The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement has severely censured the desecration of the Holy Quran by a far-right Swedish-Danish politician in Stockholm and Copenhagen, terming the sacrilegious move as a declaration of war against the Muslim world.
Addressing a ceremony in the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa on Friday evening, Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi stated that the spread of Islam in European and Western societies has been a source of constant worry for enemies of Islam, and prompted anti-Islam individuals to set fire to the copies of the Muslim holy book in a show of desperation.
He stressed that the burning of the Holy Quran in European countries falls within the framework of their hostile war on human societies, and their efforts to distance societies from Quran, and create animosity towards Islam.
On Friday, Swedish-Danish right-wing extremist Rasmus Paludan torched copies of the Holy Quran near a mosque and outside the premises of the Turkish Embassy in the Danish capital Copenhagen.
Paludan had already infuriated the Muslim world by staging a Quran-burning protest in Sweden’s capital Stockholm on Jan. 21. The right-wing extremist has vowed to continue the stunt every Friday until Sweden is admitted into the US-led NATO.
“The burning of the Holy Quran is not justifiable by any means. It is considered a hostile, criminal and profane action against all holy books,” Houthi said.
The Ansarullah chief noted, “Oppressors are trying to put up a barrier between world nations and the Quran, because they view it as the biggest danger for themselves and the biggest savior for human beings.”
“Burning of the Holy Quran and declaring enmity towards it and Islam amount to a blatant disrespect for all Muslims. Such an approach also attests to the extent of satanic forces’ anger towards Quran and their weakness in the face of the sacred book,” he noted.
Houthi went on to condemn the burning of the Holy Quran as the gravest act of hostility against Islam and Muslims, emphasizing that the pro-Zionist lobby stands at the forefront of the aggressive campaign against Islam, Quran and Muslims.
“Satanic forces try to perpetrate grievous sins and despicable crimes in the name of freedom of thought and speech, and enlist political and legal support for them,” the leader of the Ansarullah movement said.
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Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem
Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem stressed that burning of Holy Quran in Sweden is an assault on humanity and the divine religions, a fabricated sedition with Western support, and a clear inability to promote the materialistic concepts in face of the loftiness of Islam.
Sheikh Qassem wondered whether insulting 1.5 billion Muslims does not deserve to be confronted, holding the Swedish authorities and all the governments which allow the anti-Islam offenses responsible for their assaults
For his part, Head of Hezbollah Juridical Committee Sheikh Mohammad Yazbek indicated that the Swedish offense of burning Holy Quran is an assault on the dignity of all the Muslims, calling on all the Islamic World to move against this slander.
Head of Hezbollah Juridical Committee Sheikh Mohammad Yazbek
Member of Loyalty to Resistance bloc, MP Ibrahim Al-Moussawi, affirmed that burning of Holy Quran comes in the context of a plan to attack the Islamic icons and sanctities, adding that this assault will unify the Muslims.
Yemenis held a massive rally in Saada to protest against the Swedish permission to burn a Holy Quran edition, calling to boycott Stockholm and expel its ambassadors from all Muslim countries.
A statement issued after the march slammed “the crime of burning copies of the Holy Quran in Sweden,” labelling the measure as “hostile in the series of war against Islam and Muslims.”
The statement further accused the western-controlled Zionist lobby of standing behind the crime of burning copies of the Holy Quran, and called on “the western leaders and the international community to liberate themselves from the Zionist Judaism and to stop insulting the prophets, their books, and fighting their teachings.”
The protesters also demanded in their statement an official apology from the Swedish government as well as to hold the criminals accountable. “We call for boycotting Sweden and expelling its ambassadors from the Muslim countries for its criminal behavior against the sanctities.”
In the same context, Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement strongly condemned on Sunday the crime that took place in Sweden, describing “the anti-Islam behavior in the west as reflecting the ethical and political bankruptcy of the western governments.”
Relatively, the Sanaa government foreign ministry denounced the burning of the Holy Quran.
Additionally, several other countries slammed the Swedish decision to permit the burning of a copy of the Holy Quran, and warned against inciting Muslims all across the world.
في كثير من الأحيان أتساءل ما هو منشأ بعض العادات في مجتمعاتنا التي اكتسبت صبغة القدسيّة مع أنها لا تمتّ للدين بصلة، بل على العكس هناك ما يناقض الدين كثيراً من هذه الموروثات التي تناقلتها الأجيال بشكل أساسيّ لانعدام الجرأة في طرح الأسئلة العميقة والجوهريّة والتي يخشى طرحها الكثيرون، ولنبدأ على سبيل المثال لا الحصر من موقع كبير السنّ في الأسرة، ووقع رأيه على الأصغر منه؛ حيث يسود الاعتقاد أنه يجب إطاعة كبير السنّ، ولا يجوز أبداً لمن هو أصغر منه سنّاً أن يشكّ في قدرته وقيادته، ولكنّ سيدنا إبراهيم عليه السلام أخذ موقفاً حاسماً ضدّ أبيه الذي كان يعبد الأصنام، وحاول أن يهديه إلى طريق الحقّ، وهذه بالطبع ليست دعوة للتمرّد على من هم أكبر سنّاً، ولكنها دعوة للوقوف مع الحقّ ومع الصّح حتى وإن تطلّب هذا جفاء مع ذوي قربى.
«يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُونُوا قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاءَ لِلَّهِ ولَوْ عَلَى أَنْفُسِكُمْ أو الْوَالِدَيْنِ وَالأَقْرَبِينَ»، أي إنّ العدل والحقّ أهمّ من صلة القربى والوفاء لهم، بينما نلاحظ أنّ العصبية الأسريّة أو القبلية تضرب بالحقّ عرض الحائط تحزّباً لذوي القربى وانتصاراً لهم وإن كانوا على باطل، مع أنّ أسرة يوسف، عليه السلام، أظهرت بشكل جليّ أنّ الإخوة قد يكيدوا لأخيهم: «قَالَ يَا بُنَيَّ لَا تَقْصُصْ رُؤْيَاكَ عَلَىٰ إِخْوَتِكَ فَيَكِيدُوا لَكَ كَيْداً».
كما نلاحظ أنّ الناس تسعى جاهدة، وأحياناً ترتكب المعاصي من أجل تكديس الثروات لأولادهم، مع أنّ الله عزّ وجلّ قال: «إِنَّ مِنْ أَزْوَاجِكُمْ وَأَوْلَادِكُمْ عَدُواً لَّكُمْ فَاحْذَرُوهُمْ»، وقال في آية أخرى: «إِنَّمَا أَمْوَالُكُمْ وَأَوْلَادُكُمْ فِتْنَةٌ»، ومع هذا فالعرف والعادة هو العمل المستميت من أجل ضمان مصلحة الأولاد حتى بعد رحيل الأبوين عن هذه الدار.
ولكن، ومما يشغل بالي أحياناً هو من أين أتت كلّ المسؤوليات الخدميّة المترتّبة على المرأة إذا كان الله عزّ وجلّ قال: «فإِنْ أَرْضَعْنَ لَكُمْ فَآتُوهُنَّ أُجُورَهُنَّ وَأْتَمِرُوا بَيْنَكُم بِمَعْرُوفٍ وَإِن تَعَاسَرْتُمْ فَسَتُرْضِعُ لَهُ أُخْرَى»، إذا كانت المرأة ليست مجبرة بحكم الدين على إرضاع ولدها، بل يجب أن يُدفع لها أجر إذا أرضعته، فمن أين أُلصقت كلّ هذه المهام الخدميّة بالمرأة، والتي تستهلك وقتها وعمرها ولا تنال عليها جزاء ولا شكوراً، بل تعتبر جزءاً لا يتجزّأ من المهام الملقاة عليها بحكم طبيعتها وكونها زوجاً وأمّاً وأختاً وبنتاً.
غير أنّ المفهوم الذي أحدث أكبر الضّرر بأداء المسلمين في دولهم المتعدّدة هو مفهوم الكثرة والقلّة، والخلط بين مفهومي المساواة والعدالة، دون التركيز على الاستخدام الصحيح والمعنى الدقيق لكلّ منهما، حيث ما زال معظم الناس يعتقدون أنّ الحقّ دائماً مع الكثرة، مع أنّ سور وآيات القرآن الكريم عامرة بامتداح القلّة وذمّ الكثرة: «وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ»، «فَأَبَى أَكْثَرُ النَّاسِ إِلَّا كُفُوراً»، «وَمَا كَانَ أَكْثَرُهُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ»، «كَانَ أَكْثَرُهُم مُّشْرِكِين»، «بل أكثرهم لا يعلمون»، في المقابل نجد أنّ القلّة استحقّت المدح الإلهي لأنها التعبير الصادق عن رفض الانجرار وراء الأكثرية التي توهّمت أنّ كثرتها تجعلها محقّة فيما هي عليه من الاعتقاد، أو أنها طريق النّصر: «وما آمن معه إلّا قليل»، و«قليل من عباديَ الشَّكوْر»، وإذا أردنا أن نترجم هذه اللغة إلى لغة الحداثة نقول إنّ النخبة العارفة العالمة يجب أن تكون محطّ تقدير ومديح، وليست الأكثرية التي تعتبر كثرتها مبرّراً لها أن تكون محقّة، وإذا ما تفكّرنا بهذا المفهوم نجد أنّ الدول التي بنت مجداً وحقّقت تطوّراً فعلت ذلك من خلال اعتمادها على النخبة في الهند والصين والغرب بحيث يتمّ إيلاء معظم الاهتمام للنخبة الكفوءة القادرة والتي تتمتّع بكل التسهيلات فتُحدث تقدماً وتطوّراً.
أمّا البلدان التي لا تولي أهمية تذكر للتمييز بين الذين يعلمون والذين لا يعلمون، فنجدها تسير كالسلحفاة في المسار البشريّ، ولا تُحدث التطوّر أو القفزات التنموية المأمولة، فرغم الفقر والمشاكل الحياتية في الهند، تمكّنت النخبة الهندية من بناء دولة قويّة متطوّرة يُحسب لها حساب، كما عملت الصين على إعمال حكم النخبة من خلال الحزب الشيوعي الصينيّ الذي يعتبر قلّة قليلة؛ مئة مليون من أصل مليار ونصف المليار، والفاعلون به هم بضعة ملايين الذين يخطّطون لمستقبل البلاد، ويعملون على تحقيق تطوّرها وازدهارها، ناهيك عن القول إنّ الغرب قد طوّر، وعلى مدى عقود، نُخباً سياسية وفكرية وعقائدية، وهي التي تدير شؤون البلاد فعلياً بغضّ النظر عن ادّعاء الديمقراطية والتخفّي وراء مقولات حكم الأكثرية التي لم تحكم يوماً أيّ بلد من هذه البلدان.
وهنا يكمن الفرق بين مفهومي المساواة والعدالة، هذا المفهوم الذي يتعرّض للتشويه وإساءة الاستخدام؛ إذ لا يمكن أن نقول إنّ البشر متساوون لأنّ الله سبحانه وتعالى خلقهم بإمكانات ومقدرات مختلفة، وهم عملوا أيضاً بطرائق مختلفة، فكيف يمكن أن يكونوا متساوين؟! إذاً المطلوب ليس المساواة بين البشر، بل تحقيق العدالة بينهم وأن ينال كلّ منهم ما يستحقّ بناءً على قدرته وجهده. أي إنّ العدالة تكمن في تكافؤ الفرص، وليس في أن «يستوي الأعمى والبَصير»، والمنطق ذاته ينسحب على من ادّعوا حمل لواء تحرّر المرأة في الغرب في سبعينيات القرن الماضي، وطالبوا بالمساواة مع الرجال، فإذا كان الله عزّ وجل قد خلق كائنين مختلفين ليكمّل أحدهما الآخر من أجل إعمار هذا الكون، فكيف يمكن تجاهل الطبيعة البشرية الضرورية لاستمرار الخلق؟!
المطلوب هنا حقّاً هو العدالة وتكافؤ الفرص، وأن يأخذ كلّ إنسان، رجلاً كان أم امرأة، في الحياة الفرصة التي يستحقّها في العلم والعمل والحياة، والدليل الأهمّ على نفاق الغرب وقصوره في هذا المجال هو أنّه ترك مسؤولية الأسرة على عاتق المرأة، وقال لها أنت حرّة أن تبدعي، كيف يمكن أن تبدع وكاهلها مثقل بتربية الأولاد ومسؤولية العائلة، ولم يوفّر لها الفرص الخدمية التي تمكّنها فعلاً من تحقيق ذاتها والتميّز في مهنتها، بينما قامت الصين بتوفير كلّ الظروف للمرأة الأمّ واستوعبت الأطفال في حضانات ورياض أطفال كي تتمكّن المرأة من متابعة مسيرتها المهنية.
