Tag: Israel

  • Israel has achieved nothing, says Palestinian PM

    Israel has achieved nothing, says Palestinian PM

    Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh condemned Israel yesterday, saying the government has “achieved nothing” other than death and destruction in Gaza since the war began in October.

    “We know it has been an Israeli programme to push the Palestinians out of Gaza,” he said at the Munich Security Conference. “The Israelis can’t speak for anything but the reality speaks for itself.

    “(Benjamin) Netanyahu has achieved nothing until now. He killed 28,000 people. He injured 70,000 people and he destroyed 281,000 housing units. This is the only thing that Israel has achieved in Gaza until this single minute.”

    Prospects of a ceasefire in Gaza dimmed on Saturday as the US vowed to veto a draft UN resolution calling for an immediate end to fighting in the battered enclave, where Israeli forces have killed almost 29,000 Palestinians.

    Israel has repeatedly rejected pleas for a ceasefire, saying it will not stop attacks on Gaza until it has “complete victory” over the Hamas militant group.

    Washington has said a proposal put forward by Algeria would not achieve what negotiators have wrangled for weeks to secure, including a hostage exchange deal, an extended pause in fighting and increased humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    Read Also: How Israeli govt constantly attacks Palestinians, by envoy

    Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said Washington was working on a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, which would bring an “immediate and sustained period of calm to Gaza for at least six weeks”.

    The Algerian proposal, she said, “would not achieve these outcomes, and indeed, may run counter to them. We have communicated this concern repeatedly to our colleagues on the council. For that reason, the United States does not support action on this draft resolution.”

    Palestinian officials told The National the resolution would be put before the Security Council on Tuesday. Guyana, which this month holds the rotating presidency, did not immediately confirm this.

    This would be the third ceasefire resolution to be vetoed by the U.S., which has criticised previous measures for not condemning the Hamas attacks of October 7.

    In Munich, Shtayyeh called for an “immediate ceasefire” and said the international community must put pressure on Israel to halt its planned offensive on the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter after fleeing Israeli attacks on northern and central areas of Gaza.

    “Everyone should be holding Israel responsible for the atrocities,” he added.

    He later confirmed Moscow has invited Palestinian factions for talks on February 26.

  • The Israel of Shaitan

    The Israel of Shaitan

    Whilst much of the world and most of America watched the superbowl the other night, the State of Israel was busy bombing and slaughtering the Christian and Muslim women and children of Rafah and its sprawling refugee camp in far away Gaza.

    100 innocent and defenceless people were killed, most of whom were women and children, in the space of a few hours of relentless bombing.

    Israel has expressed her intention to continue to bomb and unleash horror on Rafah despite the stern  warnings and desperate pleas from the rest of the world not to do so including her two greatest allies and closest friends, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

    The Jewish state has murdered no less and probably far more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians in the last four months, 17,000 of whom are children, and injured over 100,000.

    I am compelled and constrained by my faith and love for humanity to oppose and resist such a monstrous entity that is given to commiting such inhumane and genocidal crimes against my fellow human beings for WHATEVER reason and neither can I be expected to confer on it some far-fetched and illusionary notion of “the right to exist”.

    Surely no country, particularly one which was artificially-created and which was built on the blood, sweat, suffering, toil, tears and bones of the Palestinian people like the Zionist state, has the right to exist.

    The oppressor has no right to exist if that “right” entails cheating, pillaging, plundering, enslaving, murdering at will and occupying the land of the oppressed.

    The usurper, the conqueror, the pillager, the rapist, the mass- murderer, the thief, the land-grabber, the ethnic cleanser, the butcher of the elderly and the murderer of women and children may have the weapons, wealth, international support, power, wherewithal and homicidal disposition to commit and get away with his horrendous crimes against humanity but he has no “right to exist” other than the one that he forcefully and erroneously appropriated and conferred upon himself.

    He exists and commits such unspeakable atrocities only because he has the power to do so and to get away with them and not because he has any right to exist.

