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Mark Follow Market Watch Israeli strike on Gaza humanitarian area kills and wounds dozens, authorities say Story by Associated Press JERUSALEM — Israel’s military conducted a missile strike early Tuesday that targeted a humanitarian area in the Gaza Strip, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians there, authorities said. Details about the strike in the Mawasi coastal community just west of Khan Younis that the Israeli military has designated as a humanitarian zone remained unclear. The area is home to many Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war in which the Israeli military has devastated the wider Gaza Strip after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Footage circulating on social media showed deep craters at the site of the attack, the strewn ruins around it covered in shredded tents, a bicycle and other debris. Rescue workers used shovels to shift through the sand. Bystanders used their hands to dig, illuminated by mobile phone light. At least one crater at the site looked to be as deep as 32 feet. The Israeli military described the strike as hitting “significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command-and-control center,” without immediately providing additional evidence. The Palestinian news agency WAFA said dozens had been killed and wounded, without providing precise casualty figures. It described five missiles striking the area, cratering the ground. The Israeli military said it used “precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional means” it did not immediately describe to limit civilian casualties. Footage circulating on social media showed deep craters at the site of the attack, the strewn ruins around it covered in shredded tents, a bicycle and other debris. Rescue workers used shovels to shift through the sand. Bystanders used their hands to dig, illuminated by mobile phone light. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres that the United Nations has offered to monitor any cease-fire in Gaza and demanded an end to the worst death and destruction he has seen in his more than seven-year tenure. Guterres said in an interview with The Associated Press that it’s “unrealistic” to think the U.N. could play a role in Gaza’s future, either by administering the territory or providing a peacekeeping force, because Israel is unlikely to accept a U.N. role. But he said “the U.N. will be available to support any cease-fire.” The United Nations has had a military monitoring mission in the Middle East, known as UNTSO, since 1948, and “from our side, this was one of the hypotheses that we’ve put on the table,” he said. “Of course, we’ll be ready to do whatever the international community asked for us,” Guterres said. “The question is whether the parties would accept it, and in particular whether Israel would accept it.” Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count. The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead. Meanwhile, the United Nations agency in charge of aid for displaced Palestinians said the Israeli military stopped a convoy for more than eight hours on Monday, despite it coordinating with the troops. The agency’s head Philippe Lazzarini said the staffers who were held had been trying to work on a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza and Gaza City. “The convoy was stopped at gun point just after the Wadi Gaza checkpoint with threats to detain UN staff,” he wrote on the social platform X. “Heavy damage was caused by bulldozers to the UN armoured vehicles.” He said the staff and the convoy later returned to a U.N. base but it was unclear if a polio vaccination campaign would take place Tuesday in northern Gaza. “UN Staff must be allowed to undertake their duties in safety + be protected at all times in accordance with international humanitarian law, he wrote. “Gaza is no different.” The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Coke and Pepsi boycott over Gaza lifts Muslim countries' local sodas Story by Ariba Shahid, Jessica DiNapoli and Farah Saafan KARACHI/CAIRO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola and rival PepsiCo spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades building demand for their soft drinks in Muslim-majority countries including Egypt to Pakistan. Now, both face a challenge from local sodas in those countries due to consumer boycotts that target the globe-straddling brands as symbols of America, and by extension Israel, at a time of war in Gaza. In Egypt, sales of Coke have cratered this year, while local brand V7 exported three times as many bottles of its own cola in the Middle East and the wider region than last year. In Bangladesh, an outcry forced Coca-Cola to cancel an ad campaign against the boycott. And across the Middle East, Pepsi's rapid growth evaporated after the Gaza war started in October. Pakistani corporate executive Sunbal Hassan kept Coke and Pepsi off her wedding menu in Karachi in April. She said she didn't want to feel her money had reached the tax coffers of the United States, Israel's staunchest ally. "With the boycott, one can play a part by not contributing to those funds," Hassan said. Instead, she served her wedding guests Pakistani brand Cola Next. She is not alone. While market analysts say it is hard to put a dollar figure on lost sales and PepsiCo and Coca-Cola still have growing businesses in several countries in the Middle East, Western beverage brands suffered a 7% sales decline in the first half of the year across the region, market researcher NielsenIQ says. In Pakistan, Krave Mart, a leading delivery app, has seen local cola rivals like Cola Next and Pakola soar in popularity to become about 12% of the soft drinks category, founder Kassim Shroff told Reuters this month. Before the boycott, the figure was closer to 2.5%. Shroff said Pakola, which is ice-cream soda flavored, made up most of the purchases before the boycott. He declined to provide figures for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo sales. Consumer boycotts date back at least as far as an 18th century anti-slavery sugar protest in Britain. The strategy was used in the 20th century to fight apartheid in South Africa and has been widely wielded against Israel through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Many consumers shunning Coca-Cola and PepsiCo cite U.S. support of Israel over decades, including in the current, ongoing war with Hamas. "Some consumers are deciding to make different options in their purchases because of the political perception," PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta told Reuters in a July 11 interview, adding that boycotts are "impacting those particular geographies" such as Lebanon, Pakistan and Egypt. "We will manage through it over time," he said. "It's not meaningful to our top line and bottom line at this point." PepsiCo's total revenue from its Africa, Middle East and South Asia division was $6 billion in 2023, earnings releases show. The same year, Coca-Cola's revenue from its Europe, Middle East and Africa region was $8 billion, company filings show. In the six months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that triggered the invasion of Gaza, PepsiCo beverage volumes in the Africa, Middle East and South Asia division barely grew, after notching up 8% and 15% growth in the same quarters of 2022/23, the company said. Volumes of Coke sold in Egypt declined by double-digit percentage points in the six months ended June 28, according to data from Coca-Cola HBC, which bottles there. In the same period last year, volumes rose in high single digits. Coca-Cola has said it does not fund military operations in Israel or any country. In response to a Reuters request, PepsiCo said neither the company "nor any of our brands are affiliated with any government or military in the conflict." Palestinian-American businessman Zahi Khouri founded Ramallah-based Coca-Cola bottler National Beverage Company, which sells Coke in the West Bank. The company's $25 million plant in Gaza, opened in 2016, has been destroyed in the war, he said. Employees were unharmed, he said. Khouri said boycotts were a matter of personal choice but didn't really help Palestinians. In the West Bank itself, he said, they had limited sales impact. "Only ending the occupation would help the situation," said Khouri, who supports the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel's government did not respond to a request for comment. HISTORICAL TARGETS The big soda companies are no stranger to pressure among the Muslim world's hundreds of millions of consumers. After Coke opened a factory in Israel in the 1960s, it was hit by an Arab League boycott that lasted until the early 1990s and benefited Pepsi for years in the Middle East. Coke still lags Pepsi's market share in Egypt and Pakistan, according to market research firm GlobalData. PepsiCo, which entered Israel in the early 1990s, itself faced boycotts when it purchased Israel's SodaStream for $3.2 billion in 2018. In recent years though, Muslim-majority countries with young, rising populations have provided some of the soda giants' fastest growth. In Pakistan alone, Coca-Cola says it has invested $1 billion since 2008, yielding years of double-digit sales growth. PepsiCo had similar gains, according to securities filings. Now, both are losing ground to local brands. Cola Next, which is cheaper than Coke and Pepsi, changed its ad slogan in March to "Because Cola Next is Pakistani," emphasizing its local roots. Cola Next's factories cannot meet the surge in demand, Mian Zulfiqar Ahmed, the CEO of the brand's parent company, Mezan Beverages, said in an interview. He declined to share volume figures. Restaurants, Karachi's private schools association and university students have all taken part in anti-Coca-Cola actions, eroding goodwill built through sponsorship of Coke Studio, a popular music show in Pakistan. Exports of Egyptian cola V7 have tripled this year compared to 2023, founder Mohamed Nour said in an interview. Nour, a former Coca-Cola executive who left the company after 28 years in 2020, said V7 was now sold in 21 countries. Sales in Egypt, where the product has only been available since July 2023, were up 40%, Nour said. Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, warned of long-term damage to consumer loyalty due to boycotts. "If you break habits, it’s going to be harder to win you back in the long run," he said, without giving an estimate of the financial cost to the companies. BANGLADESH BACKFIRE In Bangladesh, Coke launched advertising showing a shopkeeper talking about the company's operations in Palestine. After a public outcry over perceived insensitivity, Coke pulled the ad in June and apologized. In response to a question from Reuters, the company said the campaign "missed the mark." The ad made the boycott worse, said one Bangladeshi advertising executive, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Other American brands seen as symbols of Western culture, such as McDonalds and Starbucks, also face anti-Israel boycotts. Market share for global brands fell 4% in the first half of 2024 in the Middle East, according to NielsenIQ. But the protests have been more visible against the widely-available sodas. As well as boycotts, inflation and economic turmoil in Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh eroded consumers' buying power even before the war, making cheaper local brands more appealing. Last year, Coke's market share in the consumer sector in Pakistan fell to 5.7% from 6.3% in 2022, according to GlobalData, while Pepsi's fell to 10.4% from 10.8%. FUTURE PLANS Coca-Cola and its bottlers, and PepsiCo, still see the countries as important areas for growth, particularly as Western markets slow down. Despite the boycotts, Coke invested another $22 million upgrading technology in Pakistan in April, it said in a press release at the time. Coca-Cola's bottler in Pakistan said to investors in May that it remained "positive about the opportunity" the world's fifth most-populous country offers, and that it invested in the market with a long-term commitment. In recent weeks, PepsiCo reintroduced a brand called Teem soda, traditionally lemon-lime flavored, in Pakistani market, a spokesperson confirmed. The product is now available in a cola flavor with "Made in Pakistan" printed prominently on the label. The companies are also still injecting the Coke and Pepsi brands into the fabric of local communities by sponsoring charities, musicians and cricket teams. Those moves are key to Coke and Pepsi keeping a toehold in the countries long-term even as they face setbacks now, Georgetown's Musgrave said. "Anything you can do to make yourself an ally or presence, a part of a community," helps, he said. (Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Jessica DiNapoli in New York, Farah Saafan in Cairo; Additional reporting by Mohamed Ezz in Cairo and Ananya Mariam Rajesh in Bengaluru; Writing by Jessica DiNapoli; editing by Vanessa O'Connell and Frank Jack Daniel) https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/coke-pepsi-boycott-over-gaza-lifts-muslim-countries-local-sodas-2024-09-04/ [Mod Note: Ads removed. Please do not copy/paste off-topic material.]