وأنا أتفكّر بكلّ هذه المعاني والموروثات، أشعر وكأننا نقول «وجدنا آباءنا لها عابدين»، أو ليس من واجبنا الدينيّ والفكريّ والأخلاقيّ والإنسانيّ أن نتوقّف مع الموروثات، ونتساءل عن جدواها وصحّتها ودورها السلبي أو الإيجابي، والتصحيح الذي يجب أن تخضع له وفق حاجات وتطلّعات مجتمعاتنا المعاصرة.
Hezbollah firmly condemned on Tuesday as a “hideous offense” Charlie Hebdo’s defamatory cartoons of Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei, calling on France not to be part of the aggression.
“Once again, the Charlie Hebdo ominous magazine attacks our sanctities and honored figures,” Hezbollah’s Media Relations Office said in a statement, pointing to previous offences by the French magazine against Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), Prophet Issa (Jesus) and other religious figures.
“The magazine targets today the supreme Islamic figure in the world, Imam Khamenei, who is not only a leader of a great country, but also an Imam and religious reference for tens of millions of Muslims and an icon of humanity, freedom, dignity, resistance and pride.”
“We, in Hezbollah, firmly denounce the hideous act committed by this magazine, as we call on free people around the globe to do so.”
The Lebanese resistance party, meanwhile, urged French authorities to take “decisive measures in a bid to hold the offenders accountable.”
“Justifying the offense by attributing it to the so-called ‘freedom of expression’ is now exposed and futile,” Hezbollah’s statement read.
It lashed out at the West for adopting double standards, saying: “We have all witnessed the West’s double standards when the cause opposes with its major political interests.”
“The French government has to avoid being part of this offense and to dissociate its political disagreement with Iran from allowing impudent magazines like Charlie Hebdo to attack sanctities and dignified figures of Muslims.”
The Bahraini authorities has allowed Zionist settlers to celebrate “Hanukkah” in the capital, Manama, despite popular rejection and demonstrations, rejecting normalization with the “Israeli” entity.
This comes at a time when the Al-Khalifa regime regularly suppresses the ceremonies commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein [AS] and prevent the reception of Gulf citizens into Bahrain during Ashura.
Bahraini activists posted on their Twitter accounts a video showing Jewish settlers practicing “Hanukkah” rituals in a “synagogue” in Manama.
In light of this reality, which the Al-Khalifa regime authorities forcibly imposed on Bahrainis, a number of regions in the tiny gulf kingdom witnessed demonstrations and marches rejecting normalization with the occupying entity and the settlers’ celebration of “Hanukkah” in Manama.
Dozens of Bahrainis marched in the village of Al-Markh, carrying Palestinian flags and banners rejecting the Zionist presence in the country. The same happened in the town of Al-Maqshaa.
Despite the deployment of police forces, a massive demonstration was held on the island of Sitra raising slogans rejecting the presence of the occupying entity in Bahrain and the settlers’ celebration of “Hanukkah” in Manama.
It is noteworthy that the “Israeli” entity’s so-called president, Isaac Herzog, visited Bahrain earlier this month and met with a number of officials, more than two years after the US-brokered agreements to normalize relations between the two sides.
A Holy Land Foundation press conference. (Photo: via Twitter)
– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com
America’s destructive wars on Muslim countries launched in the wake of 9/11 under the misplaced rubric known notoriously as “War On Terror” (WoT), spawned mindless death and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale.
The George W Bush administration, heavily infested with neoconservatives and Likudniks, contemptuously ignored and willfully disregarded the sovereign status of Muslim lands by unleashing invasions, bombings, massacres and ultimately occupying them.
In a gross display of raw power, America shamelessly sought to demonstrate its unchallenged position as a military superpower to refashion the world in its image.
Since the unmistakable target of US belligerence was Islam and Muslims, it adopted a well-worn Israeli strategy by dehumanizing victims as “terrorists”. The tactic was designed to fool the world by claiming that the war was not on “good Muslims” but only the “bad ones” depicted as “terrorists”.
Against this background, one is reminded of the extent of maliciousness associated with the WoT paradigm and the abuse of justice flowing therefrom.
A classic example in this regard is the case of what became known as the “Holy Land Foundation 5”.
Fourteen years ago, five highly respected US-based Palestinian academics were unfairly targeted and jailed for providing humanitarian aid to orphans and widows in Palestine.
They have been described as the “Holy Land 5” who were actively involved in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF)based in Texas.
The HLF was at the time, the largest Muslim welfare and charity organization in the US until it was singled out and hounded by the Bush administration and Israeli forces.
Using the cover of the WoT, and fuelled by hostile Zionist agencies who profiled the HLF as a “nest of terror”, it was shut down in December 2001 by US authorities.
The case against the “Holy Land 5” led to the wrongful conviction and unjust long-term imprisonment of five highly respected Palestinian men. Three of them, Mufid Abdulqader, Ghassan Elashi, and Shukri Abu Baker, remain imprisoned today.
The two others, Abdulrahman Odeh and Mohammed El-Mezain, sentenced to 15 years each, were released in 2020 and 2022 respectively.
An intriguing yet deplorable aspect of the highly politically-charged case is the fact that these men were convicted on false charges of “providing material support to terrorism,” despite the fact that they were never even accused of funding the legitimate armed resistance to Israeli occupation and colonization.
According to various reports including by Samidoun, interestingly the same charities funded by the Holy Land Foundation were also funded by the International Red Cross and even USAID, the US Agency for International Development.
In other words, the criteria for aiding or funding “terrorism” ought to have been applicable to the International Red Cross and USAID, rendering them “guilty” as well.
However, as is known, the Holy Land Foundation was selectively targeted and borne out by the fact that after failing to convict the HLF5 in their first attempt, the US. judiciary allowed untested “evidence” by an anonymous Israeli intelligence agent.
The “War on Terror” has and remains a playbook on how to subvert justice to gain political goals. The dubious, torture-produced “evidence” by a faceless Israeli spook against the HLF5 was typical sensationalism and anti-Palestinian bigotry.
Though the subversion of American politics by Israel is a well-known documented fact, it cannot remain unchallenged. By the same token, the ill-conceived path of destruction known as the WoT needs to be derailed and its perpetrators brought to justice.
And the case of the three men who remain behind bars, deserve a global campaign to secure their freedom.
The roll call was a Eurasian thing of beauty – featuring the leaders of Russia and Belarus (EAEU), West Asia (Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Palestine) and Central Asia (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan).
China and Vietnam (East and Southeast Asia) attended at the level of vice presidents.
CICA is a multinational forum focused on cooperation toward peace, security, and stability across Asia.,Kazakh President Tokayev revealed that CICA has just adopted a declaration to turn the forum into an international organization.
CICA has already established a partnership with the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). So in practice, it will soon be working together side-by-side with the SCO, the EAEU and certainly BRICS+.
The Russia-Iran strategic partnership was prominently featured at CICA, especially after Iran being welcomed to the SCO as a full member.
President Raeisi, addressing the forum, stressed the crucial notion of an emerging “new Asia”, where “convergence and security” are “not compatible with the interests of hegemonic countries and any attempt to destabilize independent nations has goals and consequences beyond national geographies, and in fact, aims to target the stability and prosperity of regional countries.”
For Tehran, being a partner in the integration of CICA, within a maze of pan-Asia institutions, is essential after all these decades of”maximum pressure” unleashed by the Hegemon.
Moreover, it opens an opportunity, as Raeisi noted, for Iran to profit from “Asia’s economic infrastructure.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, predictably, was the star of the show in Astana. It’s essential to note that Putin is supported by “all”nations represented at CICA.
High-level bilaterals with Putin included the Emir of Qatar: everyone that matters in West Asia wants to talk to “isolated” Russia.
Putin called for “compensation for the damage caused to the Afghans during the years of occupation” (we all know the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder will refuse it), and emphasized the key role of the SCO to develop Afghanistan.
He stated that Asia, “where new centers of power are growing stronger, plays a big role in the transition to a multipolar world order”.
He warned, “there is a real threat of famine and large-scale shocks against the backdrop of volatility in energy and food prices in the world.”
Hefurther called for the end of a financial system that benefits the “Golden billion” – who “live at the expense of others” (there’s nothing “golden” about this “billion”: at best such definition of wealth applies to 10 million.)
And he stressed that Russia is doing everything to “form a system of equal and indivisible security”. Exactly what drives the hegemonic imperial elites completely berserk.
“Offer you can’t refuse” bites the dust
The imminent juxtaposition between CICA and the SCO and EAEU is yet another instance of how the pieces of the complex Eurasia jigsaw puzzle are coming together.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia – in theory, staunch imperial military allies – are itching to join the SCO, which has recently welcomed Iran as a full member.
That spells out Ankara and Riyadh’s geopolitical choice of forcefully eschewing the imperial Russophobia cum Sinophobia offensive.
Erdogan, as an observer at the recent SCO summit in Samarkand, sent out exactly this message. The SCO is fast reaching the point where we may have, sitting at the same table, and taking important consensual decisions, not only the “RICs” (Russia, India, China) in BRICS (soon to be expanded to BRICS+) but arguably the top players inMuslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.
This evolving process, not without its serious challenges, testifies to the concerted Russia-China drive to incorporate the lands of Islam as essential strategic partners in forging the post-Western multipolar world. Call it a soft Islamization of multipolarity.
No wonder the Anglo-American axis is absolutely petrified.
Now cut to a graphic illustration of all of the above – the way it’s being played in the energy markets: the already legendary Opec+ meeting in Vienna a week ago.
A tectonic geopolitical shift was inbuilt in the – collective – decision to slash oil production by 2 million barrels a day.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a very diplomatic note with a stunning piece of information for those equipped to read between the lines.
For all practical purposes, the combo behind the teleprompter reader in Washington had issued a trademark Mafia threat to stop “protection” to Riyadh if the decision on the oil cuts was taken before the US mid-term elections.
Only this time the “offer you can’t refuse” didn’t bite. OPEC+ made a collective decision, led by Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Following Putin and MBS famously getting along, it was up to Putin to host UAE President Sheikh Zayed – or MBZ, MBS’s mentor – at the stunning Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, which datesback to Peter the Great.
That was a sort of informal celebration of how OPEC+ had provoked, with a single move, a superpower strategic debacle when it comes to the geopolitics of oil, which the Empire had controlled for a century.
Everyone remembers, after the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, how US neo-cons bragged, “we are the new OPEC”.
Well, not anymore. And the move had to come from the Russians and US Persian Gulf “allies” when everyone expected that would happen the day a Chinese delegation lands in Riyadh and asks for payment of all the energy they need in yuan.
OPEC+ called the American bluff and left the superpower high’n dry. So what are they going to do to “punish” Riyadh and Abu Dhabi? Call CENTCOM in Qatar and Bahrain to mobilize their aircraft carriers and unleash regime change?
What’s certain is that the Straussian/neocon psychos in charge in Washington will double down on hybrid war.
The art of “spreading instability”
In St. Petersburg, as he addressed MBZ, Putin made it clear that it’s OPEC+ – led by Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – that is now setting the pace to “stabilize global energy markets” so consumers and suppliers would “feel calm, stable and confident” and supply and demand “would be balanced”.
On the gas front, at Russian Energy Week, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller made it clear that Russia may still “save” Europe from an energy black hole.
Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) may become operational: but all political roadblocks must be removed before any repairing work starts on the pipelines.
And on West Asia, Miller said additions to Turk Stream have already been planned, much to the delight of Ankara, keen to become a key energy hub.
In a parallel track, it’s absolutely clear that the G7’s desperate gambit of imposing an oil price cap – which translates as the weaponization of sanctions extended to the global energy market – is a losing proposition.
Slightly over a month before hosting the G20 in Bali, Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati could not make it clearer: “When the United States is imposing sanctions using economic instruments, that creates a precedent for everything”, spreading instability “not only for Indonesia but for all other countries.”
Meanwhile, allMuslim-majority countries are paying very close attention to Russia. The Russia-Iran strategic partnership is now advancing in parallel to the Russia-Saudi-UAE entente as crucial vectors of multipolarity.
In the near future, all these vectors are bound to unite in what ideally should be a supra-organization capable of managing the top story of the 21st century: Eurasia integration.
Pepe Escobar is a veteran journalist, author and independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia.