    Great nations and powerful empires come and great nations and powerful empires go.

    That is the way of the world, it is inevitable and it is well reflected in history.

    The Babylonian, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, Roman, British, Spanish, Russian, Han and Greek empires collectively and respectively once ruled the civilised world and their power was deemed to be never-ending and irresistible but where are they today?

    They had their time, sometimes stretching into hundreds of years, but eventually they crumbled and were compelled by the force of circumstances which were beyond their control to relinquish power, to leave the scene, to crumble and to eventually vanish into the night.

    And in that crumbling their so-called “right to exist”  solely for the purpose of destroying, enslaving, subjugating and tormenting others disappeared into the night with them.

    So it shall be for the Zionist state if she does not repent, go back to God and change her wicked ways.

    Like Juilus Caesar she came, she saw and she conquered.

    From the time that she was re-established 75 long years ago she boastfully flaunted her awesome power, magnificent glory, unprecedented excellence and stupendous wealth over much of the world and particularly over the Palestinian people.

    Like the Virgin Daughter of Babylon who was graphically displayed and meticulously described in Isaiah 47 of the Holy Bible she loudly and boastfully proclaimed to the world and all that cared to listen that “I AM and there is none besides me!”

    Yet despite her hubristic pride and vainglorious proclamations of invincibility it is self-evident to the discerning that with her blind, vengeful and savage rage, her unconciable lack of restraint and self-discipline, her inexplicable descent into madness and the abominable atrocities that she is committing in Gaza on a daily basis her cup is full and the Most High God has set His heart and the people of the world against her just as He did 2000 years ago after they murdered our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

    He shall surely break her yoke, bring her to her knees, revoke her “right to exist”, scatter her to the four corners of the earth, compel her to vanish into the night and ensure that her insidious and perfidious intention to establish a “Greater Israel” whose borders stretch from Egypt to Iran crumbles and is blown away with the wind.

    The Zionist state’s sole purpose of existence is to crush, conquer, enslave and exterminate the Palestinian people in their nefarious and sinister expansionist quest and to deny them what is rightfully theirs including their identity, their history, their heritage, their land, their dignity

    and their lives.

    Worse still they seek to achieve this with the full backing and blind support of a Biden-led United States of America that is simply incapable of any rational thinking or being impartial when it comes to this matter and that has wilfully shunned world opinion, given a thumbs up to genocide, supplied aid, arms, money, and material support to the ethnic cleansers, abandoned the cause of the Palestinian people and given their oppressors the right, the weaponry and the means to wipe them off the face of the earth.

    Yet consider this.

    No matter how powerful she deems herself to be the Jewish state has an Achilles heel and a soft and vulnerable underbelly and she will NEVER achieve these objectives.

    More importantly in the fullness of time and in the process of trying she may well be totally crushed and removed from the map of the world.

    This is because God alone rules in the affairs of men and He is just and true.

    The Bible says He is slow to anger but irresistible in battle. His power is awesome, His majesty is irresistible and His justice is swift.

    He is a man of war and as the Bible asks, “who can stand against Him?”

    He contends against those who contend against us, He fights for the rights of the less privileged and the underdog and He rises in defence of the enslaved and the oppressed.

    He removes mighty Kings from their thrones in the blink of an eye and He causes paupers, the rejected, the hated and the deprived to rise up in power and excel.

    He is the father of the orphan and the husband of the widow.

    He is the champion of the poor, the needy, the elderly and the defenceless infant and He is the avenger of our blood.

    His name is the I Am That I Am, the Ancient of Days, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, the Lamb of God, the Ressurected Messiah, the Coming King and the Lord God of Hosts and at the appropriate time He will honor His word and rise up for the occupied, the cheated, the subjugated, the humiliated, the denied, the oppressed and the enslaved and strike down their strong tormentor.