The Independent Follow 573.7K Followers Lindsey Graham suggests Israel should nuke Gaza and claims Hiroshima bomb was ‘the right thing’ Story by James Liddell • 10h • 2 min read Senator Lindsey Graham has come under fire for drawing comparisons between Israel’s war on Gaza and the US’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II – urging Israel to “do whatever you have to do”. Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, the South Carolina Republican appeared to justify Israel’s Rafah offensive – something that President Joe Biden has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against – and called the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 the “right decision” for the US. wants to kill you and your family. The Independent Lindsey Graham compares conflict in Gaza to World War II “When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Mr Graham told Kristin Welker. “That was the right decision,” he concluded. The two atomic blasts and the radiation that ensued are estimated to have killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people – most of them civilians. “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war they can’t afford to lose and work with them to minimise casualties,” Mr Graham continued. Ms Welker was stopped in her tracks by the senator’s comments, as he continued to speak over the host. “Why is it okay for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war. Why was it okay to do that? I thought it was okay?” Mr Graham said. He added: “To Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do.” It’s not the first time Mr Graham has shared his controversial opinion about the Middle East conflict, previously urging the US president to blow parts of Iran “off the map”. “I have been saying for six months now... hit Iran,” he told Fox News in December. “They have oil fields out in the open, they have the Revolutionary Guard headquarters you can see from space. Blow it off the map.” The Republican senator’s comments come as Israel launches a ground invasion on the Gazan city of Rafah, with more than 360,000 Palestinians so far having fled the region, according to the United Nations. Tensions between the US and Israel continue to come under strain with Mr Biden warning Mr Netanyahu that the US will curtail the supply of certain weapons if Israel invades Rafah. Mr Netanyahu swiftly responded, telling Phil McGraw on Dr Phil that the halt of precision weapons might cause more civilian casualties due to the uptake of imprecise weaponry. The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

Follow 476.5K Followers Israel destroying Gaza's food system in 'starvation' tactic, UN expert says Story by Emma Farge • 48m Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 16, 2024. REUTERS/Saleh Salem/File Photo© Thomson Reuters By Emma Farge GENEVA (Reuters) - A U.N. expert said on Thursday that Israel was destroying Gaza's food system as part of a broader "starvation campaign" in its war against Hamas militants. Aid officials have warned of looming famine five months into the campaign against the Islamist Palestinian group, while hospitals in the isolated northern part of the enclave say children have started dying from malnutrition. "Israel is not only denying and restricting the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel is destroying the food system in Gaza," Michael Fakhri, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, said in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Palestinians wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 16, 2024. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo© Thomson Reuters "Israel has mounted a starvation campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza," he added, saying that included targeting small-scale fishermen. Israel denies restricting relief into Gaza and has since last week begun working with private contractors to deliver aid. It also denies waging war on civilians, saying its fight is with Hamas whose fighters killed 1,200 people and seized 253 hostages during its Oct. 7 attacks. Israel participates in human rights council debates as an observer and may address the forum later on Thursday. FISHING SECTOR HIT Fakhri, a Lebanese-Canadian law professor, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. He was due to speak about fishing and climate change but used much of the first part of his speech to the 47-member Geneva council to address the Gaza situation. He alleged that Israel is targeting small-scale fishers by denying them access to the sea and destroying boats and shacks. Around 80% of Gaza's fishing sector has been destroyed since Oct. 7, he said, adding that every boat had been demolished by Israeli forces in the main port of Gaza City. Reuters could not verify that, though images from Oct. 8 showed smoke billowing from a boat at that port after Israeli strikes. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Aditional reporting by Nidal Al Mughrabi; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