(The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
Palestine remains a burning issue for the Muslims of the world.
The modern epic of Palestine
The Palestinian cause: the most important cause of the Islamic world
The Palestinian cause is the most important cause in Islam. No other international issue in the world of Islam is more important than the issue of Palestine because the domination of the occupiers of Palestine and Al-Quds over this part of the Islamic Ummah is the source of many of the weaknesses and problems in the world of Islam.
Bait Al-Maqdis The main pivot of the Al-Aqsa Intifada is Bait Al-Maqdis
In other words, the spark that provoked the anger of the Palestinian people was the Zionists’ affront to the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Al-Quds. Having realized their great mission to safeguard the sanctity of one of the most sacred Islamic sites, the Palestinian people entered the arena of struggle against the Zionists.
Occupation of Palestine: A long-held Western wish
Certain western powers have always wished to occupy Palestine and holy Al-Quds and the fact that they imposed the long Crusades on Muslims is a clear sign of their greed for this holy land. After the Allied Powers defeated the Ottomans and entered Bait Al-Maqdis, some of their commanders said, “Today the Crusades came to an end!”
Palestinian uprising ruined all Israeli calculations
The second point that is very important is that this uprising has ruined all calculations of this usurping Zionist regime. This is because their calculations were based on the assumption that over time the Palestinian people would lose the energy and determination to fight back after those early pressures and after the exile of more than half the population of Palestine.
“Israel’s” defeat in the 33-day and 22-day wars: Signs of steep decline
Two important events are “Israel’s” unbelievable military and political defeat against the Lebanese Islamic Resistance in the 33-day war in Lebanon -in the year 1427 of the Islamic calendar- and the humiliating defeat of the Zionist regime in the 22-day war on the people and the legitimate government of Palestine in Gaza.
Resistance of the people of Palestine: an obstacle in the way of Israel:
Of course, the Palestinian nation is powerful: it has proven this.
The Palestinian nation has proven that it has the power to resist. It has proven that it is highly motivated and that it will undoubtedly break the teeth of the brutal and blood-thirsty aggressor.
With its resistance and steadfastness, the Palestinian nation has created a big and insoluble problem for the fake and usurping Zionist regime, a problem that this fake “state” had not faced over the past 50 years. The pressure that the Zionists and their supporters exert on the oppressed people of Palestine is because their movement and their uprising have created such a problem for global arrogance and colonialism that all calculations have been ruined.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement Sayyed Abdul Malik Badreddine al-Houthi said the United States is aggressively seeking to exert its absolute dominance over Muslim nations, stressing that Washington cashed in on the September 11 attacks to accomplish the objective.
“Enemies are trying to appoint the Israeli enemy as the direct representative of the United States and the West in the region,” Sayyed al-Houthi said in a televised speech broadcast live from the Yemeni capital city of Sana’a on Thursday while addressing a ceremony held to commemorate former Ansarullah chief Martyr Sayyed Hussein Badreddine al-Houthi.
“All the actions of enemies prompt us to take a firm stance in the face of existing dangers and the ongoing all-out offensives,” he said, noting that the United States and its allies had plans to occupy Arab and Muslim countries and attack other states.
The Ansarullah leader continued, “Hussein Badreddine al-Houthi aimed his condemnations at aggressors, and adopted the approach of countering hostile attacks against the Muslim nation [Ummah].”
Stating that his slogan of “the cry in the face of the arrogant” shows the anger and protest of the Muslim Ummah against the conspiracies, Sayyed al-Houthi noted that the purpose of this slogan is to protect the internal arena of Muslims from influence, because the US attacks are comprehensive in all areas.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Sayyed al-Houthi stated that ‘Israel’ is trying to utilize American and Western measures in order to completely annihilate the Palestinian cause, emphasizing that Washington and the Tel Aviv regime do not want any country to stand in the way of their plots and that they want to implement their conspiracies in Muslim countries.
“Late Houthi’s motto centered on humanity and disowning enemies. The motto was meant to empower Muslim nations both militarily and economically, and exposed the hollow nature of enemies’ claims about freedom of opinion and expression,” the Ansarullah leader pointed out.
Sayyed al-Houthi underlined that losses and regrets inevitably await all those who bank on friendship with the enemies of the Muslim world, saying, “Many Arab regimes are moving towards friendship with the ‘Israeli’ enemy and forging economic partnership with it.”
The Ansarullah leader stated that Zionist lobbyists harbor hostility towards Islam, noting that those who are serving the Tel Aviv regime are actually turning a blind eye to ‘Israeli’ crimes being perpetrated on a daily basis in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“Whatever action that benefits the ‘Israeli’ enemy is a hostile act, which targets Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world,” Sayyed al-Houthi said.
He also said that Washington has been targeting Yemen in all areas, including politics, economy, security and culture.
Sayyed al-Houthi further noted that the US and its allies resorted to an atrocious military campaign against Yemen after losing hope of controlling the country politically.
“They have, however, failed to achieve their goals due to the spirited steadfastness and resistance of the Yemeni nation,” the Ansarullah chief said.
“Yemenis will not give in to any campaign against their country,” Sayyed al-Houthi said, emphasizing that resistance is the only path to victory against the enemies of the country.
Al-Houthi: Our cry is the voice of the nation against the plans of the enemies
The protection of the Muslim holy place is a matter of faith, not just a question of whether more can be done to protect it.
Al-Aqsa: What are Muslims Worldwide doing to Defend their Holy Site?
Israeli forces raided Al-Quds’ Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, attacking Palestinians worshipping inside. Thousands of Palestinians were attacked by Israeli police while praying in a mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.
Al-Aqsa is one of the largest and most important mosques in the Muslim world and the earliest in Palestine. Masjid Al-Aqsa is Al-Quds’ holiest Muslim site. Al-Aqsa is a symbol of Prophetic remembrance for Muslims worldwide, connecting not only the three holiest places of Makkah, Medina, and Al-Quds but also the Prophet’s biography. The importance of Masjid Al-Aqsa to Muslims is undeniable. The mosque is also a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and it has been repeatedly raided by Israeli forces and extreme factions seeking to replace it with a temple. Apart from its religious significance, Al-Aqsa symbolizes Palestinian culture and nationhood.
Israeli authorities have permitted Israeli radicals to intimidate and desecrate the sanctity of Masjid Al-Aqsa since the occupation began. The attacks on Masjid Al-Aqsa, on the other hand, have been directed by Israeli political leaders throughout the last decade.
The Israeli authority has escalated its violent actions in Al-Quds in general and in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Moreover, it already maintains temporal and spatial separations between native Palestinians and Zionist settler-colonists to impose Judaization as a fait accompli in the end.
Moreover, the number of Zionist political and religious personalities who have entered the Al-Aqsa Site has risen, in an attempt to divide the mosque between Muslims and Jews. The Israeli apartheid regime’s frequent invasions into the mosque are meant to allow Jews to perform Talmudic prayers there, in an attempt to justify the absurd demand to partition Al-Aqsa.
What is evident is that “Israel” has begun to speed its ambitions to Judaise Al-Quds in order to reach the point when it would be able to build a temple – at the expense of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque – and impose absolute Jewish Israeli sovereignty over it. In recent years, the number of invasions into Al-Aqsa and its courtyards has increased. Since the occupation began in 1948, Israeli offensives on the Al-Aqsa Mosque have never stopped. Since then, the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been in grave danger. “Israel” has also banned Ethiopian pilgrims from entering the country during this year’s Easter season. “Israel’s” brutality targets all religions.
The desecration of Masjid Al-Aqsa by “Israel” is an insult to Muslims worldwide. “Israel’s” actions and support for extremists demonstrate its contempt for the sanctity Muslims place on Al-Aqsa. However, the subject of the Al-Aqsa cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of the Palestinian struggle. People are uniting to defend their cultural and national heritage and their rights, including their right to worship, residency, freedom of movement, and a dignified living. The Palestinian struggle for justice, freedom, and equality is embodied in the protests for Al-Aqsa.
Suppose all Muslims cherish spiritually Al-Aqsa Haram Sharif. In that case, the question to ask is, what are Muslims worldwide doing to defend their Holy site, and how the world community does not put pressure on “Israel” to cease attacking the Al-Aqsa mosque and its worshippers? Muslims must have their role to protect Al-Quds’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. The protection of the Muslim holy place is a matter of faith, not just a question of whether more can be done to protect it.
The international community must hold “Israel” accountable for its ongoing attacks and abuses against Palestinians, their land, and sacred places. Significantly, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) needs to speak up. The Organization is the Muslim world’s united voice. In the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among all peoples, it strives to promote and protect the interests of the Muslim world. To play a meaningful role in combating Muslim distress, the OIC and Muslim countries must work together and assume their privileged position in dealing with Palestine’s dire condition.
The international community and the Muslim world should take steps to protect Palestinians and their rightful rights. Muslims must act in unity and solidarity to prevent occupation and oppression in Al-Quds. All Muslims on the globe have their hearts set on Masjid Al-Aqsa. Al-Quds will be free when we achieve complete unity.
Most importantly, efforts should be made to reclaim Al-Quds, protect its Islamic and historical identity, preserve and protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other important places, and combat the Holy City’s Judaization. The international community must act quickly to protect Palestinians and their fundamental rights.
On Al-Quds Day, millions of people gather worldwide to show their sympathy for the Palestinian cause and to reiterate their demand to put an end to the Zionist apartheid regime’s atrocities and occupation of Palestine. This is an opportunity for people worldwide to come together and resist the violent extremism of Israeli cruelty and “ideology”. Last year, the battle of Seif Al-Quds represented the Palestinian nation’s solidarity, which stemmed from the Palestinian people’s vigilance and freedom-seeking zeal.
Those from the Arab world who have signed normalization agreements chose to remain silent over the Israeli brutality. However, the escalation of violence in Al-Aqsa has put a lot of pressure on those nations, who had argued that having a closer connection with “Israel” would help them restrict Israeli activities against Palestinians. The normalization agreement did not affect Israeli violence or the annexation of Palestinian land. It simply highlighted “Israel’s” apartheid policies, which grant full rights to Israeli Jews while oppressing and discriminating against the indigenous Palestinian population.
More specifically, the Islamic world should mobilize the world to stop “Israel’s” brutality. They must urge the international community to hold “Israel” accountable for the escalation of events and demand an immediate halt to any aggravation that violates international laws and pacts. The UN Security Council should take action in response to “Israel’s” persistent violations. Under international humanitarian law, “Israel’s” recent illegal actions constitute “war crimes,” and those responsible for the “ruthless abuses” in Al-Aqsa must be prosecuted.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah on Friday warned the Zionist entity against targeting Al-Quds, stressing that the demise of the Palestinian capital means the demise of ‘Israel’.
In a lengthy speech on the occasion of International Al-Quds Day, Sayyed Nasrallah delivered several messages to the Israeli enemy, its backers and inferiors in the region.
His eminence stressed that the Resistance is making head against Israeli enemy despite all means of pressures adopted by the occupation and its backers.
Sayyed Nasrallah underlined that the formula that relates between Al-Quds and Gaza is still persistent, warning the Israeli enemy of the status of the Palestinian capital according to powers in the Axis of Resistance.
In this context, he urged countries and armies of the region to deliver a message to the Israeli occupation that says that the demise of Al-Quds means the demise of ‘Israel’, hinting out that any aggression on Al-Quds could lead to a regional war with Axis of Resistance.
Commenting on Israeli threats regarding the upcoming drills, Sayyed Nasrallah revealed that the Lebanese Resistance group has staged a ‘silent’ military drills in the last weeks, warning the Israeli enemy against attacking Hezbollah.
“Any folly by the Israeli enemy will be met by harsh response in a flash. This means that Israeli officials in such attack will not hear the statement: ‘Hezbollah reserves right to respond in the appropriate time and place’… We will retaliate at once.”
Al-Quds in the Conscience of the Muslim Nation
At the beginning of his speech, Sayyed Nasrallah saluted dozens of thousands of Palestinians who performed prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
He also saluted those who have been barricaded at the holy site in the latest weeks to defend it against Israeli attempts to desecrate it. His eminence, meanwhile, hailed the mass rallies which took place in about 90 countries across the world, especially those held in Iran and Yemen.
Talking more about the occasion, Sayyed Nasrallah said that the founder and the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic Imam Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini wanted through designation the last Friday in Ramadan moth as International Al-Quds Day to “keep Al-Quds in the conscience of this nation.”