    Simply put there is no place or space in todays world for the worst, most brazen, most primitive and most insidious form of racism, colonialism and fascism that today’s  Zionist State of Israel embodies, manifests and represents.

    And neither does a vicious, relentless, barbaric, cruel, heartless and blood-lusting apartheid Jewish state which is led by evil men who have lost their sense of reason, their minds and their humanity and who behave in a worse manner than the wildest of beasts have a right to exist.

    They LOST that right when they embarked on violating all international norms, laws and protocols and chose to target and kill Palestinian women and children for their sport and pleasure.

    And the sordid and reckless friends and company that they keep do not help matters.

    For example, egged in their insanity and to the brink of catastrophy by delusional clowns like the newly-elected Argentinian President who went to Israel a few days ago, wept at the praying wall in Jerusalem and proclaimed that the Jewish state should proceed to build the second Jewish Temple on the Al Aqsa mosque as soon as possible ignoring the fact that this would undoubtedly and instantly provoke millions of Muslims all over the world to violence, likely result in WW111 and probably end with the total and complete obliteration and annihilation of Israel, the Jewish state continues to wallow in her pitiful delusion of invincibility and infalliblity.

    I guess one cannot expect any better  counsel from a man who leads a Latin American country in which every single black person was wiped out, exterminated and eliminated at the outset on the grounds of not wanting their “beautiful” white bloodlines and unsullied Spanish heritage to be infiltrated, soiled, sulllied and diminished by the blood of the black African and which acted as a secure and valued safe haven for Hitler’s Nazis after World War 11.

    With friends like President Javier Milei of Argentina the Jews do not need any enemies!

    Surely this is not the Israel of King David, the greatest of all the Jewish Kings and a man who was described in the Holy Bible as being “a man after God’s heart”.

    This is not the Israel of Prime Minister Golda Meir, who described herself as being first and foremost “a Palestinian”.

    This is not the Israel of Prime Minister Yizthak Rabin who fought for peace with the Arabs and who was murdered by one of his own for doing so.

    This is the Israel of Binyamin Bibi Netanyahu, a bloodthirsty, deluded and demonic meglomaniac and tyrant who is not a Jew in the true sense of the word but rather a bloodlusting and fascitic Nazi and flaming Zionist.

    His is not the Ancient Israel of the Holy Bible which prided itself on decency, righteousness, the love and fear of God and justice but rather the Israel of the Rothchild family, the Israel of the Zionists and the Israel of shaitan.

    His is not the Israel that is the beloved of the Lord and the apple of God’s eye but an Israel that does not know or recognise God and one that has no sense of decency, goodness, mercy and compassion.

    His is not the Israel that is guarded jealousy by the Archangel Michael but rather an Israel that is led, guided, motivated and propelled by Beelzbub, Asmodeus and the principalities and demons of hell which seek to lead her to enmity with God and utter destruction.

    Yet as insane and extreme as Netanyahu appears to be his bellicose disposition is nothing compared to the utter psychotic  and sociopathic depravity of some of his cabinet Ministers such as the far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said that the Palestinian people should be driven into the Sinai desert or into the sea and who suggested that the 2.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip should be displaced and scattered into 100 different countries at 25,000 Gazans per country or the Minister of National Heritage, Amihai Ben Eliyahu, who said that a nuclear bomb should be dropped on Gaza and that everyone in it, including the women and children, should be sent to an early grave!

    If you think these outrageous submissions and nauseating contributions are, to say the least, shameful and unacceptable, I challenge you to listen to those that were made by some of Netanyahu’s other right wing Cabinet members such as the Minister of Intelligence, Gila Gamliel and the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich.

    Their views are truly beyond the pale and would make even Dr. Faustus’ demon, Mephistopheles, tremble.

    Yet it doesn’t stop there. Worse of them all is a modern-day Jezebel by the name of Tally Gotliv who is an Israeli MP and who, just a few days ago on the floor of the Israeli Knesset, said that the war must continue in Gaza, there must be no ceasefire, the occupation must be sustained, the siege must not be lifted and the people of Gaza should not be allowed one drop of water or one morsel of food and instead must be “starved to death!”