Business Insider Follow Story by ashoaib@insider.com (Alia Shoaib) • 4h Smoke rises over a buildings in Gaza City on October 9, 2023 during an Israeli air strike. Sameh Rahmi/Getty Images© Sameh Rahmi/Getty Images An Israeli minister suggested that a nuclear weapon could be dropped on Gaza. Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly distanced himself from the remark by Amichai Eliyahu, a heritage minister. Netanyahu also suspended Eliyahu from meetings of Israel's cabinet. 1 / 12 1 11 powerful images of the wave of surprise attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants including burning tanks and rocket barrages©Amir Cohen/REUTERS Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a state of war after Hamas launched a surprise attack. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israel in "Operation Al-Aqsa Storm." Insider compiled 11 dramatic images showing the consequences of the surprise attack on Israel. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared a state of war after Palestinian militant organization Hamas launched thousands of rockets in a surprise attack on Saturday. "The Israel Defense Forces will defend Israeli civilians and the Hamas terrorist organization will pay heavy price for its actions," Israel Defense Forces said in a statement, per Insider. Hamas' military commander Mohammad Deif called on Palestinians in Israel and those in neighboring Arab countries to join the attack, which he called "Operation Al-Aqsa Storm," in a rare statement, per the Washington Post. Palestinian militants infiltrated Israeli territory by land, sea, and some even used motorized paragliders as the attacks continued. Images show the scale of the attacks, including captured Israeli military vehicles, buildings aflame, and Israelis fleeing areas targeted by Hamas. Latest reports from Israeli media say 40 Israelis have been killed so far, with a further 740 people wounded by the Hamas bombings and raids. Israel's foreign ministry claimed that Hamas fighters were wantonly murdering civilians, per Sky News. Here are 11 dramatic images as the conflict unfolds. See more An Israeli minister on Sunday suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and was swiftly suspended from part of his role. Amichai Eliyahu, Israel's heritage minister, made the remark in a radio interview, in which he also said he believed "there are no non-combatants in Gaza," Israel's Haaretz news site reported. Eliyahu is part of Israel's far-right Otzma Yehudit party, itself part of the fragile coalition forming Israel's government as it wages war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. When asked by the interview whether a nuclear weapon could be used on Gaza, Eliyahu responded: "That's one way." Eliyahu also advocated for Israel taking control of the strip's territory and expelling Palestinians, who he suggested could go "to Ireland or deserts," per The Times of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded within a few hours. His office released a statement that Eliyahu's nuclear weapon comment was "not based in reality." It said Israel's military was operating in "accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents" — a claim heavily disputed by observers and advocates in Gaza. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also criticized Eliyahu's comments, and noted that Eliyahu was not directly involved in carrying out the war. Al JazeeraHeavy battles reported between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in northern Gaza 8:55 "It's a good thing that people like this are not in charge of Israel's security," Gallant said. Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from Cabinet meetings until further notice, the Associated Press reported. The outlet noted that the move had "no practical effect." Eliyahu later tried to walk back his comments, AP reported, saying: "Anyone reasonable would understand that the comment was metaphorical. But we definitely need to respond powerfully and disproportionately to terrorism." Following the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that killed some 1,400 people, Israel has been bombarding Gaza with air strikes and executing a ground invasion. Some 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza, its authorities said, many of them children.

Israeli jets strike Gaza after Hamas arson attacks (msn.com)

Israel Kills Palestinians and Western Liberals Shrug. Their Humanitarianism Is a Sham. Mehdi Hasan April 2 2018, 8:55 p.m. “IF THE CONCEPT of intervention is driven by universal human rights, why is it — from the people who identify themselves as liberal interventionists — why do we never hear a peep, a word, about intervening to protect the Palestinians?” That was the question I put to the French philosopher, author, and champion of liberal (or humanitarian) interventionism, Bernard-Henri Lévy, on my Al Jazeera English interview show “Head to Head” in 2013. The usually silver-tongued Levy struggled to answer the question. The situation in Palestine is “not the same” as in Syria and “you have not all the good on one side and all the bad on the other side,” said Levy, who once remarked in reference to the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, that he had “never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of my exchange with the man known as “BHL” this past weekend, as I watched horrific images of unarmed Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border being shot in the back by the “democratic army” of Israel. How many “moral questions” did those Israeli snipers ask themselves, I wondered, before they gunned downGazan refugees for daring to demand a return to their homes inside the Green Line? On Friday, the IDF shot an astonishing 773 people with live ammunition, killing 17 of them. Yet a spokesperson for the IDF bragged that Israeli troops “arrived prepared” and “everything was accurate. … We know where every bullet landed.” On Sunday, Israel’s hawkish defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, roundly rejected calls from the European Union and the United Nations for an independent inquiry into the violence and insisted that “our soldiers deserve a commendation.” To be clear, then: Israeli troops will continue to murder and maim Palestinians while the Israeli government guarantees that there will be no consequences for their actions. So, where is the outcry from liberal interventionists across the West? Where is BHL, as Palestinians are being shot and wounded in the hundreds in 2018? Where is the call from former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose 1999 speech in Chicago defending the concept of a “just war” and a “doctrine of the international community” became a key text for liberal interventionists, for a “no-fly” zone over Gaza? Why does a guest speaker at Ariel Sharon’s funeral have nothing to say about the increasing number of Palestinian funerals? Where is the moral outrage from former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, the famously pro-intervention, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a “A Problem From Hell,” which lamented U.S. inaction in Rwanda, over the sheer number of unarmed Palestinians shot, killed, and injured in recent days? How does she have time to retweet a picture of an elephant and a lion cub, but not to make a statement about the violence in Gaza? Where is the demand from Canadian academic-turned-politician Michael Ignatieff, who was once one of the loudest voices in favor of the so-called responsibility to protect doctrine, for peacekeeping troops to be deployed to the Occupied Territories? Where are the righteously angry op-eds from Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, or Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, or David Aaronovitch of The Times of London, demanding concrete action against the human rights abusers of the IDF? And where is the appeal from former U.S. Secretary of State and arch-interventionist Madeleine Albright for economic and financial sanctions against the state of Israel? For an arms embargo? For travel bans on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Lieberman, and IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot? Their silence is deafening — and telling. Palestinians, it seems, have been so dehumanized that they don’t deserve a humanitarian intervention; their blood is cheap, their plight is unimportant, and, perhaps above all else, their killers are our friends. Palestinians protesters run for cover from Israeli tear gas during clashes with Israeli troops along the border between Israel and Gaza Strip, in the eastern Gaza Strip, 01 April 2018. Photo: Momen Faiz/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/AP SHOULD WE REALLY be surprised, though? After all, this isn’t the first time that members of the liberal intervention brigade have shamelessly ignored the tragic deaths of innocent Palestinians. In March 2001, towards the start of the “Second Intifada,” and with the Palestinian civilian death toll mounting, the U.N. Security Council proposed a resolution that would have “set up an appropriate mechanism to protect Palestinian civilians, including through the establishment of a United Nations observer force” on the ground in the Occupied Territories. The United States, however, in the form of the George W. Bush administration, vetoed that resolution. What was the response from U.S. liberals? They stayed mum. In the summer of 2014, the Israeli air force — for the the third time in six years — pounded the Gaza Strip, dropping bombs on schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings, and killing more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians — including 500 children — in the process. What was the position of then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who would later throw her support behind a “no-fly” zone over Syria)? “Hamas provoked another attack” while “Israel has a right to defend itself.” And what was the response from her fellow liberals? Most of them didn’t say a word. Fast forward to 2018: This time round, 17 dead and 1,400 wounded. Videos going viral of Israeli soldiers — armed and funded by U.S. taxpayers — shooting fleeing Palestinians in their backs. Again, not a peep on Twitter, or elsewhere, from the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress, such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. For liberal Democrats, #resistance is supposed to be against the Trump administration and the so-called alt-right, not against the longest military occupation in the world. This moral blindness that so many liberals and progressives in the United States have for the Palestinians has never ceased to amaze — or disgust — me. As the Israeli writer and economist Abraham Gutman notes, “This blind spot is so pronounced that it created a whole new type of progressive, the PEP, ‘Progressive-Except-on-Palestine.’” The PEP, he continues, “is horrified by the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, but willing to argue that there is nuance and perhaps support the government of Israel, with [Ayelet] Shaked as the Minister of Justice, who posted on Facebook an article calling Palestinian children ‘little snakes.’” Indeed. The PEP will loudly condemn the bigotry and nativism of the Republican Party in the United States, and the ongoing segregation and racism in the Deep South, while averting their gaze from the brazen racism of the Israeli government and the ongoing apartheid in the Occupied Territories. The PEP rails against Trump and his hawkish minions while standing to applaud Netanyahu or smiling in photos with Lieberman — this despite the fact that the similarities between the Trump and Netanyahu administrations have been well–documented. And the PEP who happens to be a proud supporter of liberal interventionism will back interventions almost everywhere except the Occupied Territories. Their heart bleeds for Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, Rwandans, Kosovars … but not for Palestinians. This is not an exercise in whataboutism; it is about drawing attention to blatant double standards and moral hypocrisy. On Palestine, liberal interventionists who happen to be “progressive-except-on-Palestine” borrow from the Trump playbook when they cynically blame “both sides” for the violence. They claim that Palestinian deaths are the consequence of “clashes” and “confrontations.” Yet the reality is that one side is the occupier and the other is the occupied; one side has rockets and rifles and the other side has rocks and slingshots; one side is doing the killing and the other side is doing the dying. There is no other conclusion: The ongoing and glaring refusal of liberal interventionists in the West to say even a word about the need to protect occupied Palestinians from state-sponsored violence is a reminder of just how morally bankrupt and cynically hypocritical the whole “liberal intervention” shtick is.