Israeli Schemes of Forgetting, Despair and Exhausting
He noted that the Israeli enemy and their backers adopted three paths in dealing with Palestine and the Muslim nation: forcing the Muslims to forget Palestine and Al-Quds, despairing Palestinian people and exhausting Palestinians as well as countries in the region.
In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah said that the first path has been foiled, stressing that “the Israeli occupation failed to take the Palestinian cause off the nation’s top priorities.”
He noted that normalization deals between some Arab countries, which are aimed at despairing Palestinian people has also failed.
“The aim of normalization deals was to tell the Palestinians that there is no hope and that they have to surrender. However, this path has also failed.”
“The heroic operations in occupied territories as well as firing rockets and the confrontations in Jenin… All these indicate that Palestinian people believe in victory.”
“The third path is the exhausting one. And it’s aimed against Palestinians and all people in the Axis of Resistance. This path includes all forms of pressures against our people and the Resistance groups, like sanctions, financial pressures and terror lists.”
His eminence stressed here that despite sufferings, this path has failed and that Palestine and Al-Quds is still one of this nation’s top priorities.
Axis of Resistance Making Head
Sayyed Nasrallah affirmed that Palestine and Al-Quds “are part of our religion, ideology and dignity which we will never abandon.”
He noted that Axis of Resistance has not relied on the political stance, but went for the military confrontation, underlining the importance of such option.
“Military confrontation proved ability to achieve victories and this path should continue. Military confrontation tops acts of resistance against Zionist entity throughout long years of Jihad. Military confrontation has proved that ‘Israel’ could be conquered and that this entity is not a destiny.”
Sayyed Nasrallah then talked about achievements secured by the Axis of Resistance in the latest months, noting that the “Int’l Al-Quds Day comes this year as the resistance against occupation is making head.”
He hailed the individual operations taking place in Palestine in the latest weeks, calling for offering all forms of support to Palestinian people.
“Individual operations carried out by Palestinians against Israeli occupation in the latest weeks are game-changing acts of resistance. They Palestinian individual operations revealed the Israeli occupation’s vulnerability.”
He said that the individual operations toppled the Israeli formula which is based on occupation and security, noting that the Zionist entity “can’t survive without security” and that this is one of the most achievements secured by this kind of operations.
The Hezbollah S.G. also pointed to the Al-Quds-Gaza formula established by Palestinian Resistance following Sword of Al-Quds Op. in 2021, stressing that such formula is still persistent.
Then, he highlighted the unwavering commitment by Axis of Resistance powers towards Al-Quds.
‘We reiterate the regional formula which stipulates the solid relation between the Axis of Resistance and Al-Quds.”
In this context, he called on some Arab countries, which have relations with the Zionist entity, to deliver a message to the Israeli occupation that reads: Demise of Al-Quds means demise of ‘Israel’.”
“The future of Axis of Resistance is hope while the fate of the enemy is defeat.”
Attack on Iran and Israeli Drills
Sayyed Nasrallah then cited when the Zionist entity attacked Iran from Erbil last month.
“Iran retaliated by firing 12 missiles on Israeli Mossad facility in Erbil. Tehran at time delivered a message to regional countries which established ties with Zionist entity that any attack on the Islamic Republic through their soils will be met by harsh response.”
His eminence then tackled the upcoming Israeli drills in the Zionist entity next May. He revealed that the Hezbollah holds ‘silent’ drills frequently, stressing that the Lebanese Resistance movement is fully ready to confront any potential Israeli aggression.
“Any Israeli folly will be met by harsh response. In such case you (Israelis) will not hear ‘we reserve right to respond in the appropriate time and place’. We will retaliate at once.”
German sports pundits attribute any less than perfect performance of a Muslim sportsperson during the Holy Month to fasting, while denying extraordinary achievements by fasting athletes their due respect.
German Islamophobia’s treatment of Muslim athletes observing Ramadan
There are two annual occurrences during the month of Ramadan that are so reliable in their probability that they will happen that you can set your watch to them: Israeli occupation forces storming the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Al-Quds and bombing the Gaza-Strip, and white German sports pundits finding a way to denigrate the faith of 1.8 billion followers of Islam by attributing a decline in athletic performance to fasting.
This year, the prime target of this seasonal brand of socially accepted Islamophobia has been French football player N’Golo Kanté of English club FC Chelsea, one of the best defensive midfielders in the world, and whose relatively weaker performance than usual during the first leg quarter-final match against Spanish side Real Madrid in this season’s Champions League was blamed on his observing Ramadan. By who? None other than his German manager, Thomas Tuchel.
“[I]f for many days you don’t drink or eat it can have an effect,” said the 58-year-old after his team lost 1:3 on their home turf at Stamford Bridge in early April. Just in time for this year’s Holy Month, white German sports pundits, as embodied by Tuchel, once again underwent vocational re- training from football aficionado to nutrition expert. In their traditional Eurocentric hubris, they seem to think that they know better than the adherents of a world religion who have been practicing the central pillar of their faith that is the fast for over a millennia.
Tuchel, who is known for his radical notions regarding dietary regimens and his utter disrespect for boundaries in enforcing them (during his stint as manager of Paris Saint-Germain, French media claimed that Tuchel had demanded from midfielder Marco Verratti the latter should lose weight, prompting a justifiably disgruntled Verratti to voice his intention of transferring elsewhere), is one to talk: German news magazine Der Focus once commented on Tuchel’s skinniness with the words “Is this slim or simply unhealthy?” And given his signature pallor one could argue that the “Tuchel- diet” (sport.de) is diametrically opposed to a balanced food intake.
The Chelsea manager’s career often seems like a time-delayed one of Liverpool FC coach Jürgen Klopp, the former on more than one occasion following in the footsteps of his German compatriot (coaching the former Klopp clubs FSV Mainz 05 and Borussia Dortmund in the German Bundesliga, then following him to the Premier League, albeit with a detour in Paris).
German media have even gone so far as to call him a “Klopp clone.” Yet when it comes to “wokeness” and cultural sensitivity, Tuchel and Klopp are worlds apart. When in the past the British sports press tried to link the performance issues of his Muslim players to their observance of Ramadan, a loyal Klopp threw himself in front of them like a human shield by saying:
“I have no problem with my players fasting. I respect their religion and they were always amazing whether they were fasting or not. There are days when [Sadio] Mané and [Mohamed] Salah come late to the dressing room because they were praying. There are many things more important than football.”
With his insensitive and textbook liberal Islamophobic comments directed at Kanté, the sore loser that is Thomas Tuchel (Chelsea has since been knocked-out of the tournament), has proven to the world that he views Klopp’s last sentence slightly differently and that when it comes to decency, empathy and loyalty, the “Klopp clone” still has a lot to learn from original Klopp.
Erasing Ramadan when it’s convenient
Another way German sports pundits like to denigrate Ramadan is by conveniently omitting when it not only does not diminish the performance of a fasting player, but enhances it, even to the level of unparalleled mastery. This is exactly what the white German sportscasters at DAZN did (in Germany, the US streaming service shares the broadcasting rights to the UEFA Champions League with Prime Video and Sky), who in their gushing praise for Real Madrid’s hat trick-scoring striker Karim Benzema during the aforementioned match and in the post-match analysis did not once think of mentioning that Benzema had been fasting.
They could have said: “For the sake of fairness und completeness, we should add that Benzema has been fasting, so the outstanding performance that we witnessed tonight has to be seen in this light and deserves even more credit.” Or, God forbid, surpass themselves by saying something along the lines of Benzema’s superior performance not having occurred in spite of his observance of Ramadan, but because of it; that the razor-sharp focus and spiritual energy achieved through fasting (seen by the Westcentric worldview as a health risk when Muslims do it, but as beneficial to the body and spirit when done by Hindu yogis, which Whitey then emulates to the point of cultural appropriation) had a thing or two to do with his phenomenal performance.
But far from it: lying by omission is also lying, and in their deliberate erasure of Ramadan the white German “professionals” at DAZN (in Germany, sports commentators are almost exclusively white), who normally don’t shy away from espousing their allegedly anti-racist views when commenting favourably on football players taking a knee, sadly revealed the limits of their progressive politics.
“Ramadan Kyrie”: Islamophilia in the NBA
That there is an alternative way of going about representing Ramadan in sports media one could see in the NBA these days, North America’s highest men’s professional basketball league: after the Brooklyn Nets’ victory against the Cleveland Cavaliers in mid-April, Nets star Kyrie Irving, a convert to Islam, was asked by an American reporter:
“Kyrie, on a personal note: you have said that you are fasting for Ramadan…How do you muster the energy to go out and score 34 points with very little nutrition in your body?”
What Irving answered was a counter-narrative rebuttal against all the Westcentric agnostics and atheists and the individualistic societies that have (ill-in)formed them, who in their cultural narcissism and colonial arrogance underestimate the communal and holistic meaning of Ramadan:
“Well, it’s a journey with God, and I’m not alone in this. I have brothers and sisters all around the world that are fasting with me. We hold our prayers and our meditations very sacred…God’s inside me, God’s inside you, God’s inside all of us, so I’m walking with faith. That’s all that matters.”
I watched the Nets’ first play-off match against the Boston Celtics live on DAZN (the Nets lost in the last second due to a buzzer-beating shot by Celtics star player Jayson Tatum) and even though a fasting Kyrie Irving once again displayed highest levels of basketball artistry, the German commentators again did not mention that Irving was fasting, much less go out of their way to establish a causal link between his observance of Ramadan and his high performance.
“Fans have dubbed Irving with the ‘Ramadan Kyrie’ nickname as he puts up impressive scoring outbursts despite the guard fasting during games,” writes Massachusetts news portal MassLive.com. Look how positively Ramadan can be portrayed if there is the will to do so! DAZN commentators in Germany should take note.
I wonder what they had to say to what Celtics star Jaylen Brown, Irving’s former team mate who is also fasting, told the attendants of a press conference before the play-offs:
“Ramadan is something special…It’s something that’s saved my life in a lot of ways. So shoutout to all the people who are participating and shoutout to everybody who shows respect because, in reality, some things are bigger than basketball.”
Hear that, Thomas Tuchel? Ramadan is not only not bad for your health, but also “life-saving.” So show some respect. Brown’s comments should put all liberal Islamophobes with their unprovoked acrimony towards the Muslim fast to shame.
And like Klopp and Irving, the latter who at a press conference in May 2021 during which he condemned “Israel’s” bombing of Palestine said that “basketball is just not the most important thing to me right now”, Brown has also got his priorities straight. Deen over dunya, as Muslims say.
Fair play for Islam
Returning to European football, there was another wonderful example this Ramadan of a fasting athlete excelling in his sport and being afforded the transparent and contextualized respect he deserves: A match in Portugal’s first division saw FC Porto’s Iranian international Mehdi Taremi scoring a hat trick in his club’s 7:0 win against Portimonense, prompting the Primeira Liga to post this on their official Twitter page: “During the day, the rules of Ramadan are followed; while hunger is satisfied at night with goals.”
Fair play is a key tenet of competitive sports, and it also includes respect. UEFA’s Respect campaign was launched in 2008 as a social responsibility programme with the objective of “work[ing] towards unity and respect across gender, race, religion and ability,” says UEFA.
With its deliberate erasure of the positive role religious fasting plays in the athletic performances of Muslim sportspeople and its liberal Islamophobia of constructing a causality between observing Ramadan and performance issues, German punditry, be it in the form of the sports commentators at DAZN Germany or a manager like Thomas Tuchel, have repeatedly proven that they have yet to embody this spirit of respect for the religion of Islam.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
Ramin Mazaheri (@RaminMazaheri2 on Twitter) is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. His new book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘ Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
The re-election of Emmanuel Macron is being celebrated by Brussels, high finance and his “bourgeois bloc” of core French supporters, but Macron’s record shows that Muslims and Muslim nations anticipate little reason to celebrate.
After Macron’s victory the Iranian foreign ministry called for face-to-face talks to resume on the JCPOA pact on Iran’s nuclear energy program “as soon as possible”. The talks were paused on March 11 due to the unrest in Ukraine, but Iranians would be mistaken to imagine that a second term of Macron will lead to less Western-dominated policies from him.
Just to show how far Macron is willing to go in order to defend the interests of Brussels and Washington, simply look at his position on Russia: He is completely on board with years of sanctions on Moscow no matter how badly they bankrupt the average French individual, household or business. His stance is designed to benefit supranational interests, not French ones.
In a race which was a dead heat two weeks ago Macron’s stance seemed like electoral suicide. Marine Le Pen took the opposite tack – she insisted that Russia sanctions not encompass energy imports nor negatively impact the average French voter.