    This modern day harpy should have not been named Tally at all but rather Medusa the Gorgon or Cruella De Ville!

    Does anyone still believe that these bestial creatures are God’s chosen people or some kind of star-studded master race?

    They may be a chosen people but judging by their rhetoric, speech and actions they were not chosen by God but rather by the devil.

    To talk about wiping out a whole race of people with nuclear weapons is, to say the least, cold-blooded and barbaric and it is the kind of rhetoric that Hitler’s Nazis indulged in.

    It has no place whatsoever in todays world and whether it comes from the Jews or anyone else we must condemn it in the strongest terms.

    The State of Israel that I know, that I love, that I pray for everyday and that is eulogised, celebrated and  enunciated in the Holy Bible is not one and the same as the vile, callous, murderous, beastly, accursed and blood-drunk Zionist entity that is presided over by the creature called Bibi Netanyahu, that falsely and erroneously describes itself as Israel and that feeds and drinks on the blood, flesh, tears, misery and suffering of the Palestinian people.

    The Israel of old that I knew and loved was a shining beacon of light, love, joy, hope and goodness to the world and to humanity and was truly a blessing to all but Netanyahu’s Israel is a curse to the world and is shrouded in perfidy, deceit, evil and darkness.

    To those that still claim to love the Zionist state and who believe that they are above the law and can get away with anything I say this: search your conscience, find your humanity and always remember that God is fair and just.

    He will never support or encourage the barbaric things that Israel is doing in Gaza and neither can there be any blessing in supporting it.

    Be guided, be wise and never forget that every form of evil and oppression has an expiry date.

    For the Palestinian people and indeed all those from all over the world that stand by them and that are weeping for them, the night may be dark but joy comes in the morning!

    Permit me to end this contribution by sharing a little more about the nature, history, character and experiences of these beautiful Palestinian people that Israel wishes to remove from the records of history.

    Ever since the people of Gaza voted for Hamas in a free and fair election in 2006 Israel turned their entire territory into the worlds largest and most horrifying concentration camp and open prison.

    Right from the outset everything and everyone, including food, water, medical provisions, electricity and other essentials of life that went in and out of Gaza was controlled by the State of Israel.

    All her borders were closed and no-one could go into or come out of the Strip without the permission of the Jewish authorities.

    In addition to that no nation, corporation or individual from the international community was allowed to provide them with succour, aid or provisions without the permission of the Israelis which was almost impossible to get.

    They were treated like caged rats and they were subjected to what can best be described as a military siege and blockade from the land, the sea and the air right from the outset whilst their people, including women and children, were systematically targeted for humiliation, slaughtered, butchered, tortured, maimed, abducted, raped and murdered by members of the Israeli Defence Force whose greatest claim to fame for the last 20 years is the ability not to fight and win wars against other standing armies successfully but to rape, pillage and slaughter innocent and defenceless Palestinian civilians including women and children.

    Permit me to add the following which in my view serves as the ultimate indignity and humiliation.

    As a matter of policy the Israelis do not return the bodies of any Palestinian, whether man, woman or child, that dies in their prisons.

    If you are a Palestinian and you go to jail or are put in detention in Israel, if you die there you are NEVER going home to be buried and your loved ones will never see you or your body again.

    You will be denied the normal burial writes which are accorded to every himan being and your body will be dropped in some filthy hole in the corner of some rat and cockroach infested Israeli jail like that of a stray dog!

    This is utterly heartless but what is even worse is the fact that when Palestinians die or are killed by the Jews either on the battlefield, in their homes, in their hospitals, on their streets or indeed anywhere else and the Israeli Defence Force has access to their bodies they cut them open, remove their vital organs, take them back to Israel and sell them on the international black market!

    One is constrained to ask whether those that insist on doing such abominable things are really human beings?