This video was posted by Khamenei.ir website and I decided to share it with you good friends of mine.

Hello all, Sharing a new vlog with you on the PFLP. If you have any feedback or criticism, feel free to reply. Iran Military Vlog #5 discusses the PFLP's infancy and the movement's early incremental development. One of the major consequences of the 1948 war was the mobilization of nationalist militias in Palestine. Gradually, Palestinian movements with a regional Arab outlook became increasingly disillusioned with Arabism and instead opted for grassroots guerrilla tactics as a means of liberating Palestinian territory. The removal of Arab primacy also involved appeals to the Soviet Union and the PRC through the adoption of international Marxism. One of the most prominent movements born out of the 1967 Arab defeat was the PFLP, the second-largest of the groups forming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The movement was founded and led by George Habash and has maintained amicable relations with states of the Resistance Axis, including Iran and Syria. This vlog looks back at the PFLP in its early stages.

The End of Israel -Novel- Please Comment & Like Settings: Palestine, Israel, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, The United States... Period: 1990's - 2020's Themes: Occupation, Geopolitics, Armed Conflict, Religious Tension The main character through the novel is Muhammed, a Palestinian. We start with his childhood and follow him well into his adulthood. Many other characters appear and play crucial roles in his life. Some scenes contain a moderate degree of violence representative of and to be expected of the topic matter. Be warned. “If you will it, it is no dream.” –Theodor Herzl 1902 Chapter 1 Suffering “It was September 2nd, 1991. We had intended to go to Beit Hanoun Hospital, a doctor and nurse could have helped her through labor and received the infant, put him in an incubator, monitor them, and everything that normal deliveries entail in the world. Our ambulance driver sped as fast as he could, taking us flying over bumps, rattling us through potholes, throwing us on sharp turns, jolting us at sudden stops and swerving to get around traffic and pedestrians. Our driver did his best to get her into real medical care, but we were stopped at an IDF checkpoint. At first he assured us that we would be waived through, but the soldiers manning the checkpoint blared at him not to come closer. He put the ambulance in brake, got out and pleaded with them shouting that he had a pregnant woman. They blared back, told him to turn around and not to come closer or they would fire. He offered to let them search the ambulance, his passengers, and himself… again they told him to return. They shouted that if he didn’t go, they would fire and then search the van after. My sister poked her leg out of the van, readying to present herself as proof we were harmless. Just the sight of the rear of the ambulance opening provoked the Israelis into panicked shouting on their megaphones, maybe three of them at once, ‘Get back in the vehicle, don’t come out, go back!’. The driver said that he would turn around, but that he would leave his pregnant passenger with them if they would give her over to a medic, or be generous enough to take her to a doctor. Their patience was gone, ‘Go back, leave nothing behind, we’ll fire if you’re not gone in 20 seconds, final warning’. The driver hurried back into the ambulance, he drove just out of sight of the checkpoint, we didn’t have time to take her to a hospital by some other route. He thought quick, parked, ran to a stranger’s home and asked them if he could bring a woman in labor inside. They obliged but my sister wouldn’t move from the van. Instead that family we’d never met brought towels and blankets, water bottles, and then crawled into the back of the ambulance and helped her through.” - Nadirah Zaqarna, Muhammed Al Filistini’s maternal aunt “And so it was in this way that one child, in a city of children, was birthed. To an ancient land, to a holy land, torn by strife and broken by poverty. In that not so special place he was birthed, nobody renown to note it and the incomprehensible import. The world remained totally unaware who had entered it, the gravity of him, the immensity of him. In his first gasp, his first cry, the heavens were electrified, deities sang in ecstasy and in agony. Humanity did not feel his presence, but it would. With all certainty, yes, surely and most painfully, it would feel him in time.” It’s been a decade since Muhammed, once just a faceless young boy from Gaza City, reshaped the geopolitical, religious, and cultural scene of his region and the globe. In putting together our investigative piece on his legacy we’ve followed his footsteps right from his very beginning. Talking to neighbors and family in modern day Gaza, collecting old photographs, we’ve learned that Muhammed’s father, Khalil Suleiman, was in brief a short and skinny man with lean sinewy limbs. His hands were veiny and thick with discolored knuckles and rough calluses on his palms. In the heat he wore the same white tank top for days, and he kept his face shaved but for a dark mustache and the occasional stubble along his jaw and chin. His hair was always close cropped, his eyes were always tired, and his back was increasingly sore. Supporting a family and surviving through the duration of the 1st Intifada, Suleiman was the quiet man who’s normally out making connections and following leads. He’d had so many gigs since he was a small boy that even he couldn’t count or recall them fully. He was an expert at most anything requiring a screwdriver, a hammer, a saw, and he was helpful and ready to go, ready to follow instructions and work for many, many hours without break, without checking the time, without complaint and without slowing down. He worked at fishing docks, on fishing boats, in orchards. He’d driven delivery trucks and manned warehouses, he’d worn a hardhat and worked out of a toolbox. Suleiman had been dirty and worn, he had heat stroke more than once and he’d woken up many mornings too sore to move his body and too penniless to rest it through. Speaking to Muhammed’s older sister in Amman Jordan, Shiyam Wahdan, “As physically and mentally exhausted as our father was, he always had time for Muhammed. He bathed, dressed, and fed Muhammed as a baby. He carried Muhammed on his shoulders, ran with him in his arms, tickled him, played ball with him. Our father would have only a moment to rest, after long hours at back breaking work before he’d have to return to another, often more bodily taxing work. To have a precious twenty minutes with his small son roused him, removed the weariness from his face. Every boy’s hero is his father, the strongest man in the world and the smartest and the protector against all things bad. So it was in Muhammed’s eyes then." She continued, "Our father had a job were he repaired boats, mostly fishing. The business was run by a friend of his cousin’s. Israeli impositions and restrictions on the Gazan coast took their toll on the industry and he was periodically laid off, accepted reduced wages, or even accepted other means of payment in lieu of a salary; favors, supplies, fuel. He was at home by himself when the IDF made a ground incursion. A smoke grenade was hurled into our window, he ran to the door so that he could get out but just as he reached for the doorknob Israeli soldiers kicked it in, smashing his hand and his face and sending him tumbling over. They detained him while they searched our apartment, but apparently, of course, they had the wrong address. They didn’t apologize to him, they didn’t talk, they tore through everything and then they were out. Muhammed was the first to come home. He was very little then, he hadn’t been in school but for a few months perhaps. He found the door broken in, everything thrown about and tipped over, emptied drawers, clothes wadded in a great mess over displaced furniture, the rug rolled up, cushions slashed open, cabinets open and their contents spilled out. Muhammed found our father trying to get the plastic wrist binding off with a small kitchen knife but he couldn’t do it himself. Little Muhammed was the one who had to cut it. With his little hands he had to cut his papa’s restraints, telling him to be steady and careful, he freed his father like an escaped criminal. Small boys have their hero; father. Their father protects the home and he’s invincible. Then what humiliation it was to be found that way, helpless and the home ruined, violated, and all imaginings of security and guardianship dashed.” Not more than a year after that incident, “Our father was going to see an acquaintance about a job. He was walking when an Israeli Army convoy passed on the street ahead of him. When an Israeli convoy went through they went fast, they didn’t want an engagement. Sometimes going fast didn’t help. He waited for the convoy to pass, but on that day it was ambushed by resistance fighters. They called themselves that, and that’s the closest to real guerrillas there were. To be honest they weren’t really resistance fighters, they were young guys with a single Molotov cocktail. But a little fire can frighten a troop of elephants into a stampede, into a charge. That Molotov came over a low wall, or from a roof top, or from a breezeway, or from a parked car, or from somewhere… but it came and shattered all over the windshield of an Israeli military supply truck. The convoy stopped, and unable to discern the location of their attackers, the Israeli soldiers raised their rifles and fired indiscriminately, into windows, at rooftops, into breezeways, into cars. My father was shot through the upper-spine as he turned to take cover in a shop. He fell so fast and heavy he twisted his wrist and busted his chin open on the pavement. He was paralyzed where he lay. But for sowing him up, there was no surgery, nothing to remove... it flew