Apartheid
Heartbreaking video as little Palestinian boy talks seeing of dad, pregnant mum executed
Shocking matter-of-fact retelling by Faisal Al-Khaldi spotlights the horror of everyday life under Israeli genocide
A video from Alaraby TV provides a devastating window on the horrific reality of life for Palestinians and their children under the genocide of their Israeli occupiers – but has also showcased the love, humanity and courage of the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
Ahmed al-Khaldi and his pregnant wife Fatima were executed in December when Israeli soldiers invaded their home, an incident confirmed by human rights group Euro-Med Monitor. Their son Adam was also killed and his four-year-old little brother Faisal was wounded but survived. Six others in the house were also murdered.
Little Faisal has now spoken to Alaraby about seeing his parents murdered:
As Alon Mizrahi, who shared the video to Twitter, pointed out, the video of Faisal shows a ‘premature maturity’ that can only be born out of great horror – but the love of the anonymous woman who is caring for him is just as powerful. Mizrahi, in a post accompanying the video, commented:
1. The maturity of this kid, which is way beyond his tender age. He recounts things he saw almost like an adult giving testimony. This kind of premature maturity is only the result of tragedy and disaster: a world in which children are not allowed to be children. This has been true for Gaza for generations, thanks to Israel’s occupation, siege and frequent wars.
2. The other thing that stood out for me was the amounts of love showered on this kid by the woman that we never see, but only hear her voice, see her hand and feel her presence. This really melts your heart immediately in it’s universal humanity, but it is also distinctly Arab. This kind of outpouring, heartfelt love, with this tone of voice, this pyisicallity [sic], that heart fully open – that is immediately recognizable to me as Arab.
This genocide has been started, and is being inflicted, with always the big political and cultural purpose of dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims: this has been its underlaying foundation. But what is happening is exactly the opposite.
Hundreds of millions of people have been exposed, for the first time in life, to the immense beauty, generosity, humanity, courage and wisdom the Muslim and Arab world are capable of.
This was made with the intention of making Muslims and Arabs hated, and presenting them as sub-human; but I think, for much of humanity, this has opened gated and portals of love that had been shut before. What is coming out from Gaza’s doctors and journalists and volunteers and rescue teams and children and just people – this has captivated the hearts of countless good souls around this planet.
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Black Lambeth councillor quits Labour after suspension over Gaza vote
Sonia Winifred quits Labour in disgust and says she has no confidence in leadership
Cllr Sonia Winifred
A Black councillor in London’s Lambeth borough has quite the Labour party in disgust after being suspended for voting for a ceasefire motion put before the borough council in January.
Sonia Winifred announced her resignation on her social media this afternoon, saying that in voting for an immediate ceasefire she was representing her constituents in ‘wonderfully diverse’ Knights Hill:
Former Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP – also suspended by Keir Starmer – responded with an unfavourable comparison of Labour’s current Stalinist and imperialist regime to the party that stood against South African apartheid a few decades ago:
Shocked to hear that you have been disciplined because of your position on Gaza. On that basis not a single Labour councillor would have dared breathe a word about apartheid in the 80s.
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) March 7, 2024
Solidarity with Sonia Winifred, Diane Abbott and all those hounded by Starmer’s red Tory regime for standing up for justice and humanity.
Israel has so far killed at least 40,000 civilians in Gaza, maimed twice as many and is inflicting starvation and disease on more than two million innocents, half of whom are children.
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Video: ‘Goodbye Palestine’ – deranged US congressman wants Palestine erased
Republican Chuck Fleischmann’s ‘Israel forever’ rant
Republican US congressman Chuck Fleischmann has been caught on video in a deranged rant in which he tells a Palestinian-American ‘Goodbye to Palestine’, appearing – and not denying when asked – to wish for Palestine and its people to be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’.
Fleischmann was challenged by two anti-genocide activists about his support for Israel and began his rant that he will always support Israel before gesticulating in the face of one of the pair and telling them ‘I will never support the Palestinians. Never!’:
Fleischmann’s unhinged rant is a frightening window into the mentality of the US right – and the UK Israel lobby’s murderousness, which differs primarily in being less obviously expressed.