    The Palestinians of Gaza are a people that have been living under the most grotesque, repressive, repressed and insidious form of bondage and occupation for the last few decades yet they remain strong, focused, fearless, resilient, gallant, heroic, confident, courageous and irrepressible.

    What makes the wickedness and cruelty that they have been subjected to all the more difficult for them to bear is the fact that contrary to Israeli and Western propaganda and their inexcusable and deplorable revision and outright perversion of history the Palestinians are a proud, noble, enlightened, refined, cosmopolitan, technologically-advanced, peace-loving people whose sacred values and noble heritage are second to none and whose rich history of peace, tolerance, civilisation, accommodation, religious diversity, charity, kindness and peaceful coexistence with their guests and neigbours goes back thousands of years.

    Again they are by far the best educated people in the Middle East and possibly amongst the best educated in the world with 30% of them being PhD holders whilst 99% of their over 14 million population are literate.

    There are seven million Palestinians living in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel put together whilst another seven million live in the diaspora and are spread all over the world doing skilled jobs, running businesses and attending universities and other institutions of higher learning.

    Abandoned by much of the Arab world in their struggle for emancipation due to American and Jewish influence and pressure, they have soldiered on regardless making huge contributions in science, the arts, commerce, sports and virtually every other field of human endeavour.

    Read Also: Erdogan, el-Sisi demand Israel halt looming offensive on Rafah

    They are not only industrious and hard working but they have remarkable foresight and have resolved never to bow, submit, capitulate or bend the knee to their Zionist oppressors and colonial masters but rather to stand firm, stand tall, maintain their self respect and dignity, thrive, survive and resist them till the very end even if it means that they all die trying.

    This courageous thirst and quest for freedom, emancipation and liberation despite the horrific circumstances they have been subjected to can only but be admired and applauded by all right thinking people.

    They are indeed a testimony to courage and a great source of inspiration to the downtrodden and those that the famous Afro-American author Franz Fanon described in his famous book titled ‘The Wretched of the Earth’.

    Like the black majority population of the old apartheid South Africa who stood firm against all odds, fought hard, held on to their dream of freedom and were martyred in their thousands for hundreds of years till it eventually came they have refused to bend the knee and become slaves to the Zionists and instead, like Patrick Henry the famous American revolutionary courageously proclaimed to King George 111 of England in 1775 they have defiantly shouted “give me liberty or give me death” and they have courageously screamed “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

    Literally every single Gazan and Palestinian is committed to this noble cause of liberation and is prepared to sacrifice their lives for it and nothing provides a more eloquent testimony to this than their willingness to protect themselves militarily and wage war against their oppressors.

    Consequently they manufacture virtually all of their own weapons and their ably-trained and well- equipped armed wing, known as the Al Qasam Brigade, has proved to be a formidable fighting force in battle and one which has given the Israeli Defence Force a bloody nose.

    I watched the Minister of Social Services of Gaza, Dr. Ghazi Hamad, who is a leading member and an influential and powerful figure in the Hamas Government speak on Seun Okinbaloye’s Channels Television ‘Politics Today’ show last tuesday evening and I was very impressed by the way he marshalled his points and stated his case.

    He spoke in a concise, eloquent, refined and effective manner and his arguments and submissions were irrefutable, incontrovertible and compelling.

    Millions of Nigerians were spell-bound and star-struck when they heard him as he calmly enunciated the truth about the events of October 7th (for which he refused to apologise) and the history of the Palestinian struggle.

    He made four notable points.

    Firstly that a person whose home or country has been forcefully occupied by a foreign power and aggressor and whose family members and compatriots are being killed on a daily basis cannot be legitimately described as a terrorist as a consequence of his quest to throw the occupier out and free his people by any means, including violent ones.

    This appears to me to be sound logic.

    You cannot beg a famished wolf to leave the sheep pen and you cannot appeal to a hungry tiger to leave the chicken coop. You can only drive them out by force.

