is the right thing to do,” he continued. “And the irony is that I won’t be silenced. They might take away my reputation. They might take away my job and my career. But I’m not the kind of person who will be quiet now that there’s a personal cost for telling the truth. They’re just proving my point.”

Davidai first achieved national notoriety after delivering a thunderous speech before a crowd of students and others gathered on campus in which he called the school’s president a “coward” for refusing to condemn Hamas apologists and anti-Zionist demonstrations on campus.

“I’m talking to you as a dad, and I want you to know we cannot protect your children from pro-terror student organizations, because the president of Columbia University will not speak out,” Davidai said to the students, whom he asked to film and send the remarks to their parents. “Citizens of the US are right now kidnapped in Gaza, and yet the president of the university is allowing — is giving — her support to pro-terror student organizations.”

In many ways, becoming a public figure has been a detriment, Davidai said. His email is flooded daily with notes from antisemites accusing him of being an “Elder of Zion” and a “genocidal baby killer.”

His colleagues, furious that his exposing antisemitism and left-wing radicalism at Columbia University has caused important donors to pull their support from the school, have never commented on the hate mail even though they are always copied as recipients of it, he alleged.

[standing-with-palestine]

Not all Israeli are behind their Government’s plan to kill all Palestinians. In this Video, that was filmed two weeks ago, we see Israeli burning their Flag in protest.

Thursday February 29 2024

146 Days of Genocide

[ultyso]

Videos at Source

Alt: “Another air strike on an apartment in Dir Al-Balah. We keep losing people by the minute in the Gaza Strip. Ceasefire now.”

Source Source Source

Alt: “Israel posted a photo of their soldiers assisting this elderly Palestinian man in Gaza. After filming was over, they shot him twice in the back and killed him.”

“His granddaughter confirms that Israeli soldiers killed him with two bullets to his back.”

Source

Alt: “They said we won’t have internet and calls on Thursday.”

[akajustmerry]

Happy Palestinian Film Thursday!

It's week 2 of me watching a Palestinian film, and supporting cinema of Palestine on Thursday nights (AEDT). This week's film is the short documentary: Jamila's Mirror (1993). Dir. Arab Loutfi. This documentary is a retrospective of the Palestinian women who have fought as guerilla freedom fighters in the Palestinian resistance. Watch it free on YouTube.

[darkmaga-returns]

Rachel Blevins

Oct 17, 2024

The Israeli Military confirmed that it killed Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza on Thursday, in what reports are describing as an “unplanned operation.” The IDF released a video that appears to show Sinwar’s final moments, in which he threw a stick at the drone filming him, in one final act of defiance.

Max Blumenthal, Editor of The Grayzone, noted that while Netanyahu may be patting himself on the back for killing leaders like Sinwar and Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in the short-term, Israel is lacking strategy in the long-term, as it continues to carry out massacres in the region and further destabilizes itself as a country in the process.

Follow Max Blumenthal on X and check out The Grayzone

SOURCE LINKS:

17 Oct. 2024 - IDF releases VIDEO of ‘Sinwar’s last moments’

17 Oct. 2024 - Israel confirms death of Hamas leader

16 Oct. 2024 - Report: Netanyahu Approves Set of Targets To Hit Inside Iran

14 Oct. 2024 - IDF chief visits base hit in ‘serious and painful’ drone strike

7 Oct. 2024 - Atrocity Inc: How Israel Sells The Destruction Of Gaza

17 Oct. 2024 - 'With Israel no one is safe': North Lebanon village reels after deadly air strike

12 Nov. 2023 - How America’s bloodthirsty journalism cheers on Israel’s war on Gaza

4 Feb. 2024 - CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’

25 March 2024 - Israeli propagandist behind Hamas ‘mass rape’ narrative exposed as grifter, fraud

28 Dec. 2023 - NYT: Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7

15 Oct. 2024 - US gives Israel 30 days to boost Gaza aid or risk cut to military support

15 Oct. 2024 - Shaban al-Dalou: The Palestinian teen burned to death in Israeli bombing

15 Oct. 2024 - ‘Let Him Never be Forgotten’ – Sha’ban Al-Dalou Burned Alive in Israeli Airstrike on Gaza Hospital Camp

11 Oct. 2024 - Israel jails Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo, releases him pending investigation

11 Oct. 2024 - Washington keeps silent after Israel arrests US journalist over report on Iran attack

5 Oct. 2024 - The Grayzone: On the ground investigating Iran's strikes on Israel

[girlschasinggirls]

Palestinian journalist Saif Al Qawasmi became a story in his own right when dozens of far-right Israelis attacked him in full view of the world’s media.

Al Qawasmi was covering the ultranationalist Flag March, which sees tens of thousands of far-right Israelis, mostly teenagers, parade through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday.

A photo of Al Qawasmi being mobbed inside Damascus Gate by a swarm of teenagers quickly went viral online, and became a symbol of the danger the march poses to Palestinians, particularly journalists.

He was knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly, sustaining a head injury.