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Never Again Should Be for Anybody
As an aside, and as an African, I wish the German government exhibited the same regret for their history in Namibia with the Herero-Nama genocide and for the genocide during the Maji Maji Rebellion in Tanzania....
Tweet quoting Webbe on Gaza goes viral
Tens of thousands of shares on post quoting one of UK’s most consistent MPs on Israel’s Gaza genocide
A tweet quoting Leicester East MP Claudia Webbe’s pithy analysis of Gaza has gone viral after it was shared by UK-based, pro-Gaza investigative journalist Sulaiman Ahmed.
Webbe tweeted on 7 Feb:
Israel does not want peace. They want Gaza.
They want to slaughter Palestinians, drive them into the Sinai Egyptian desert and eradicate Palestine.
Yet, our political leaders still refuse to call for an immediate ceasefire.— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) February 7, 2024
Ahmed’s post a couple of weeks later quoting her first sentence was shared thirty-six thousand times and ‘liked’ eighty-two thousand times:
Claudia Webbe is one of the UK’s most consistently solid and outspoken MPs in solidarity with Palestinians and against Israel’s war crimes – at a time when most MPs are either silent or actively endorsing the war criminals – and is routinely foully abused by racists and supporters of genocide for it. She sits as an independent MP and shames the leadership of both main political parties, both of whom are eagerly complicit in Israel’s genocide, refuse to condemn the Israeli regime’s contempt for humanity international law and have avidly propagated discredited Israeli atrocity propaganda used to justify Israel’s slaughter.
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Video: Merseyside Metro Mayor Rotheram refuses to say Israel is committing genocide
Rotheram says he’s come to ‘speak to the community’ – but apparently not to the member of the community asking him to give a simple yes or no answer
Merseyside ‘metro mayor’ Steve Rotheram has been confronted by a local woman who asked for a yes or no answer whether Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians is genocide.
Rotheram squirmed, he obfuscated – but he wouldn’t even give a multi-worded answer, let alone a yes or no one. Nor would he ask the local woman whether she thought it’s genocide, so she can show how simple it is to say.
Instead, he wittered about ‘part of the problem’ and wanting to ‘speak to the community’ while having ‘a private conversation’ (which is it, Steve?):
Video used by courtesy of The Art of Resistance
Keir Starmer’s corrupting influence on the Labour party is seen all too clearly in the actions of many local ‘Labour’ politicians – and Starmer’s war on anyone within the party who dares speak out against the actions of Israel has many party representatives too terrified to do so, in spite of the overwhelming moral need for solidarity with Palestinians and condemnation of Israel’s genocide – yes, genocide. Sadly, it seems like Mayor Rotheram is one of them, despite the massive solidarity among the people of Merseyside with the oppressed and murdered in Gaza and the West Bank.
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Goalposts and Gunfire: Israel’s Deliberate Attacks on Palestinian Football and Its Players
Amid an ongoing onslaught against the Gaza Strip by apartheid Israel, the Palestinian national football team was a Cinderella story at this year’s AFC Asian Cup, reaching the knockout stages, eventually falling only to hosts and eventual winners hosted in Qatar. But while the challenge on the football field was hard enough, the Palestinian football team has to deal with a unique challenge that no other national squad faces: that of an unrelenting attack on it from Israel. This attack has included jailing, torturing, shooting and killing top players, bombing Palestinian infrastructure, and restricting the movement of players in and out of the country.
This has led to a growing global movement calling for Israel to be banned from international sporting competitions as part of a wider campaign to implement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). South Africa-based group Red Card Israel, for example, told MintPress that:
The action of suspending Israel from international sport creates a symbolic support against the unlawful occupation of Israel in the Palestinian territories and shows solidarity for the Palestinian people living under the apartheid regime.”
Cutting Down the Tallest Flowers
Palestine started with one simple goal in the Asian Cup: to put a smile on people’s faces back home, giving them hope by representing them on an international stage. In that, they succeeded, becoming the toast of the tournament, playing attractive, positive football, including a 3-0 win over Hong Kong, China. Yet they did so despite generations of players shot, killed or permanently disabled by Israeli warplanes and snipers.