It was even revealed just several days before the second round vote that Brussels was waiting for the French election to finish in order to announce a total ban on Russian energy imports. Mere days before the runoff France’s Foreign Minister was forced to admit that Macron was indeed in favor of such a ban. There was no hiding it: if French voters were voting with their pocketbooks Macron was going to cost them, and for years.
Macron was truly willing to lose his re-election in order to put Western globalist interests in front of France’s well-being.
However, in between the first and second rounds of voting any criticism of Macron’s policies or record in office was pathetically shouted down as “support for fascism”. Macron won a 58-42 victory, though the total masks the same problem as his 66-34 win in 2017: the obvious lack of a clear mandate for his proposals.
So if Macron is not going to stand up for France as regards to Russia, why would he do so for Iran?
His record on the JCPOA is already clear: five years of stalling, refusal to go against Washington and the clear failure to uphold France’s side of the deal.
Now that he’s re-elected the man who inspired the phrase “liberal strongman” will feel bolder, stronger and more willing to violently forge a tighter-knit Europe, not less willing. Untethered from re-election concerns the rabid Europhile Macron now has even less incentive to look out for the average person’s well-being. So no matter how much ending the sanction war on Iran would benefit France it must be understood that this is simply not a major factor in Macron’s political calculations.
Iran is forced to rely a lot on the French president to influence the West. Macron’s role has been to play the “good cop” to the “bad cop” of Washington and London, who are unable to conceal their anger for Iranian Islamic revolutionaries. Berlin silently holds its purse while Brussels insists that their pragmatic politicians are always just on the cusp of finding a solution to all things – of course they never have. The other JCPOA signatories – China and Russia – are not the problem to finding diplomatic solutions, of course.
Like with Donald Trump, nobody is really sure what Marine Le Pen would actually do if she ever took office, but at least there was hope that there could, maybe, possibly, perhaps be a voice in Paris for sovereign rights and mutually-beneficial cooperation. But the idea that Macron is going to turn into Charles De Gaulle and stand up to Washington and London is worse than wishful thinking. It’s definitely not based on his record, ideology or stated desires.
So don’t be surprised if Macron starts his second term with strong demands on Tehran.
The question is: how long will Iran put up with even more waiting for the West to fulfil their side of the JCPOA? Macron probably doesn’t realise that patience across all of Iran wore out at the end of February. If Macron thinks he can engage in his usual ineffectual diplomacy for another year before he has to get serious, he’d be quite wrong – Iran’s patience with the JCPOA is at an end.
Unlike with the US in 2020 there was no change in power so there’s no justifiable reason for any delays. Macron better get to Vienna immediately or his record thus far on the JCOPA will become etched in stone: failure.
Macron has been the most pro-Zionist French president in recent memory. He passed a bill which falsely and shamefully equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, something which epitomises the lack of intellectual rigour and duplicity in Macronian politics. The former Rothschild banker has been routinely described as out of his depth in international affairs, and he has always relied on more experienced advisors. He shuttles diplomatically because that’s the longtime role of Paris in Western international affairs – Macron, who married his high school drama teacher, is playing his assigned role.
Domestically, Macron has done things which Marine Le Pen would simply have never gotten away with. A stunning (but rarely reported) fact is that Macron’s government ministers openly criticised Le Pen for being “soft on Islam”. That was from the right-wing of Macron’s government – the less reactionary members of his cabinet regularly railed against the alleged perils of “Islamo-leftism”. Macron is against any leftism, of course.
Macron immediately took Francois Hollande’s multiyear state of emergency and legalised it, with Muslims the clear targets.
How did that affect Islamophobia in France? I can’t tell you, because in 2020 Macron forced the French Collective Against Islamophobia, an essential NGO for the nation, into exile in Belgium.
His so-called “anti-separatist law” of 2021 tried to ban the hijab for minors, and yet Macron hypocritically scored international points by opposing Le Pen’s proposed (and unenforceable) ban on the hijab in public spaces. I argue (and not at all to defend a Marine Le Pen who has gotten even worse than in 2017) that Le Pen had to go to these absurd lengths simply to appear as the more anti-Islam candidate opposite the extremely Islamophobic Emmanuel Macron.
But this is the first week of Macron’s second term – if we can’t be optimistic now, when can we be?
In 2017 two out of three French voters were on the side of the nation’s Muslim citizens – for two weeks.
In between the first and second round presidential vote the incredible repression which Marine Le Pen was going to wage on Muslims was constantly cited as a reason to vote for Emmanuel Macron, who was presented as a “centrist”.
As the largest Muslim country in Europe the Muslim vote matters: In 2012 French Muslims decided the election. More than 2 million Muslim voters voted for Francois Hollande to the tune of 93% against Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande prevailed by just 1.1 million votes, or a 51.6% to 48.4% margin.
Hollande immediately sold out the Muslim vote by refusing to take a zero-tolerance approach to Sarkozy’s inauguration of France’s normalisation of Islamophobia.
The start of open attacks on Islam with Sarkozy has only backfired in every way, because since his election polls show that French Muslims have only gotten more devout in their practices. The reason is obvious: the constant accusations that Islam is bad pushes French Muslims to look more closely at their religion – they do, and they realise how wonderful Islam is, thus they become more devout.
For France’s non-Muslims it has tragically backfired as well. Many in France don’t realise that the insulting Islamophobia, which results in humiliating domestic oppression, comes on top of two centuries of colonial and neo-colonial domination, plus foreign wars in places like Mali, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Seemingly every Muslim attacker in France since 2008 who wasn’t clearly insane cited France’s wars in Mali and Syria, specifically, as justification for their attacks.
Hollande manipulated the attacks to gain approval for state-sponsored Islamophobia, which became his trusty “Islamo-diversion” tactic to deflect from his unpopular enforcing of far-right economic austerity. In his tenure some 4,000 warrantless raids on Muslim homes, mosques and properties only led to six suspicions of terrorism. The handful of the court cases were won, and I cannot unearth even one conviction from Hollande-era raids.
France’s fake-left assumed they have the Muslim constituency in their back pocket in 2012. In 2017 the threat of the National Front forced them into Macron’s camp. 2022 is a changed place.
Many French Muslims have told me they will do what was unthinkable to them previously – vote for the National Front (now rebranded as the “National Rally) in the second round.
Why the change? The insidious deception that Macron is a “centrist” and not a willing manipulator of Islamophobia has been totally disproven – the lower class and the Muslim class have paid the price for five years.
Sarkozy brought French Islamophobia into the mainstream, Hollande got it approved, but Macron institutionalised it. Macron took Hollande’s multiyear state of emergency and legalised it, with Muslims the clear targets and practically the only victims. Only the Yellow Vests and a small number of leftist and environmental activists have ever been impacted.
From not apologising for various massacres and atrocities against Algerians, to keeping Europe’s oldest political prisoner and the “Arab Nelson Mandela” Georges Ibrahim Abdallah in prison, to falsely and shamefully enacting legislation which equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, to a “cyber-hate bill” which targets pro-Palestinians and Yellow Vests – Macron did very little in the past five years which did anything but hurt Muslims.
Have Islamophobic acts increased during the Macron era? We don’t know – Macron forced the closure of the French Collective Against Islamophobia, seemingly the only and certainly the best Muslim NGO committed to tracking this problem.
His so-called “anti-separatist law” of 2021 was the definite legalisation of Islamophobia, and was so heavy-handed even the United Nations and English-media widely criticised it. It tried to ban the hijab for minors and clearly violated constitutional protections for the freedom of association, worship and politics. In recent months nearly 100 mosques have recently been raided by the government, with at least two dozen shut down so far. (Who says Macron doesn’t care about far-right voters?)
Just this week a new report from Reuters came out: The mosque closures were based merely on “secretive evidence” which violate the right to fair trial and equality before the law. “Secretive” is simply another word for “false”, of course.
As his record clearly now proves, Macron is on the far-right economically (austerity and neoliberalism), politically (with his repression of the Yellow Vests), in his governance style (it’s a completely top-down style befitting a monarch and not an elected public servant who must listen to others and compromise) but also culturally – he’s Islamophobic.
The error is exactly as I wrote in 2017 – in agreeing with the Mainstream Media’s insistence that Macron was a “centrist”. The past five years proves he is authoritarian, pro-economic inequality, and Islamophobic.
Much like with the absolutely brutal repression of the Yellow Vests – Marine Le Pen would have never gotten away with half of the Islamophobia Macron did. People would have been on guard from the day she took office – similar to the response to Donald Trump’s election in the United States. A Le Pen victory would have sparked organised progressive resistance groups – something like a George Floyd response or #MeToo but à la française.
The handful of French media oligarchs who decided to give a political neophyte (he was previously a Rothschild banker) like Macron such glowing press coverage in the run-up to the 2017 election also decided to hand the 2022 election campaign agenda to convicted racist Eric Zemmour. The reason? Primarily this was done to spit the far-right vote for Sunday’s first round vote, but Zemmour also aids Macron by making Macron look more falsely “centrist”. Look at his record – Macron needs that assistance.
Making Islamophobia the 2022 election’s primary campaign issue will backfire – record abstention is widely predicted. It’s actually good news in this way: Islamophobia may still propel French politicians but the French people are bored by it – they wanted to go back to discussing real issues.
A very recent poll actually has Marine Le Pen beating Macron 50.5% to 49.5%. Other recent polls have her just 3 points down from Macron – that’s within the margin of error, and thus it’s a dead-heat. Her Hungarian “right-nationalist” counterpart just won a huge victory even though polls predicted a much tighter contest. French polling agencies are not just staffed by politicians – the biggest one is owned by a politician. Thus the odds of a 2nd round win by Le Pen seem much, much higher than many claimed in the previous months.
A Le Pen victory will be no picnic for France’s Muslims but at least everyone will be on guard against her. Macron, foolishly, was given a huge leash, and he went so far against Muslims that he broke the chain.
But mostly, France’s Muslims will do what a record number of French people will likely do: tune out the mainstream media hate factory and not vote. Abstention will hurt France’s left wing candidate – Jean-Luc Melenchon, who opposed the anti-separatism bill – but in France even the left wing is often as Islamophobic as the right wing.
One thing is certain: the alleged “centrist” Macron was no solution for France’s anti-Muslim problems.
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. His new book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘ Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
For years Zionist regime has been busy with committing crimes against Muslims, mainly Palestinians, and its crime has gone unnoticed by the international bodies and recently Saudi-led coalition has joined the Zionist wagon to commit crimes against Yemenis with no concern about getting due punishments from the international bodies or countries.
TEHRAN (Iran News) – For years Zionist regime has been busy with committing crimes against Muslims, mainly Palestinians, and its crime has gone unnoticed by the international bodies and recently Saudi-led coalition has joined the Zionist wagon to commit crimes against Yemenis with no concern about getting due punishments from the international bodies or countries.
In recent days while the world and especially the United Nations have been mobilized against Russia to punish this country regarding Ukraine war, Zionists and Saudi-led coalition forces continue their crimes comfortably without getting any even small condemnation from the UN.
It seems crimes against Muslims will continue non-stop mostly by Zionists and by some so-called Muslim states while the world is indifferent towards Muslims’ condition in Palestine and Yemen.
On Tuesday, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement sharply criticized the United States for exercising double standards on human rights, saying Washington has remained silent on decades of Israeli atrocities against Palestine as well as the horrendous criminal acts that the Saudi-led coalition is perpetrating in war-torn Yemen.
“While U.S. officials accuse Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine, they tend to turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed against civilians in all their wars. The United States has carried out crimes worldwide, spanning from Japan to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia. U.S. warplanes have bombed Afghan weddings, turning them into funerals,” Sayed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech broadcast live from Beirut.
He added, “What can Americans say about the massacres being perpetrated by Zionists in Palestine and Israel’s war crimes? What can they say about the siege of the Gaza Strip? What can they say about the massacres of the Saudi-American aggression in Yemen? What can they say about the blockade of Yemen?”
The Hezbollah chief noted that thousands of trials should be held to bring American and European military officials to justice for crimes committed in Algeria, Libya and elsewhere in the world.
He also lambasted the international community’s apathy towards Friday’s attack on a Shia mosque in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar, which killed at least 61 people and injured another 196, stating that the bombers who carried out the attack were US creations and instructed to play out the scenario.
Hezbollah’s leader warns that the Russia-Ukraine conflict can lead to repercussions that would be very dangerous to the whole world.
What Nasrallah said is just a small portion of many crimes which are committed in the world which go unpunished and even unnoticed.