“The settlers stole my phones, filming equipment and they beat me and insulted me,” he told The National on Thursday after his ordeal.

“The life of a Palestinian journalist, especially in Jerusalem, is very difficult. But after October 7, Palestinian journalists became, in the eyes of the police, a regular civilian, even a terrorist,” he said.

“Our lives became much harder, with arrests and beatings.” …

[gageblackwood]

So I can't get a direct link to the piece, but as I was looking for NYT coverage of the UN genocide trial I found a piece titled: "At a rally near Gaza, far-right Israelis promote plans to resettle the territory."

It reads:

"With international alarm high over the wartime plight of Gaza’s people and concern rising about their future, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said this week that Israel would not permanently occupy Gaza after the war there ends. But some far-right Israelis insist otherwise.

On Thursday afternoon, more than 100 settlers from the Israeli-occupied West Bank drove in a convoy toward the Gaza border. Many of them carried placards bearing a simple slogan: “Returning to Gaza.”

They did not cross the border this time, but they hope to in the near future — and permanently so. Even before the war ends, the settler movement — a powerful and well-organized lobby that includes several prominent lawmakers — wants to re-establish the Jewish settlements in Gaza that were dismantled in 2005, when Israel withdrew its troops from the territory.

“We pray to return,” said Avishay Bar Yehuda, 67, an activist at the rally who said he lived on a Gaza settlement until the 2005 withdrawal.

For most of the world, the settlements were considered illegal under international law, and an obstacle to Palestinian autonomy, the same judgment that still applies to those in the West Bank.

But settlers believe that the Gaza withdrawal was a mistake, for religious reasons — they believe that Gaza was part of the land given to Jews by God — but also for security ones. They say that a significant Israeli civilian presence in Gaza, protected by Israeli soldiers, would have made it far harder for Hamas to seize control of Gaza, which it did within a few years of the Israeli withdrawal, and also far more difficult for the group to attack Israel with the same brutality as it did on Oct. 7.

“Annex it to the state of Israel, and demolish all the houses,” Zvi Sukkot, a hardline lawmaker attending the event, said of northern Gaza. “We need a huge Jewish settlement in Gaza.”

Polling since Oct. 7 consistently suggests that a majority of Israelis remain wary of reintroducing settlements to Gaza, even as Israeli attitudes to Palestinians have otherwise hardened since the attack. Many Israelis say that protecting Jewish towns in such hostile territory would be costly in both military and economic terms.

But powerful forces are nevertheless trying to popularize the idea.

Lawmakers from Mr. Netanyahu’s party proposed legislation in November that would let civilians return to Gaza. Two far-right ministers in his coalition, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said they support resettlement.

Settler activists have circulated blueprints for suggested settlement projects in Gaza. Soldiers in Gaza have filmed themselves promoting resettlement while on duty. Pop stars have spoken in favor of the idea while holding motivational concerts for soldiers waiting to enter Gaza, to loud cheers from the soldiers.

“A Jewish settlement must be built in the territory of the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Smotrich said in a televised interview on Sunday.

And, for now, the settler movement does not necessarily need the government’s support: Since 1967, settler activists often built unauthorized settlements in the West Bank that successive governments ultimately agreed to back."

Gotta say, I have a feeling these people aren't taking the accusation seriously, especially with:

“Annex it to the state of Israel, and demolish all the houses,” Zvi Sukkot, a hardline lawmaker attending the event, said of northern Gaza. “We need a huge Jewish settlement in Gaza.”

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The groups noted that in Nov., Alexandra Orbuch, a writer for The Princeton Tory, a conservative student publication, was assaulted by a male member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) while filming a protest the group held on campus. The man allegedly followed Orbuch to obstruct her efforts, eventually stepping on her foot and pushing her. When Orbuch complained to a nearby public safety officer, the officer told her that she had “incited something.”

Despite the gendered nature of the assault —an issue Princeton has dedicated an entire office to dealing with — the university granted the male student a no-contact oder against Orbuch, explaining that any reporting she published which alluded to him would be considered a violation of the order and result in disciplinary charges. A similar incident occurred in 2022, when Tory reporter Danielle Shapiro attempted to report on the Princeton Committee on Palestine. After being notified of the order, Shapiro was told refer to a “Sexual Misconduct & Title IX” webpage, according to a guest column she wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

“This is at least the second time in the last two years that a Tory student journalist has been silence by a no-contact order at the behest of community members offended by his or her pro-Israel journalism,” Thursday’s letter continued. “This systematic weaponization of no-contact orders to silence pro-Israel journalism — or any journalism — cannot stand.”

The incidents involving Orbuch and Shapiro are two of numerous examples of universities subjecting conservative and pro-Israel campus community members to reputational smearing and denying them the same rights and protections as progressives and pro-Palestinian advocates. The issue has drawn attention from Congress, whose House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce is investigating whether universities such as Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) employed a self-serving interpretation of the US Constitution to avoid punishing students who committed antisemitic discrimination and harassment.