For example, in January 2014, cousins Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17 – young stars about to be called to the national team – were traveling home from a training session near Ramallah. They were ambushed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who shot al-Raouf in the legs. Jawhar rushed to his aid, only to be peppered with bullets himself, including seven in his left foot, three in his right, and one in the hand. An attack dog was unleashed on them, and soldiers subsequently broke al-Raouf’s leg for good measure, suggesting they knew who the pair were. Their careers were over in a flash, and their destiny was stripped away. Now 29 and 27, respectively, Jawhar and al-Raouf would have been in their prime for the 2024 tournament.
While the pair survived partly thanks to medical treatment in Jordan, many of their peers were less fortunate. Tarek al-Quto, a promising midfielder, was killed by the IDF in 2004. Five years later, during Operation Cast Lead, Israel killed three more top players: Ayman Alkurd, Shadi Sbakhe and Wajeh Moshtaha. Also in 2009, 18-year-old phenomenon Saji Darwish was struck down by an Israeli sniper near Ramallah.
Palestinian amputees, many deliberately shot in the legs by Israeli troops, play a soccer match while using their crutches in Gaza, Aug. 16, 2023. Adel Hana | AP
“Arrests, torture and killings of Palestinian footballers became a regular headline in Palestine,” noted Palestinian writer Ramzy Baroud. One of the most infamous examples of this was Mahmoud Sarsak, who was arrested and held for three years without trial or visits from his family.
Protesting his treatment, Sarsak – a Palestinian international star – went on a hunger strike for three months. In the process, he almost died and lost nearly half his usual body weight. His case became a cause célèbre around the footballing world, with supporter clubs and even footballing legends like Eric Cantona, Michel Platini and Lilian Thuram calling for his release. The international pressure caused Israel to relent and free Sarsak, but the permanent health issues he suffered meant his career was over.
Sarsak’s case is far from the most extreme, however. Zakaria Issa, one of the country’s top strikers, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2003. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2011, he was released but died four months later.
Sameh Maraaba, meanwhile, has enjoyed a fruitful career, playing 40 times for Palestine in international competitions. He would no doubt have achieved more, however, if he had not been arrested at a border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank and accused by Israel of being an associate of Hamas. Maraaba was detained for seven months, during which he missed many crucial qualifying games for the 215 AFC Asian Cup and the 2014 Asian Games.
And on the same day in 2012, Israeli forces arrested Muhammad Nimr – a promising 23-year-old forward from the Amari refugee camp who had managed to forge a career in Europe – and Omar Abu Roïs, the goalkeeper for the Palestinian national football team. Their arrests spurred more calls for Israel to be barred from international sporting competitions.
Speaking with MintPress News, a spokesperson for Red Card Israel explained that suspending Israel from sporting events would illustrate that “the violation of human rights results in exclusions on an international level and that it cannot continue to blatantly disregard international law while still enjoying the privilege of international participation in sport.”
But even if they have not spent time in prison, the occupation has touched every footballer negatively. Palestinian athletes have to live, train and perform under immense psychological pressure. Mahmoud Wadi, for instance, revealed that he had to live with the constant threat of death during Israeli occupation. “I would go to bed at night and stare at the ceiling expecting it to come crashing down on my head at any moment,” he said of living through Operation Protective Edge. “Many players that I played against or with while in Gaza have died,” he added.
Wadi’s woes did not stop there. A day before Palestine’s first Asian Cup game against Iran in January, he was informed that his cousin had been killed in the Israeli attack.
Blocking Palestine From Competing
Wadi is one of the few Gazans to play for Palestine in recent years. The Israeli government has imposed a medieval-style siege on the densely populated strip. It strictly controls the amount of food and basic goods entering and exiting, making elite sport extremely difficult. Gazan football has suffered, with many top players (including Wadi) leaving for Egypt.