“Trusting Americans translates into stupidity, foolishness and ignorance,” Nasrallah said, adding, “Ukrainians have been let down by those who they counted on, and they have started to announce their readiness for discussions with Moscow,” Nasrallah said.
“The treatment of the recent wave of refugees from Ukraine exposes discrimination based on religion, race, and color. Is this the Western civilization?” he said.
The double standard approach towards different issues by the West and the international bodies hurts the nations in the world especially when it comes to the Muslim states or anti-West countries, this approach widens so that ever body can see and feel the double standard regarding the mentioned states.
The strange thing is that Muslim states help the Zionists and the West to get bolder action against Muslim states because they know that Muslim states are divided and they will not take a united action against the committed crimes.
As Nasrallah said, the U.S. and mainly the West cannot be trusted and even Ukrainian people saw it in practice that the U.S. and Europeans are not ready to fight for them when they need it. Ukraine war has taught us many lessons and especially to the Muslim countries.
One of the main lessons is that Muslim countries should not rely on assistance of other countries and they themselves should fight for success and prosperity. The second lesson is that they should fight for their cause as Ukrainians do for it because they have realized that Western countries prefer to talk rather than to act.
So it is up to Muslim nations whether to accept suppression by their enemies or to stand against it because as long as they wait for the international bodies’ reaction to crimes against Palestine and Yemen or even other Muslim country like Sudan, it will be waste of time because the non-stop crimes against them will continue without getting due reaction and punishment.
Muslim nations need leaders like Seyed Ali Khamenei and Sayed Nasrallah to stand against arrogant states otherwise they have to seat and watch crimes against them going on. Lack of the brave leadership is the missing link in Muslim states which hurts them and makes happy the hostile nations.
In the Name of All- beneficent, All-merciful God (Allah).
God has kept his promise to Jesus ( peace be upon him) that his followers will have the upperhand over his enemies until the day of judgment.
Today the Christian population of the world is 2.3 billion and the Jews, who refused to recognize the Holiness of Jesus and his Holy mother Mary and showed enmity towards them, are only 14.7 million (in pure form) and including their sub categories they are 20 million or so, and the Idol worshippers of then Rome, who wanted to kill Jesus and killed many of his followers, are extinct now.
If a person is told, “God has sent a message that you will never enter paradise and you are definitely going to hell” How do you think he is going to act?
I think he is going to be enraged and he is going to commit every possible sins and crimes against others and try to destroy others’ lives out of envy, just like what has happened to Satan, when Allah cursed him and drove him away from the Garden, as he refused to obey Allah’s order.
Also, if someone is told that he is going to heaven no matter what, then nothing will stop him from committing crimes against others, since he is assured of heaven. This is the case with the Zionist Jews; they think they are chosen by God. It should be asked: “Chosen” for what, heaven or hell?
Had God really made this promise to any one, He would have first removed the evil intentions from his soul completely, so that he is preserved from all sins and not commit crimes against others, to get what he desires. This is the logical path.
Then, when we see the Zionist Jews are committing great sins and crimes against other human beings, then we have no doubt they have fabricated this saying: “We are not going to be punished for this.”
This very sentence of them, “We are the chosen people” is the root cause of their transgressions in their private and social lives, which had begun long before Jesus arrived, almost two thousand years ago. God says in the Holy Quran:
“The faithless among the children ( descendants) of Israel were cursed on the tongue of David and Jesus son of Mary. That, because they would disobey and they used to commit transgression.’ (5:78)
A strange looking transgression by Israeli Occupation forces need to be looked at and be given much attention to. Every time Israel attacked Lebanon, it did not forget to shell Cana, a south Lebanon town bordering northern Galilee. They have killed many innocent civilians there intentionally, even though there were no Hezbollah positions there during those incidents . Much was written about it in Lebanese media at that time and in subsequent anniversaries. The famous and distinguished journalist, late Robert Fisk, covered these stories at length.
Lebanese town of Cana is not like any other town, it is famous for pilgrimage for the Christians and the Muslims. It is said, Jesus( peace be upon him) showed his first miracle there, changing water into a Heavenly wine or drink for his disciples. Some say, he also cured a woman there, his first time, with his miraculous power.
WHY do Israeli Occupation Forces shell this place every time they attack Lebanon?
Questions must be asked to the Christian world, specially to the US politicians:
1. Which is more financially beneficial for the USA, friendship with 20 million Jews or 1.8 billion Muslims?
2. Why are the Jews so dear to you who think Jesus was a fraud?
3. And why are the Muslims so detestable to you, while the Quran is full of beautiful praises for Jesus and his Holy Mother ?
3. Was not Hitler a Christian who killed Jews in Europe? Why have you implanted European Jews in Palestine? Does Jesus agree with this kind of justice?
4. Why should Muslim be killed and evicted from Palestine to make space for European Jews, whom you Christians have killed in hundreds of thousands? Why not create a safe heaven for them in Europe or in the USA, if you are so concerned about their plight? What kind of atonement and upholding human rights is that?
5. Is it socially and securitywise an advantage for the USA to support Israel in inhumane crimes against Palestinians and their neighbors and thereby antagonize the 1.8 billion Muslims? (Thanks to American internet, that brings news and footage of American and Israeli crimes against the Muslim world, to every Muslim home everyday)
6. Are you afraid that, if you don’t support Israel, you are going to lose all the Jewish business people’s money?
In that case, where are they going to go with their money?
7. Why don’t you tell your Jewish friends “Stop whispering venoms in my ears against Muslims, they have the same rights as you have! They are not hurting you, it is us who have hurt you many times!”
If you do not have the courage to tell it to the Jews, then borrow courage from these verses of the Holy Quran, where God speaks to the faithful through Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him and his infallible family):
” O you who have faith ( faith in God an His messengers and the Judgment Day)! Be maintainers of justice and witness for the sake of Allah, even if it should be against yourselves or [your] parents and near relatives, and whether it be [someone] rich or poor, for Allah has a greater right over them. So do not follow [your] desires, lest you should be unfair, and if you distort [the testimony] or disregard [it], Allah is indeed well aware of what you do.” (Quran, 4:135)
And here is another instruction from God which blows away any racism, religious bigotry and other reasons that unfairly treat people, be they Jews, Christians and Muslims:
“O you who have faith! Be maintainers of justice, for the sake of Allah, and ill feeling for a people should never lead you to be unfair. Be fair; that is Godwariness, and be wary of Allah. Allah is indeed well aware of what you do.
Allah has promised those who have faith and do righteous deeds, forgiveness and a great reward.” (Quran,5:8-9)
And He praises the upright people:
” So give good news to my servants who listen to the word and follow the best of it. They are the ones whom Allah has guided, and it is they who possess intellect.” (Quran, 39:17-18)
More than 1400 hundred years ago, Allah revealed to Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him and his infallible family) that he was going to defeat the big forces of the idol worshippers and take back the control of Holy Kaba, which was built by his forefather prophet Abraham (pubh), known as The idol smasher. These were the verses:
“When Nasrallah ( Allah’s help) comes with victory, and you see the people entering Allah’s religion in throngs, then celebrate the praise of your Lord, and plead to Him for forgiveness. Indeed He is all-clement.” (Quran, 110-:1-3)
And it happened exactly so. The idol worshippers all fled from Macca before putting up a fight due to great fear. That fear in the hearts of the pagans was the help from Allah.
This time we have a person named Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah (Allah’s help), the Leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, promising the same, that his forces, along with his friends from the region, will liberate entire Palestine from the Zionists with the help from the oppressed Palestinians. Thereby also liberate Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on behalf of the Muslim world.
Is Nasrallah name just a coincidental similarity? Or is it divinely ordained for the liberation of Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem?
In last 22 years he has always made good on his pledges. In the year 2000, he promised to his country men that they would drive out the Israeli forces from south Lebanon, and they did. After the victory he declared to his nation that “There will be no more defeats for Lebanon against Israel.”
In 2006, on the first day of the war, which was imposed on Lebanon by Israel, he warned the Israeli people on a televised speech that their war was not only against Lebanon, but their war was also against Prophet Mohammad and his family (peace be upon him and his family). He declared that his forces were given a divine pledge, that they were surely going to win the war and they will humiliate the Israelis, and it happened exactly so.
After 4 weeks of fighting Israel realised that it was not going win the war and actually was losing, it requested the USA to arrange a cease-fire with Lebanese PM. Before the cease-fire, for a face saving result, Israel pressed hard with a very big number of their best tanks against Hezbollah . I remember, three days before the cease-fire, Israel lost 34 tanks, two days before the cease-fire it lost 55 tanks and on the last day it lost 74 tanks. A real face saver huh?
With his mentioning of the divine guarantee and the great victory, Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah proved he has divine connections with Prophet Mohammad and his family ( pubh& his family).
Before Hezbollah entered the Syrian war against the Al Qaeda and the ISIS terrorists, at the invitation of the Syrian government, Sayyed Nasrallah again pledged victory, and he made good on his pledge again. By this, he once again proved he is spiritually connected to the higher world, from where he gets his clues.
My conclusion is, Israel will give up fighting due to extreme fear of death. All of their officers and soldiers know that Sayyed Nasrallah never lies; when he says something, it happiness. We are going to see what used to happen during the days of the prophets and for that, there is no better arena than Palestine.
A few days ago presstv.ir reported that Sayyed Nasrallah has said, while meeting the Hamas Leader Ismail Hanyeh:
“The resistance front has always stood by its words, and fulfilled it’s pledges. The obliteration of Israel and liberation of al-Quds are now within reach and can happen closer than ever. When the resistance front vows to obliterate Israel, it relies on established facts and not illusions.”
Israeli settlers have announced that they are going to enter the Al Aqsa Mosque on 18th of July with the demand that the Dome of the Mosque structure be demolished for building the Temple of Solomon. According to the Jews, their Messiah will appear any time after that.
Allah has a notice for the Zionists though:
” And when your Lord proclaimed that He would surely send against them, until the Day of Resurrection, those who will inflict on them a terrible punishment. Indeed your Lord is swift in retribution, and indeed He is all- seeing, all-merciful.” ( Quran, 7:167)
Editors is a General Posting account managed by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff. All content herein is owned and copyrighted by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff
A Pakistani-Canadian family recently fell victim to another hate crime against Muslims in Canada. Five members of a Muslim family became the latest target of anti-Islam attacks in Canada. The hate crime claimed the lives of four family members and critically wounded a child. Police said the victims were two women aged 77 and 44, a 46-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl. A nine-year-old boy was seriously injured and is in serious condition in hospital. The victims, all members of the same family, were hit on Sunday evening while waiting to cross a street in the city of London, 200km (124 miles) southwest of Toronto, Canadian news outlets reported on Monday. Canadian Police confirmed a 20-year-old Canadian attacker, Nathaniel Veltman, intentionally ran over the family with his pick-up truck in London, Ontario ‘because they were Muslim,’ killing four people, including a teenage girl.
Pakistan foreign office spokesperson said, “We strongly condemn the Islamophobic incident that resulted in the tragic death of four family members of Pakistani origin, in London, Ontario. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. The High Commission for Pakistan in Ottawa and the Consulate General in Toronto are in close contact with the relevant Canadian authorities to ascertain the facts of the case and to ensure that the perpetrators of this heinous act are brought to justice. Our Consul General in Toronto also visited the family of the deceased to offer sympathies and condolences and all possible assistance.”
Canadian authorities defined the incident as a “horrific act of Islamophobia.” “This was an act of mass murder perpetrated against Muslims,” London Mayor Ed Holder said. “It was rooted in unspeakable hatred.”The Canadian Prime Minister has stated that Islamophobia has no place in any of their communities. Events like these further reinforce the imperative for the international community to work together for interfaith harmony and peaceful coexistence. In fact, Canada is a relatively peaceful country and hosts people of all nationalities, religions, races, and ethnicities. While Canada presents itself as one of the most liberal states under its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, anti-Islam hate crimes continue to threaten both communal peace and Muslim lives in the North American country.
Like most Western countries, Canadian legal authorities do not define anti-Islam attacks as terrorist acts despite calling incidents by radical armed groups like Daesh and Al Qaeda terror acts.
The incident is widely condemned internationally, particularly in the Muslim world.
It is appealed to all Muslims to remain calm and cooperate with local authorities to fight against hate crimes, particularly against Muslims. But, unfortunately, Islamophobia is rising sharply in the Western World.
By design, few spoiler groups, nations, and individuals have launched a acompaing to distort the Muslim image. Islam is a religion of “Peace” and “Love,” but they have projected Muslims as Terrorists. In fact, they blamed Muslims for Terrorism and destroyed their countries, and captured natural resources and their wealth. The Worst genocide happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan under cover of the War on Terror and shifted their wealth and natural resources to Western World.