in and it flew out. He had an x-ray, I saw it along with the whole family. Between his shoulder blades was a mess of broken spinal bone fragments, and there was nothing to be done for that. After his doctor released him from the hospital, a week maybe, he didn’t leave his bed again.” Muhammed’s father was no longer an unbending man of strength and physical activity. “He needed to be cared for like an infant throughout the day and family would take turns waking in the night to attend to him. He was an adult man who drooled, he had diapers, he had bed sores and infections, he had atrophied muscles. His face was a loose hanging and absent wreck of the gruff but handsome face in the photos about our home. Muhammed’s father had ceased to exist, and there was only this guilt ridden burden, silent and unmoving, in his place. They had once prayed and bowed together, they couldn’t have that together from then on. Muhammed did not speak to him but when prompted to by our mother, and in a short time didn’t speak to him at all but when none were around.” Mrs. Wahdan showed us her father’s medical records, including his x-ray and the conclusion by his doctor that no surgical remedy was possible. In his concluding notes there was an expression of optimism that he might live ten or twelve years more. “We couldn’t afford new clothes, we couldn’t afford adequate food, and we lived off the charity of people almost as poor as we were. Muhammed was aware as anybody that was all due to the Israeli blockade. School was often cancelled, there were frequent riots and Israeli incursions. Dozens of Muhammed’s classmates and neighbors were maimed and killed in Israeli military actions. One of his friends was buried in the rubble of his home as an Israeli bomb flattened it. Another one of his friends was hit in the brain by shrapnel and was left mentally handicapped. Some lost limbs, others bore horrific scars. Men were dragged away to prison in front of everybody, homes were demolished as families stood and watched, orphans and young widows abounded. Muhammed learned, as we all did, that nothing good in Gaza lasts for long. You enjoy it while you have it, what little you have, because the Jews can take it and will take it whenever they like. In elementary school Muhammed had a friend named Hamid. They’d hold hands, play in stair wells, attempt tricks with a soccer ball. They shared the same classroom and sat together each day. While Hamid needed to be reminded and practiced several times before he mastered a chapter assigned by their teacher, Muhammed would read his textbook once and then recite it almost word for word, and then add his own thoughts. He’d read ahead because unanswered questions in the early chapters would be immediately apparent to him and in his curiosity he would follow through to the end to have his curiosity satisfied. Hamid was clever but envied the ease with which Muhammed ingested whatever the teacher sent him home with. Muhammed tried to help Hamid but when it became clear to him that Hamid would rather get the high test scores without the mental exertion, Muhammed didn’t think twice before he devised a way for his companion to cheat during the exam. Muhammed would come to the teacher before class and ask the teacher if he could take the test then, “I’ll stress over it all morning and I won’t focus during lecture time unless I can finish it now.” His teacher agreed, and in the span of the day and before the rest of the class took the test, Muhammed would teach the answers to Hamid. The teacher suspected nothing for several months until it became apparent that on days Muhammed didn’t take the test early Hamid’s scores were considerably lower. Having been scolded and dismissed after being made to clean the classroom they returned to their homes together. Hamid didn’t apologize or promise to make it up to him, because they didn’t consider themselves separate in the way that they could wrong or right one another. After a moment all of that, the teacher’s mean tone and posture that’s so intimidating to children, it seemed so distant and they began to enjoy their walk home, kicking their soccer ball along the sidewalk and joining a round of hajlah having come upon some classmates. Through with that, they set off to a soccer field together. If he hadn’t been one step behind it would’ve been Muhammed. His school friend turned the corner and in mid-sentence his head exploded, opened from the top like a blooming bright pink flower. An Israeli sniper in a guard tower had taken the shot assuming that whoever poked out from behind that building was a militant. It wasn’t a militant, it was a modest boy in velcro-strap shoes. It was Hamid. Muhammed didn’t cry, he returned home as he had been going, but with bits of brain and skull fragments stuck to the front of his shirt, a film of blood all down to his knees.” Muhammed came home before anybody else, his sister and father napping, his other sister staying late at school to study, his mother working endless hours. “He took off his shoes and set his soccer ball down between them. He walked so silently to retrieve a change of clothes, returned out the door to the bathroom at the back of the building, and he washed himself as he’d wash himself if it were mud that had been splashed on him. And that was it. No more friend, wash him down the drain, the Jews took him, and that’s it. Our sister Mina cared for our father and Muhammed while our mother worked. We’d heard the news that Hamid had been killed but it was days before anybody realized Muhammed was with him when it happened. It was Mina who, while prodding Muhammed on the matter, discovered that. She cried, he didn’t. She promised that she’d protect him, she’d escort him to and from school, she’d talk to him each day, that he wasn’t alone anymore. And she did that for some time, a year or so. She learned his daily occurrences, checked his homework though he needed no checking, and she tended the scuffs and s[Edited Out]s he’d get from playing rough with other boys. She not only cooked for him, shopped for him, and monitored him, she spoke to him and learned him. Mina was the somebody in his family who knew who his favorite soccer players were, that he liked to play the forward position, and that he wanted to be a police chief or to be in charge of security detail for an important person when he grew up. She learned that he liked martial arts movies and that his humor was of the oddly mature sort that notes nuanced absurdities like a dentist who hates his patients or a business owner who won’t eat at his own restaurant. What happened to our sister? Our sister Mina was riding in a shuttle bus. It was taking her home after a day in school. A few cars ahead there was a motorcycle, and riding on the back of that motorcycle was a man who’d been identified for cash by an Israeli informant as a Libyan trained explosives expert they were hunting. An Israeli helicopter fired a rocket on him and it hit its target. The suddenness of the strike in fast traffic caused accidents. A farmer in his fruit truck delivering to a market rear-ended my sister’s shuttle bus. She was sitting in the back seat with her friend memorizing math formulas. She flew forward and bounced off the ceiling, landing just by the driver’s seat. Her wrist was broken, her cheekbone cracked, and she received a concussion bruising her visual cortex such that she was blinded for life. Muhammed loved and needed his father. In keeping with his character, he was full of brotherliness toward Hamid. But Mina’s suffering was a new sort. Hamid was beyond this world. Stuck between four walls, so was his father. Mina was still alive, fully, the same girl inside… but from then until forever she’d be handicapped and ruined. In Muhammed’s heart that was worse, and she made it worse for him by trying to do everything the same as she did it before. Blind, she still tended to her paralyzed father… moving and functioning by memory. She still walked him to school and back, blind. Mina still listened to his daily happenings while making meals for us. Muhammed watched her do these things as he had watched her do them before, and it was an assault on his sanity that now she did those things without eyes… staring blankly, moving clumsily, for him and the rest of us. Our mother and I pleaded with Mina to stop, day after day and week after week, we told her she was excused from those duties, that it wasn’t her fault. She persisted. One morning she was caught between cleaning our father, making a breakfast, and trying to finish her own homework. Muhammed tried to sneak out the door to school without her following. She sensed that he had gone and went out after him, calling for him to wait. He marched forward and she followed after him. She stumbled on a curb and fell into a table where a pair of old men were having their tea. Muhammed turned back, with tears in his eyes, the only time I saw tears in his eyes, and screamed at her there for everybody to witness, “Go home, I don’t need you now! Go home!” and he ran. When he was an elementary age boy he prized school and dedicated teachers because it wasn’t something he could take for granted. However, after our father’s injury and without that paternal discipline and our mother always away at work, not only could he miss school without any real immediate consequence, he didn’t have any hope for it either. After all, he told our mother when she first learned that he was absent for a whole week, “If I go to my classes or if I don’t go to them, when I’m grown we’ll still be in Gaza, Hamid will still be dead, father will still be paralyzed, and Mina will still be blind. How well I study won’t lessen what we suffer now, nor prevent what we’ll suffer later.” Our mother had no response for him then, but she remembered his words and she’d have her response." -End of Chapter 1- I'm eager for feedback. This novel is finished and has 12 Chapters. I'll add more chapters soon... Thank You!