But life for a footballer in the West Bank can also be fraught with difficulties. Israel, which controls so much about life in Palestine, regularly denies exit visas to all domestically-based Palestinian footballers, leading to the country having to forfeit games and drop out of tournaments. Palestine was scheduled to play a crucial World Cup 2010 qualifying match against Singapore, but Israeli officials blocked the team from leaving the country. Despite protests, the footballing authorities elected not to reschedule the match but penalize Palestine, leading to their exit from the tournament. In May 2008, the team was barred from leaving the country to play at the AFC Challenge Cup. Three years later, two national team players were refused reentry into the West Bank after a match against Thailand. It is, in part, these sorts of arbitrary travel restrictions that have led selectors to look to the diaspora Palestinian population for players.
The constant Israeli military attacks have also taken a toll on the footballing infrastructure. In 2009, Israel destroyed the Rafah National Stadium in Gaza. And no football is being played at Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City because Israel has turned the structure into an open-air prison camp. Images showing dozens of Palestinians – some as young as nine years old – stripped and paraded around at gunpoint went viral on social media in December, sparking global outrage.
All of this has meant that Palestine regularly has to play its “home” games in other countries. The team had to pull out of the Merdeka Tournament in Malaysia due to the Israeli onslaught, and Palestine is scheduled to play all of its upcoming home matches for the 2026 World Cup qualification tournament in Kuwait.
Should Israel Be Banned?
In contrast, aside from some vocal opposition from opposing fans at games, Israel and its national football team have faced almost no negative repercussions. This is partially due to the position of the sport’s governing body, FIFA, which has consistently refused to act upon requests to hold Israel to account. In January, the Palestinian Football Association released a formal request calling on FIFA to ban Israel from sporting competitions over blatant human rights violations like the ones cataloged here.
It is not as if FIFA has not taken action before. In the 1990s, it banned Yugoslavia from competing at the 1994 World Cup amid a war in the Balkans. And in 2022, the organization indefinitely suspended Russia from international competitions because it invaded Ukraine. Yet these states were carrying out actions that Western powers – above all, the U.S. – opposed. In contrast, aggressive actions or human rights violations by Western powers never result in FIFA bans – a fact suggesting where the real power in the organization lies.
Indeed, it appears that opposing Israeli attacks is more likely to result in negative consequences than carrying them out. A number of professional footballers in Europe have been fired for making public comments criticizing Israel or supporting Palestine. Indonesia, slated to host the FIFA 2023 Under-20 World Cup, was stripped of that honor after uncertainty over whether it would allow the Israeli team to compete. (Indonesia does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel).
As such, in football, as with politics, any actor proposing or carrying out a principled, non-violent boycott of Israel is likely to face consequences from authorities. Thirty-seven U.S. states currently have anti-BDS laws on their books, despite the fact that nearly three-quarters of Americans oppose such legislation.
Seen in South Africa. Photo | Red Card Israel
Despite the opposition from football’s governing body, a growing grassroots global movement is emerging, demanding sporting authorities take action to oppose genocide. That this is being led by South Africa is significant.
That so much of the Palestine solidarity movement emanates from South Africa is significant. Until the 1990s, South Africa was dominated by a human rights-abusing apartheid regime. But mounting international pressure turned the country into a pariah state and forced South Africa to change its ways.
Throughout the period, though, the white supremacist government maintained support from both the Israeli and American governments. Today, South Africa is leading a team at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with the crime of genocide. Red Card Israel explained that they see the victory in South Africa as a blueprint to follow, telling MintPress that:
The intention behind the boycott of Israel in football (and other sports) is to further the intention of gaining equality for Palestinians on all international and political fronts. South Africa is best placed to bear testament to how sports, academic and cultural boycotts add pressure on illegitimate governments to crumble under the weight of unjust systemic oppression. It worked for South Africa, so there’s no reason why it won’t work in the case of Israel.”
As we have just seen at the Asian Cup, sport has the potential to unite people, both nationally and internationally. Football fans around the world have shown their solidarity with Palestine, and many are now organizing to make the dream of an end to apartheid a reality. It is clear, however, that football’s authorities will not welcome this movement. So, to achieve victory, organizers must show as much courage and determination as the Palestinian team did on the pitch this January.