There are around two billion Muslims; almost every fourth person on this earth is Muslim; although there are 57 Muslim countries, in fact, Muslims are spread all over the globe. The Muslim world is rich in natural resources like Oil and Gas. But backward in education and divided politically so became easy target for Western World. However, Muslims are a significant contributor to modern Science and Technology and the global economy.
There might be few criminals in Islam, just like in any other religion or race, but the overhelming majority are good people. Unholy media has been used as a tool to distort the Muslim image. Many people are converting to Islam, even in the Western world. Most women in the West believe that Muslims are the best Husbands. Most of the Western World depends on natural resources and wealth from Muslim World. Muslims living in the Western World are highly qualified, hard-working, diligent, competent, and contribute to the host country’s socio-economic development.
Islamophobia is an emerging phenomenon, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan has been highlighting it frequently in all possible forms. Therefore, there is a need for the Western World must understand the consequences of Hate against Muslims.
Here is a shortlist of some past anti-Islam attacks in Canada only (in the rest of the Western World, there are much more):
Quebec City mosque attack
In late January 2017, Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old university student and a former Royal Canadian Army Cadet attacked the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, killing six worshippers and wounding five others.
Bissonnette held similar views to New Zealand’s Christchurch mosque shooter, Brenton Tarrant, an Australian citizen, having far-right and white supremacist political views. The Canadian attacker was also a fan of former President Trump and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
The attacker was sentenced to life in prison. But, while Canadian leaders like Trudeau called the assault an act of terror, Bissonnette was not charged under the terrorism clause of the country’s Criminal Code.
The Quebec City attack has led to widespread public debate in Canada about why Islamophobic attacks motivated by right-wing political views have been rising across the country.
Abdullah Alzureiqi and his daughter Hala say a prayer at the fatal crime scene where a man driving a pick-up truck jumped the curb and ran over a Muslim family in London, Ontario, Canada, on June 7, 2021.
Abdullah Alzureiqi and his daughter Hala say a prayer at the fatal crime scene where a man driving a pick-up truck jumped the curb and ran over a Muslim family in London, Ontario, Canada, on June 7, 2021. (Carlos Osorio / Reuters)
In 2017, hate crimes climbed significantly in Canada to the previous year. But with a 207 percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims, anti-Islam attacks were much higher than attacks against other social groups.
Even after the Quebec City Mosque shooting, which the country’s leaders widely condemned, attacks against Muslims “peaked,” according to an Islamophobia report.
Attacks on other mosques
Canada’s Islamic worshipping centers have been the target of anti-Islam attacks during the last decade. In addition, hate groups have constantly threatened mosques since 2013.
In 2015, the only mosque in Ontario’s Peterborough was set on fire by a hate group. A year before that vandalization, another anti-Islam assault, which was prevented by the police, targeted a Montreal mosque. In 2014, the Montreal police found a suspicious package in front of another mosque. The police neutralized the package.
Attacks on hijabi women
In Canada, many Muslim women have long been targeted by hate groups. Some of those attacks have apparently increased after Quebec, the country’s French-speaking second largest province by population, considered a bill that proposed a ban on wearing religious symbols, including hijab, in public spaces in 2013. The bill failed to become law.
In 2013, several Muslim hijabi women were assaulted across Quebec as attackers forcibly removed their headscarves. Since then, hijabi women, including one pregnant woman, have been targeted by racist attackers.
Despite continuing attacks, in 2019, Quebec Premier François Legault claimed that there was “no Islamophobia in Quebec.” However, after a political backlash, he backtracked from his comment.
Canadian media
Canadian media has fuelled anti-Muslim sentiment, making the country’s Islamophobia-related issues worse, according to experts.
“Islamophobia is a direct result of the anti-Muslim rhetoric conveyed in the media,” said a 2019 statement by Canadian Muslim Alliance, referring to the country’s press organizations.
“We appeal to the Canadian, Quebec, and municipal governments to stand against this type of hate speech. Words matter,” the statement added.
There are many more similar cases, but not reported, not documented. The actual situation is grave and worrisome. Scholars, Intellectuals, Think Tanks may conduct research and case studies to evaluate the actual threat posed.
It is time to think wisely. Therefore, it is appealed to all sensible and peace-loving nations and individuals to promote understanding, coexistence, harmony and turn this world into a better place to live for us and our next generations.
Author: Prof. Engr. Zamir Ahmed Awan, Sinologist (ex-Diplomat), Editor, Analyst, Non-Resident Fellow of CCG (Center for China and Globalization), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan. (E-mail: awanzamir@yahoo.com).
When French President Emmanuel Macron was pilloried in some quarters for defending freedom of expression as a French value, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison backed his European counterpart: “We share values. We stand for the same things.” This professed French/Australian value for freedom of expression has now come back to bite the backside of the Australian prime minister.
When it comes to publication of inflammatory western depictions of the prophet Mohammed that raise the ire of many Muslims worldwide, many western voices will step forth to defend freedom of expression. However, this fidelity to the freedom of expression will often change when what is being expressed casts the West in a negative light; a case in point being an image of an Australian soldier slitting a Muslim child’s throat.
News.com.au featured a 60 Minutes Australia report about “disturbing allegations of the murder of children and a ‘killing as a sport’ culture” among Australian fighters deployed in Afghanistan.
A sociologist, Samantha Crompvoets, spent months interviewing Special Forces soldiers about alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. Among the insouciant acts noted were soldiers tallying their kills on wall boards — kills that included civilians and prisoners.
60 Minutes described the killers as a “rogue band” of special forces soldiers. One especially “disturbing allegation” described how Australian Special Forces soldiers mercilessly slit the throats of 14-year-old boys, bagged their bodies, and tossed them in a river.
A Guardianexclusive exposed depravity with a photo of an Australian soldier drinking beer from a Taliban fighter’s prosthetic leg.
The findings by Crompvoets and the 60 Minutes report were corroborated by the Australian government’s redacted Brereton Report of “possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history”:
… 39 unlawful killings by or involving ADF members. The Report also discloses separate allegations that ADF members cruelly treated persons under their control. None of these alleged crimes was committed during the heat of battle. The alleged victims were non-combatants or no longer combatants.
What particularly stuck in the craw of political Australia was a tweet by a Chinese official, Zhao Lijian, of a gruesome throat-slitting image.
Australian prime minister Morrison was apoplectic, calling the post “repugnant,” “deeply offensive to every Australian, every Australian who has served in that uniform,” “utterly outrageous,” and unjustifiable noting that it was a “false image.” Morrison demanded an apology from the Chinese government, the firing of Zhao Lijian, and for Twitter to remove the post.
“It is utterly outrageous and cannot be justified on any basis whatsoever, the Chinese Government should be totally ashamed of this post,” Morrison said.
First, calling the image false is deflection because anyone who gives more than a cursory glance to the image will right away realize that it is has been photo-shopped and does not purport in any way to be an untouched photograph.
Second, the Australian prime minister obviously has backward moral priorities. I submit that what should be deeply offensive to Morrison and every human being — not just Australians — and especially offensive for every Australian who has served in the Australian military are the egregious war crimes committed by those wearing the same uniform. The starting and focal point for condemnation must be the war crimes. Logically, if the spate of gruesome war crimes had not been committed by Australians in uniform, then outcry at the crimes would not have been filliped.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying did address the outrage by Morrison in a TV address.
“These cruel crimes have been condemned by the international community,” said Hua.
“The Australian government should do some soul searching and bring the culprits to justice, and offer an official apology to the Afghan people and make the solemn pledge that they will never repeat such crimes. Earlier, they said the Chinese government should feel ashamed but it is Australian soldiers who committed such cruel crimes.”
“Shouldn’t the Australian government feel ashamed? Shouldn’t they feel ashamed for their soldiers killing innocent Afghan civilians?”
According to Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani, Morrison did express — not a full-fledged apology — but “his deepest sorrow over the misconduct by some Australian troops.” Australia’s foreign minister Marise Payne also wrote to her Afghan counterpart to extend “apologies for the misconduct identified by the inquiry, by some Australian military personnel in Afghanistan.” The wording would seem to diminish the atrocities as “misconduct.” There is also a overarching emphasis that the crimes were committed by some troops, seeking to exculpate the bulk of the troops from bad apples among them.
It would seem Australia is trying to distract from its horrendous war crimes. Colloquially put, Australia’s political honcho is trying to cover the military’s bare ass.
World Socialist Web Site was scathing in denouncing the Australian Establishment’s response,
The tweet by a mid-ranking Chinese official, condemning Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, has been met with hysterical denunciations by the entire political and media establishment. The response can only be described as a staggering exercise in hypocrisy, confected outrage and an attempt to whip-up a wartime nationalist frenzy.
The illustration is based on an investigative report by the Australian Department of Defense, Hua pointed out, noting that “although it is a painting, it reflects the facts.”
Hua pointed to Morrison’s real purpose: to divert attention and shift pressure from Australian war crimes to criticism of China.
Australia Liberal MP Andrew Hastie preferred that the war crimes had been kept buried. Hastie (who as a captain in the Special Air Services was cleared of wrongdoing in an investigation into soldiers under his command who chopped the hands off dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan) criticized the Australian Defence Force for releasing allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan, saying it has allowed China to malign Australian troops.
Bipartisan support was forthcoming for Australian government indignation as Labor leader Anthony Albanese also criticized the image and shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong called it “gratuitous” and “inflammatory.”
Prosecuting Western War Crimes
At the end of World War II war crimes tribunals were set up. In Europe there was the Nuremberg Tribunal and in Asia the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. It was victor’s justice and no Allies were tried. This although the United States and, to a lesser degree France, engaged in a deliberate policy of starving German prisoners of war (who the US re-designated as disarmed enemy forces to evade the Geneva Conventions on POWs, as president George W Bush would later similarly do in Afghanistan when he refused to recognize POWs, labeling them instead as unlawful enemy combatants) and civilians. Germans stated that over 1,700,000 soldiers alive at the end of the war never returned home.
In the Far East, there were no allies prosecuted at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. It must be noted that just as Nazi scientists were brought back to work at the behest of the US, class A Japanese war criminals were also protected by the US from prosecution.
Australia is not alone in the commission of war crimes. Canadian Airborne Regiment troops tied and blind-folded 16-year-old Shidane Arone, beat him with a metal bar, and burned with cigarellos for hours (he was later found to have burns on his penis), and took “trophy pics.” Arone was dead the following morning. The Canadian Airborne Regiment would be disbanded. US war crimes are numerous. They include My Lai in Viet Nam, Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, etc.
Western war criminals are seldom punished, or when punished, then not in a meaningful way proportionate to the crimes committed. In fact, if you expose the war crimes perpetrated by a western allied country, then you risk becoming targeted for imprisonment. Such is the situation that Julian Assange finds himself in today. Although an Australian citizen, Morrison has been unsympathetic to the WikiLeaks founder and publisher who exposed egregious US war crimes. Said Morrison, “Mr Assange will get the same support that any other Australian would … he’s not going to be given any special treatment.”
This is what adherence to the tenet of freedom of expression genuinely signifies in much of the western world. In other words, freedom of expression is good for the western goose but bad when it is for the Muslim gander.
For further background view the damning allegations of serious war crimes, including the execution of innocent civilians and detainees.
Facebook, Google and Twitter are not neutral platforms. They control the digital public square to aid the powerful – and can cancel any of us overnight
Palestinian critics say Facebook has become ‘another face of occupation’ (AFP/File photo)
There is a growing unease that the decisions taken by social media corporations can have a harmful impact on our lives. These platforms, despite enjoying an effective monopoly over the virtual public square, have long avoided serious scrutiny or accountability.
In a new Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, former Silicon Valley executives warn of a dystopian future. Google, Facebook and Twitter have gathered vast quantities of data on us to better predict and manipulate our desires. Their products are gradually rewiring our brains to addict us to our screens and make us more pliable to advertisers. The result, as we are consigned to discrete ideological echo chambers, is ever greater social and political polarisation and turmoil.
Western publics are waking up very belatedly to the undemocratic power social media wields over them
As if to underline the ever-tightening grip these tech corporations exert on our lives, Facebook and Twitter decided this month to openly interfere in the most contentious US presidential election in living memory. They censored a story that could harm the electoral prospects of Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger to incumbent President Donald Trump.