    You either tread the path of violent resistance to evil or you shamefully submit, close your eyes, prepare for the worse and die a shameful and cowardly death.

    For those who have bought the lies of the West and Israel and that continue to dismiss Hamas as nothing but a terrorist organisation I ask the following.

    How can an occupier of someone elses land and a violent conqueror describe those whose land and people they have suppressed, conquered, subjugated, humiliated, enslaved and violently and forcefully appropriated describe their victims and those whose lives, homes and land they have taken and captured as terrorists simply because they have opted to undergo an armed struggle in an attempt to defend themselves, fight back, deliver their people and take back what is rightfully theirs?

    Surely those that resist such oppression cannot fairly be described as terrorists but rather as freedom fighters.

    This is precisely what happened in apartheid South Africa and after decades of suffering, degradation, oppression, subjugation, humiliation,  murder, persecution and destruction the black South Africans took their nation back through a gallant and courageous armed struggle which was waged by the armed wing of the ANC known as Umkontho We Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation).

    History is replete with such examples.

    The courageous and fiery black American preacher and slave Nat Turner did the same in the southern American state of Virginia when he led his fellow black slaves in a violent and murderous rebellion, known as the Southampton Insurrection, against their white slave owners in 1831.

    The Americans themselves waged a violent and bloody revolution and war of independence against the  oppression and subjugation of their erstwhile British colonial masters in 1775.

    The French broke their own shackles of bondage and oppression in 1789 with a violent and extremely bloody revolution against the subjugation of the monarchy and the ruling class durng which they killed or drove into exile most of the French upper classes and ruling elite and sent the King, his Queen and other members of his family to the guillotine.

    The English waged their own war of emancipation in 1642 when Oliver Cromwell unleashed a violent revolution and civil war against King Charles 1st and not only removed him from power and established the Parliamentary system of Government but also beheaded him!

    The Russians embarked on their own revolution in 1917 when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks fought a civil war against Tsar Nicholas 11, removed him from the throne, ended 300 years of the brutal oppression of the Romanov dynasty, took power for the people and established a Communist nation known as the USSR.

    Toussant Louverture did the same in Haiti in 1801 when he led his army of black slaves in a war of emancipation against the French, defeated them in battle and established the western worlds first free black nation.

    Closer to home Fl. Lt. John Jerry Rawlings freed the people of Ghana from oppression, corruption, subjugation and suppressive military rule in 1979 when he organised a coup detat and effected what he himself described as a revolution after which many members of the erstwhile ruling class were executed.

    I could go on and on.

    If armed struggle against the unjust, vicious, relentless usurper and wicked oppressor is a legitimate form of resistance in all these countries and cases and if it worked successfully for them why should the Palestinians not do the same?

    Are they not human beings too or are they less human than the rest of us? Do they not also have a duty to their people and indeed an obligation to God to resist every form of oppression, injustice and evil?

    Do the great faiths of Islam and Christianity not insist on this in their Holy books?

    They most surely do.

    The second point the Minister made when asked about whether or not Hamas would release the remaining over 100 Israeli hostages that they abducted on October 7th, was that they would only do so once the Israelis released at least 5000 of the 7000 prisoners, most of whom were women and children, that they had arrested and kept in illegal detention and held without trial from both Gaza and the occupied West Bank for the last few months and years.

    When asked about the targetting and killing of women and children by Hamas and particularly the ugly events of October 7th he made the point that it was not and had never been the practice and intention of Hamas’ Al Qassam Brigade to target women and children and that the Israeli Defence Force has targetted and killed thousands of Palestinian women and children over the months and years BEFORE October 7th and yet the world turned a blind eye to it, sat back and said nothing.

    Though in my view two wrongs do not make a right again this appears to me to be a fair point.

    Are Palestinian women and children not human beings as well? Does red blood not flow through their veins too? Do they not also have a right to life?