Feature photo | Palestinian soccer supporters watch a match between the Palestinian team and Thailand in the West Bank town of Al-Ram, near Ramallah. Bernat Armangue | AP
Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
The post Goalposts and Gunfire: Israel’s Deliberate Attacks on Palestinian Football and Its Players appeared first on MintPress News.
Well over 100 civilians murdered as Israeli tanks, gunboats fire on crowd waiting for aid delivery
Terror and chaos in Gaza City after IDF ‘trap’
Injured wait on lorries and a donkey cart (social media image)
More than a hundred Palestinian civilians have been slaughtered and many more injured, after Israeli tanks, gunboats and armoured vehicles opened fire on a crowd of people waiting for a scheduled aid delivery to arrive. The Israeli military has admitted opening fire, claiming that troops felt ‘endangered’. The IDF also tried to blame the civilians for their own deaths, saying some were trampled – presumably as terrified people tried to escape the fire zone.
Some reports have put the death toll at 170, with more than a thousand wounded. Social media posts show the carnage and the attempts to evacuate the injured. The Al Jazeera news service reported that the victims had fallen into a ‘trap’ set by the Israeli military:
Palestinians who witnessed the Israeli attack on aid seekers in Gaza city say it was a trap.
According to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli forces have killed almost 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October last year, the vast majority of them civilians and a large majority women and children, and have wounded more than 70,000 others, many of them severely. The World Health Organization and others have reported that more than a million people are in, or at imminent risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade and military assault, and victims of starvation have already died.
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Israel supporters shamelessly smear Bushnell with ‘dead jews’ claim. It’s an outright lie
US serviceman whose self-immolation resonated around the world did not say ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews are dead’, as multiple pro-Israel accounts have claimed
Supporters of apartheid Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians have begun spreading a claim that Aaron Bushnell, the US serviceman who died this week after setting himself on fire outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, posted a comment to his Reddit account that ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews [sic] are dead’.
The image has been touted by accounts well known for dismissive and often racist commentary about Palestinians as a means of trying to justify Israel’s war crimes. ‘Comedy’ writer Lee Kern was one of the most prominent:
Kern not only propagated the fake claim but described the whole of Palestine as a ‘racist hate movement’
Kern described the whole of Palestine, not just a resistance group, as a ‘suicide death cult’
Writer Kern’s 2021 comment appears to have been deleted but was commented on as early as 2021 and he does not appear to have made a denial to the many times it has been thrown at him
A careful examination of Bushnell’s Reddit account by fact-checker Snopes, over a wider period than the two months ago that the image shows – including using a service that records deleted posts – showed that no such post had ever been made by Bushnell and the image is completely fake. A reverse image search also revealed no other instances before the image began to be circulated by propagandists.
Bushnell’s shocking protest has focused even greater attention on Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The attempt by supporters of the slaughter to divert from his aim in his terrible protest by posting an outright lie about him after his death is shameful and entirely unsurprising.
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Met confirms arrest of Gaza protester at Thornberry’s office
Outrage among activists at anti-genocide protest
The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed the arrest of a protester on Monday night at what outraged other protesters have said was a lively but entirely peaceful protest, outside the Islington office of Shadow Attorney Emily Thornberry, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Labour regime’s support for it.
A Met spokesperson told Skwawkbox that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and bailed ‘pending further investigations’:
A small demonstration was held in Islington High Street during the evening of Monday, 26 February. A woman was arrested at the scene on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. She was taken into custody and later released on bail pending further enquiries. Next due on a date in April.
Protesters against genocide and for the human rights of Palestinians have been demonised by politicians and supporters of Israel for supposed ‘hate speech’ since Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank accelerated after the Hamas raid and the Israel military’s well-known – but ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media and politicians – killing of ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens. The Tory government, aided by ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer, have continued to attack the civil rights of the UK people to protest.
Right-wing MPs, along with pro-Israel campaigners, continue to call for tougher police action against demonstrators, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of protests.
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