Some people look at the scene and see the power of #America, the support of the west for the #Zionists and the power of Zionists’ financial and propaganda networks in America and in other parts of the world. As a result of this, they think that restoring #Palestine to the Palestinians is an impossible task. But I say that this impossible task will become possible ... What's your opinion? http://sayyidali.com/viewpoints/restoring-palestine-2544.html

(bismillah) Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has lashed out at the UN Security Council for its failure to stop Israel’s atrocities in the besieged Gaza Strip. Addressing the ministerial meeting of the Palestine Committee of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran on Monday, Rouhani said “the continuation of the UN Security Council’s indifference and inaction” has emboldened the Tel Aviv regime to continue its crimes against the oppressed Palestinian people in Gaza. “The inaction and flagrant indifference of the UN Security Council toward the current catastrophe in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, is a blatant symbol of injustice in the Security Council,” said Rouhani. He said effective measures have to be adopted to put an end to such crimes because Tel Aviv is violating human principles. Rouhani, the rotating president of the NAM, further called on the movement to roll up its sleeves to put an end to Israeli “war crimes and genocide” in the coastal sliver. NAM, based on its fundamental standards, should take action to stop the current trend of war crimes and genocide committed by the Zionist regime, said Rouhani. “The Non-Aligned Movement, as an international circle with ample potential and capacities, can and should take basic and firm steps toward the realization of real peace and social justice in line with the inalienable rights of the oppressed Palestinian people,” said the Iranian president. Rouhani further said the crisis in Gaza would not be resolved without the return of Palestinians to their homes. Following Rouhani’s speech, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said the humanitarian situation in Gaza is at breaking point and people are experiencing unspeakable horrors. He called for an arms embargo on Israel, which, he said, uses military equipment against defenseless Palestinians. Over 1,820 Palestinians have so far been killed and some 9,400 others injured since the Israeli military first launched its offensive against the Gaza Strip on July 8. The Israeli military says three Israeli civilians and 64 soldiers have been killed in the conflict, but Palestinian resistance movement Hamas puts the fatalities at more than 150. http://presstv.com/detail/2014/08/04/373987/iran-slams-unsc-inaction-on-gaza/