Given that nearly half of Americans receive their news chiefly via Facebook, the ramifications of such a decision on our political life were not hard to interpret. In excising any debate about purported corruption and influence-peddling by Biden’s son, Hunter, carried out in his father’s name, these social media platforms stepped firmly into the role of authoritarian arbiter of what we are allowed to say and know.
‘Monopoly gatekeeper’
Western publics are waking up very belatedly to the undemocratic power social media wields over them. But if we wish to understand where this ultimately leads, there is no better case study than the very different ways Israelis and Palestinians have been treated by the tech giants.
The treatment of Palestinians online serves as a warning that it would be foolish indeed to regard these globe-spanning corporations as politically neutral platforms, and their decisions as straightforwardly commercial. This is to doubly misunderstand their role.How Facebook threatens vulnerable Muslim communities Read More »
Social media firms are now effectively monopolistic communication grids – similar to the electricity and water grids, or the phone network of a quarter of a century ago. Their decisions are therefore no longer private matters, but instead have huge social, economic and political consequences. That is part of the reason why the US justice department launched a lawsuit last week against Google for acting as a “monopoly gatekeeper for the internet”.
Google, Facebook and Twitter have no more a right to arbitrarily decide who and what they host on their sites than telecoms companies once had a right to decide whether a customer should be allowed a phone line. But unlike the phone company, social media corporations control not just the means of communication, but the content too. They can decide, as the Hunter Biden story shows, whether their customers get to participate in vital public debates about who leads them.
The Hunter Biden decision is as if the phone company of old not only listened in to conversations, but was able to cut the line if it did not like the politics of any particular customer.
In fact, it is even worse than that. Social media now deliver the news to large sections of the population. Their censoring of a story is more akin to the electricity company turning off the power to everyone’s homes for the duration of a TV broadcast to ensure no one can see it.
Censorship by stealth
The tech giants are the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in human history, their riches measured in hundreds of billions, and now trillions, of dollars. But the argument that they are apolitical – aiming simply to maximise profits – was never true.
They have every reason to promote politicians who side with them by committing not to break up their monopolies or regulate their activities, or, better still, by promising to weaken controls that might prevent them from growing even more fabulously rich and powerful.
Social media algorithms help drive decisions on content removal (AFP/File photo)
Conversely, the tech giants also have every incentive to use the digital space to penalise and marginalise political activists who urge greater regulation either of their activities, or of the marketplace more generally.
Unlike their explicit deletion of the Hunter Biden story, which incensed the Trump administration, social media corporations more usually censor by stealth. That power is wielded through algorithms, the secret codes that decide whether something or someone appears in a search result or on a social media feed. If they desire, these tech titans can cancel any one of us overnight.
This is not just political paranoia. The disproportionate impact of algorithm changes on “left-leaning” websites – those most critical of the neoliberal system that has enriched social media corporations – was highlighted this month by the Wall Street Journal.
Wrong kinds of speech
Politicians increasingly understand the power of social media, which is why they want to harness it as best they can for their own ends. Since the shock of Trump’s election victory in late 2016, Facebook, Google and Twitter executives have regularly found themselves dragged before legislative oversight committees in the US and UK.
There, they are ritually rebuked by politicians for creating a crisis of “fake news” – a crisis that, in fact, long predated social media, as the deceptions of US and UK officials in linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and claiming that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” testify to only too clearly.
The online fate of Palestinians points to a future in which the already-powerful will gain ever greater control over what we know and what we are allowed to think
Politicians have also begun holding internet corporations responsible for “foreign interference” in western elections – typically blamed on Russia – despite a dearth of serious evidence for most of their allegations.
Political pressure is being exerted not to make the corporations more transparent and accountable, but to steer them towards enforcing even more assiduously restrictions on the wrong kinds of speech – whether it be violent racists on the right or critics of capitalism and western government policy on the left.
For that reason, social media’s original image as a neutral arena of information sharing, or as a tool for widening public debate and increasing civic engagement, or as a discourse leveller between the rich and powerful and weak and marginalised, grows ever more hollow.
Separate digital rights
Nowhere are ties between tech and state officials more evident than in their dealings with Israel. This has led to starkly different treatment of digital rights for Israelis and Palestinians. The online fate of Palestinians points to a future in which the already-powerful will gain ever greater control over what we know and what we are allowed to think, and over who is visible and who is erased from public life.
Israel was well-positioned to exploit social media before most other states had recognised its importance in manipulating popular attitudes and perceptions. For decades, Israel had, in part, outsourced an official programme of hasbara – or state propaganda – to its own citizens and supporters abroad. As new digital platforms emerged, these partisans were only too willing to expand their role.Facebook accused of censoring Palestinians under pretext of fighting hate speech Read More »
Israel had another advantage. After the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, Israel began crafting a narrative of state victimhood by redefining antisemitism to suggest it was now a particular affliction of the left, not the right. So-called “new antisemitism” did not target Jews, but related instead to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights.
This highly dubious narrative proved easy to condense into social media-friendly soundbites.
Israel still routinely describes any Palestinian resistance to its belligerent occupation or its illegal settlements as “terrorism”, and any support from other Palestinians as “incitement”. International solidarity with Palestinians is characterised as “delegitimisation” and equated with antisemitism.
‘Flood the internet’
As far back as 2008, it emerged that a pro-Israel media lobby group, Camera, had been orchestrating covert efforts by Israel loyalists to infiltrate the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to edit entries and “rewrite history” in ways favourable to Israel. Soon afterwards, politician Naftali Bennett helped organise courses teaching “Zionist editing” of Wikipedia.
In 2011, the Israeli army declared social media a new “battleground” and assigned “cyber warriors” to wage combat online. In 2015, Israel’s foreign ministry set up an additional command centre to recruit young, tech-savvy former soldiers from 8200, the army’s cyber intelligence unit, to lead the battle online. Many have gone on to establish hi-tech firms whose spying software became integral to the functioning of social media.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a 2019 cyber industry conference in Tel Aviv (AFP)
An app launched in 2017, Act.IL, mobilised Israel partisans to “swarm” sites hosting either criticism of Israel or support for Palestinians. The initiative, supported by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, was headed by veterans of Israeli intelligence services.
According to the Forward, a US Jewish weekly, Israel’s intelligence services liaise closely with Act.IL and request help in getting content, including videos, removed by social media platforms. The Forward observed shortly after the app was rolled out: “Its work so far offers a startling glimpse of how it could shape the online conversations about Israel without ever showing its hand.”
Sima Vaknin-Gil, a former Israeli military censor who was then assigned to Israel’s strategic affairs ministry, said the goal was to “create a community of fighters” whose job was to “flood the internet” with Israeli propaganda.
Willing allies
With advantages measured in personnel numbers and ideological zeal, in tech and propaganda experience, and in high-level influence in Washington and Silicon Valley, Israel was soon able to turn social media platforms into willing allies in its struggle to marginalise Palestinians online.
In 2016, Israel’s justice ministry was boasting that Facebook, Google and YouTube were “complying with up to 95 percent of Israeli requests to delete content”, almost all of it Palestinian. The social media companies did not confirm this figure.
The Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel lobby group with a history of smearing Palestinian organisations and Jewish groups critical of Israel, established a “command centre” in Silicon Valley in 2017 to monitor what it termed “online hate speech”. That same year, it was appointed a “trusted flagger” organisation for YouTube, meaning its reporting of content for removal was prioritised.
Tech corporations are now the undeclared, profit-driven arbiters of our speech rights. But their commitment is not to open and vigorous public debate
At a 2018 conference in Ramallah hosted by 7amleh, a Palestinian online advocacy group, local Google and Facebook representatives barely hid their priorities. It was important to their bottom line to avoid upsetting governments with the power to constrain their commercial activities – even if those governments were systematically violating international law and human rights. In this battle, the Palestinian Authority carries no weight at all. Israel presides over Palestinians’ communications and internet infrastructure. It controls the Palestinian economy and its key resources.
Since 2016, Israel’s justice ministry has reportedly suppressed tens of thousands of Palestinian posts. In a completely opaque process, Israel’s own algorithms detect content it deems “extremist” and then requests its removal. Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested by Israel over social media posts, chilling online activity.
Human Rights Watch warned late last year that Israel and Facebook were often blurring the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and incitement. Conversely, as Israel has shifted ever further rightwards, the Netanyahu government and social media platforms have not stemmed a surge of posts in Hebrew promoting anti-Palestinian incitement and calling for violence. 7amleh has noted that Israelis post racist or inciteful material against Palestinians roughly every minute.
News agencies shut down
As well as excising tens of thousands of Palestinian posts, Israel has persuaded Facebook to take down the accounts of major Palestinian news agencies and leading journalists.
By 2018, the Palestinian public had grown so incensed that a campaign of online protests and calls to boycott Facebook were led under the hashtag “FBcensorsPalestine”. In Gaza, demonstrators accused the company of being “another face of occupation”. Leila Khaled shutdown shows how corporate tech is enemy of free speechRead More »
Activism in solidarity with Palestinians in the US and Europe has been similarly targeted. Ads for films, as well as the films themselves, have been taken down and websites removed.
Last month, Zoom, a video conferencing site that has boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic, joined YouTube and Facebook in censoring a webinar organised by San Francisco State University because it included Leila Khaled, an icon of the Palestinian resistance movement now in her seventies.
On Friday, Zoom blocked a second scheduled appearance by Khaled – this time in a University of Hawaii webinar on censorship – as well as a spate of other events across the US to protest against her cancellation by the site. A statement concerning the day of action said campuses were “joining in the campaign to resist corporate and university silencing of Palestinian narratives and Palestinian voices”.
The decision, a flagrant attack on academic freedom, was reportedly taken after the social media groups were heavily pressured by the Israeli government and anti-Palestinian lobby groups, which labelled the webinar “antisemitic”.
Wiped off the map
The degree to which the tech giants’ discrimination against Palestinians is structural and entrenched has been underscored by the years-long struggle of activists both to include Palestinian villages on online maps and GPS services, and to name the Palestinian territories as “Palestine”, in accordance with Palestine’s recognition by the United Nations.
That campaign has largely floundered, even though more than a million people have signed a petition in protest. Both Google and Apple have proved highly resistant to these appeals; hundreds of Palestinian villages are missing from their maps of the occupied West Bank, while Israel’s illegal settlements are identified in detail, accorded the same status as the Palestinian communities that are shown.
New houses being built in the Nokdim settlement in the occupied West Bank on 13 October (AFP)
The occupied Palestinian territories are subordinated under the name “Israel”, while Jerusalem is presented as Israel’s unified and undisputed capital, just as Israel claims – making the occupation of the Palestinian section of the city invisible.
These are far from politically neutral decisions. Israeli governments have long pursued a Greater Israel ideology that requires driving Palestinians off their lands. This year, that dispossession programme was formalised with plans, backed by the Trump administration, to annex swathes of the West Bank.
Google and Apple are effectively colluding in this policy by helping to erase Palestinians’ visible presence in their homeland. As two Palestinian scholars, George Zeidan and Haya Haddad, recently noted: “When Google and Apple erase Palestinian villages from their navigation, but proudly mark settlements, the effect is complicity in the Israeli nationalist narrative.”
Out of the shadows
Israel’s ever-tightening relationship with social media corporations has played out largely behind the scenes. But these ties moved decisively out of the shadows in May, when Facebook announced that its new oversight board would include Emi Palmor, one of the architects of Israel’s online repression policy towards Palestinians.
Palestinians know only too well how easy it is for technology to diminish and disappear the voices of the weak and oppressed, and to amplify the voices of the powerful
The board will issue precedent-setting rulings to help shape Facebook’s and Instagram’s censorship and free speech policies. But as the former director-general of the justice ministry, Palmor has shown no commitment to online free speech. Quite the reverse: she worked hand-in-hand with the tech giants to censor Palestinian posts and shut down Palestinian news websites. She oversaw the transformation of her department into what the human rights organisation Adalah has called the Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.
Tech corporations are now the undeclared, profit-driven arbiters of our speech rights. But their commitment is not to open and vigorous public debate, online transparency or greater civic engagement. Their only commitment is to the maintenance of a business environment in which they avoid any regulation by major governments infringing on their right to make money.
The appointment of Palmor perfectly illustrates the corrupting relationship between government and social media. Palestinians know only too well how easy it is for technology to diminish and disappear the voices of the weak and oppressed, and to amplify the voices of the powerful.
Many more of us could soon find ourselves sharing the online fate of Palestinians.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.Jonathan CookJonathan Cook, a British journalist based in Nazareth since 2001, is the the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a past winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net
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UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 