(bismillah) Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Tehran is waiting for a positive response from Egypt for the dispatch of foodstuff and medical aid to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. “We are waiting for the fulfillment of the Egyptian government’s promises in this regard,” Zarif told reporters on Monday. He added that he has held two telephone conversations with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on the Israeli regime’s ongoing military offensive in Gaza and the necessity to send humanitarian aid to people in the blockaded enclave. “We hope that the Egyptian government would help Iran’s medical aid and foodstuff reach the people in Gaza and prepare the ground for the transfer of the injured Palestinians, who are mostly children, to Iran,” Zarif said." The Iranian minister noted that despite promises by the Egyptian government, Tehran has not received "a serious response" yet. “We hope that the Egyptian government would help Iran’s medical aid and foodstuff reach the people in Gaza and prepare the ground for the transfer of the injured Palestinians, who are mostly children, to Iran,” Zarif said. Pointing to the day-long meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Ministerial Committee on Palestine over the situation in Gaza, he added that the event in Tehran conveyed the message to the world that the majority of people do not accept silence and indifference regarding the ongoing crisis in the besieged enclave. “It is necessary that Muslim countries, members of the Non-Aligned Movement and Arab states adopt a coordinated measure to defend the Gazans and exert pressure on the Zionist regime [israel] and its allies to end their crimes,” the Iranian minister pointed out." He expressed regret that the international community has failed to play an active role to put an end to the Israeli regime’s atrocities in Gaza as a result of the US and certain Western countries’ support for Tel Aviv. “It is necessary that Muslim countries, members of the Non-Aligned Movement and Arab states adopt a coordinated measure to defend the Gazans and exert pressure on the Zionist regime [israel] and its allies to end their crimes,” the Iranian minister pointed out. Medical sources say at least 1,865 people, including over 400 children, have been killed and over 9,400 injured since the Israeli regime began its offensive against the Gaza Strip on July 8. http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/08/04/374028/iran-awaits-egypt-response-on-gaza-aid/

(bismillah) Noam Chomsky, the renowned Jewish American thinker, says Israel has committed “a major war crime” as it continues to attack the besieged Gaza Strip. Israel has been pressing ahead with heavy offensive on Gaza amid international condemnation to stop the bloody onslaught which has claimed the lives of at least 1,700 Palestinians. More than 9,000 people have also been injured since the beginning of the aggression nearly four weeks ago. Chomsky told Press TV that Israel is much worse than the former apartheid regime in South Africa. “Hospitals have been attacked repeatedly. Each one is a war crime. In fact, for Israel to fire one bullet across the border is also a crime. Trials for war crimes only apply to the defeated. Within the occupied territory, Israel’s polices are much worse than apartheid,” he said in a phone interview. He said Israel faces economic isolation over occupying Palestinian territories. He called for an arms embargo on Tel Aviv. Chomsky also criticized Arab leaders for supporting Washington’s pro-Israel policies in the past years. Israel has intensified its airstrikes on Gaza after it was reported that an Israeli soldier had been captured by Palestinian resistance fighters there. On Friday, US President Barack Obama called on the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas to “unconditionally” release the Israeli soldier. "If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible," Obama said in a news conference. Obama framed the release of 23-year-old Hadar Goldin as a precondition for a possible ceasefire. Latest figures show the ongoing Israeli air and ground strikes have claimed the lives of more than 350 children across the strip. http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/08/02/373806/chomsky-israel-committed-war-crimes/

(bismillah) Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei Calls For Arming Gaza To Fight IsraelTEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's supreme leader on Tuesday called on Muslims from around the world to help arm Gaza Palestinians in their fight against Israel. The call by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was his latest such message during the ongoing war between Gaza's Hamas rulers and Israel. Khamenei claims that while Israel and America seek to disarm Hamas, Iran says "the opposite ... the Muslim World has a duty to arm the Palestinian nation by all means." Iran, a staunch Hamas ally, does not recognize Israel and supports militant anti-Israeli groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group. Iran does not recognize Israel and has considered the Jewish state its archenemy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed monarchy and brought clerics to power Khamenei spoke at a prayer ceremony in Tehran as Shiite Iranians marked the beginning of Eid al-Fitr holiday that follows the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/iran-israel-gaza_n_5629631.html

The Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe of 1948Apr. 23 Featured, Modern History, Ottoman History, Palestine 4 commentsOne of the most jarring and important events of recent Islamic history has been the Arab-Israeli Conflict. This conflict is multifaceted, complex, and is still one of the world’s most problematic issues in international relations. One aspect of this conflict is the refugee problem that began in 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians became refugees that year, in what is known as the “Nakba”, which is Arabic for catastrophe. BackgroundIn the 1800s, a new nationalistic movement was born in Europe. Zionism was a political movement advocating the creation of a Jewish state. Many Jews believed having their own state was necessary in the face of discrimination and oppression by Europeans. After debating where to create this new state should exist at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the Zionist movement decided to aim at creating their state in Palestine, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The sultan/caliph of the Ottoman Empire, Abdülhamid II, refused to accept this, even in the face of a 150 million British pound payment proposed by Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, in exchange for ownership of Palestine. The door would open for Zionism however, after the First World War. During the war, Britain captured Palestine from the Ottomans in 1917. At around the same time, the British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued a declaration to the Zionist movement promising British support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After the war, Palestine became a League of Nations mandate under British control in 1920. Since it was under British control, the Zionist movement heavily advocated the emigration of European Jews to Palestine. The result was an exponential rise in the number of Jews living in Palestine. According to British census data, in 1922, there were 83,790 Jews in Palestine. By 1931, it was 175,138. And by 1945, the number had jumped to 553,600 people. In 25 years, Jews had gone from 11% of the total population to 31%.1 Naturally, the reaction from the Palestinian Arabs was less than enthusiastic. Tension between new Jewish settlers and native Palestinians erupted on numerous occasions. Eventually, the British decided by the 1940s that they could no longer control the territory, and decided to end the mandate of Palestine and leave the country. United Nations Plan and Israeli IndependenceThe left map shows the Jewish-majority areas in the Mandate of Palestine. The right map illustrates the UN Partition Plan. Seeing the coming end of British control over Palestine, and the inevitably conflict between the Arabs and the Jews, the newly-created United Nations took up the issue in 1947. It came up with a plan known as the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. The plan advocated the creation of two states in what has historically been known as Palestine. One for Jews, known as Israel, and one for Arabs, Palestine.2 While the Jews in Palestine accepted the plan with enthusiasm, the Arabs vehemently rejected it. In their view, it took away land that had been a historically Muslim Arab land since the Crusades and gave it to the new Jewish minority in the country. Tensions rose again between the two sides. In the midst of this rising tension, Britain declared an end to the Mandate of Palestine, and withdrew from the country on May 14th, 1948. That day, the Zionist movement in Palestine declared the establishment of a new country, Israel. The following day, the neighboring Arab countries declared their rejection of the declaration and invaded Israel. Without going into the details of the war itself, the result of the 1948 war was an enormous increase in the size of Israel. The resulting state was much larger than the state proposed by the United Nations, capturing approximately 50% of the proposed Arab state. Expulsion of the PalestiniansPerhaps the largest human impact of the 1948 War was the expulsion of much of the Palestinian population. Within the borders of the new State of Israel, there had been close to 1,000,000 Palestinian Arabs before the war. By the end of the war in 1949, between 700,000 and 750,000 of them had been expelled.3 Only 150,000 remained in Israel. Palestinian refugees in 1948 Refugees are always an unfortunate side-effect of war. Throughout history, groups of people had fled to escape fighting and conquest. What makes the Palestinian refugees of 1948 unique, however, is whythey became refugees. Since this is still very much a real conflict today, historians analyzing the causes of the Palestinian exodus are heavily influenced by politics and international relations. Historians (including Israeli historians) have however defined a few key reasons for the exodus: Fear: Many Palestinians left because due to fear of Israeli attacks and atrocities. These fears were not unwarranted. On April 9th, 1948, about 120 Israeli fighters entered the Palestinian town of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. 600 villagers were killed.4 Some died defending the city in battle against Israeli forces, while others were killed by hand grenades thrown into their homes, or executed after being paraded through the streets of Jerusalem. Naturally, once word of this massacre spread throughout Palestine, Palestinians feared the worst from the Israelis. In many cases, entire Palestinian villages fled Israeli advances, hoping to avoid the same fate as Deir Yassin. Some Israeli groups, such as Yishuv, accelerated this feeling through psychological warfare intended to intimidate Palestinian towns into surrendering or fleeing. Radio broadcasts were aired in Arabic, warning Arab villagers that they could not stand up to Israeli advances, and resistance was futile. Expulsion by Israeli Forces: Fear was the main motivating factor for refugees early in the war. As the war dragged on through 1948, however, deliberate Israeli expulsion became more popular. As the Israelis conquered more and more territory, their forces became more thinly spread throughout the country. As a result, many newly-conquered villages were forcibly emptied by Israeli forces. Notable examples of this were the cities of Lydda and Ramla, near Jerusalem. When they were conquered in July of 1948, Yitzhak Rabin signed an order expelling all Palestinians from the two towns, amounting to between 50,000 and 70,000 people.5 Israeli forces bused some of them to the Arab front lines, while others were forced to walk, only being allowed to take with them whatever they could carry. This expulsion alone accounted for about 10% of the total Palestinian expulsion in 1948. Encouragement by Arab Forces: In some cases, the Arab armies from neighboring countries, particularly Jordan, encouraged Palestinian towns to evacuate. One possible reason for this was that to provide an open battlefield without civilians in the crossfire. In any case, many Palestinian civilians left their homes under direction from Arab armies, hoping to return soon after the inevitable Arab victory, only to become refugees in neighboring countries. After the WarA Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Syria in 1948. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War created a massive refugee problem in the Middle East. Over 500 towns and cities throughout Palestine were completely depopulated during this time. The 700,000+ refugees from these towns became an economic and social burden on neighboring countries and the West Bank, Palestinian land under Jordanian authority. In 1954, Israel passed the Prevention of Infiltration Law. It allowed the Israeli government to expel any Palestinians who managed to sneak back to their homes in what was now Israel. It also allowed the government to expel any internally displaced Palestinians still within Israel if they sought to return to their homes. Today, the right of return is still a major problem that has yet to be solved by peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. The forcible expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 proved to be a problem that continues to last even after the lives of the original refugees draw to a close in the early 2000s. http://lostislamichistory.com/the-nakba-the-palestinian-catastrophe-of-1948/

(salam) If you read through the various articles on press tv, al-manar you can see various people claiming this as a victory over israel: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/22/273993/abbas-felicitates-hamas-on-gaza-victory/ http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/22/273957/gaza-victory-over-israel-is-reality-hamas/ http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/22/273944/iran-congratulates-gazans-on-victory/ http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/main.php Haniyeh: “Victory of Gaza is a reality. God will accept what you've sacrificed, and all Muslims are happy because of this victory,” Sa'eed Jalili: "The Islamic Republic of Iran congratulates the downtrodden people of Palestine on this victory..." al-Quds Brigades: “The martyrs are who made this epic; they are who made this victory. We bow today for this great triumph,” Is this propaganda, denial or delusion? (i'm actually asking)

In this photo, Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, and Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil have hold body of a Palestinian child killed in Israeli air attacks.

besmellah, Salaam! You might have heard about the current situation in Gaza & I really don't know if you are active in spreading it on your facebook or any other social networking medias- but if you are- please set this as your profile picture as well as tag your friends to do the same. We can't do much physical battle from so far away, but we can keep them in our prayers & help spread the message of Karbala inshAllah. We really don't want what happened in 2009 to happen again http://fc05.devianta...r13-d5la5si.jpg <---Icon found here- better resolution Remember, the people of Kufa let Imam hossain (as) fight alone, let us not do the same inshAllah. eltemase dua,

Gaza Biscuits to Feed West Bank School Children Date : 5/3/2012 Time : 13:58 GAZA, March 5, 2012 (WAFA) - United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Monday helped transfer pallets of fortified date bars from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank through Israeli crossing ports, a WFP press release said. This is the first batch of a total of 140 tons of locally-produced date bars (or 19 truckloads) that will be used in WFP's school feeding distributions in the West Bank, it added. 'This transfer from Gaza to the West Bank is the first of its kind since the inception of the blockade in 2007 and hopefully more will follow in order to support children learning and school assistance and concomitantly help boost the private sector and support a productive economy in Gaza', says Pablo Recalde, WFP Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory. WFP was previously purchasing all date bar requirements for school feeding in Egypt or in Turkey until a factory was identified in the Gaza Strip. The factory has the capacity to supply the needed quantities at a competitive price and meeting WFP quality standards. These date bars are already used in the Gaza Strip school feeding program and will now be used in the West Bank as well, where WFP assists 75,000 school children in 292 schools in the most food insecure areas, notably in Israeli-controlled Area C, Seam Zone and Bedouin communities. The humanitarian transfer of date bars from Gaza to the West Bank follows more than 6 months of negotiation between WFP and the Israeli authorities, with strong support of the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) and of the international community. The WFP 'date bar project' has already created 60 new jobs at the biscuit factory in Gaza; subcontractors of the factory are also benefiting from this transfer, said the press release. WFP expects to inject more than $2 million in the Gaza economy through the date bar project alone. The blockade of the Gaza Strip continues to seriously hamper access and movement of goods, services and people, affecting Palestinians' access to local and international markets, said WFP. Food insecurity affects almost half of the population, caused by the high levels of unemployment, a weak private sector and a lack of purchasing power preventing people from covering their basic needs. M.S. PPalestine News & Information Agency - WAFA

(bismillah)