    Israel has indeed been slaughtering them at will over many decades without a word from the world but the barbarity and brutality of their post October 7th butchery on Palestinian babies, infants, children and youths beggars belief. Such wickedness has never been seen in modern history.

    The Zionists have murdered no less than 17000 Palestinian children in Gaza and maimed and wounded thousands of others in the last four months alone and yet they are still claiming to be the victims?

    Surely this makes no sense. As bad as October 7th was, Israel’s response is disproportionate, barbaric, unacceptable and can best be described as a Nazi-like World War 11 second holocaust.

    What Hitler and the Germans did to the Jews between 1936 and 1945 is precisely what the Zionists are doing to the Palestinians today.

    The Germans called it the “Final Solution” then and I call it the “Final Solution” today.

    The only difference is that the race of the victims are different and the hunted has now become the hunter.

    Finally he made the point that whilst the whole world appeared to have abandoned the Palestinians and were indifferent to their suffering and struggle over the last 70 years and given the fact that the path of peaceful negotiation that Fatah, the PLO and the President Mahmoud Abbas-led occupied West Bank Government had chosen to tread had not produced any positive results over the last 30 years, Hamas had no intention whatsoever of abandoning their people, renouncing their armed struggle or submitting to Israel and her allies.

    Can anyone legitimately fault the logic of his position? Yours truly certainly cannot.

    This is especially so given the fact that Netanyahu has proclaimed that there will and cannot be a two-state solution as long as he is in power and given the fact that he has thrown the American-brokered Oslo Accord agreement into the dustbin.

    To him and those that share his views the Palestinian people must either be totally subjugated, enslaved, colonised, occupied and beaten into cowardly submission or they must be totally and completely eliminated, exterminated and removed from the face of the earth.

    Given this, would any right thinking person that has even a modicum of self-respect and honor not fight back?

    Should one not rather be prepared to die on their feet than live in chains and on their knees?

    That is the position of Hamas and frankly it is unassailable in its rationale and logic.

    It is no wonder that Juilus Malema, the fiery young South African MP and politician, recently said “anyone that condemns or does not support Hamas in their armed struggle against the Israelis is a coward!”

    I commend Channels Television and Seun Okinbaloye for providing Dr. Hamad with their powerful platform and for cultivating the courage to enable us to hear the other side of the story.

    The Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, one Michael Freeman, who appeared on the same show the following evening in a futile attempt to do some damage control by responding to and countering Dr. Hamad was not only completely out of his depth but was also inexplicably agitated, overly emotional, unnecessarily abusive, deeply insulting, overtly and manifestly offensive and worse of all he was disingenuous, deceitful, dishonest, vulgar, out of control,deranged, enraged, condescending and wholly and completely ineffective.

    Simply put he spoke nothing but specious lies and rubbish and he did so in the most simplistic and condescending manner.

    His appearance was merely a pitiful regurgitation of the puerile  propaganda and infantile lies that the Jews have peddled and churned out over the years and he painted the picture of a drowning man who was representing a dying, discredited, old and mortally wounded flogged horse.

    He was not only unconvincing and irritating but also malevolent and bellicose in his approach and choice of words and thoroughly nauseating.

    I could literally see two little devil horns sticking out of his balding head and smell the sulphur of hell seeping through my television screen as he bellowed whilst the words “mendacious”, “deceitful”, “liar”,  “propagandist”, “artful dodger”, “lover of carnage”, “drinker of blood”, “eater of flesh”, “poisonous viper”, “child-killing terrorist”, “dark oppressor”, “dung-eating coprophiliac” and “accuser of the brethren” were spiritually inscribed on his ugly Zionist head.

    I guess one can expect no less from a creature who represents satan’s kingdom on earth, who speaks for a

    a vile race of quislings that fawn before their masters and genuflect at their every word and whose nation thrives, flourishes and excels on lies, falsehood and the premeditated and systemic mass murder, ethnic-cleansing, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and wilful slaughter of innocent and defenceless men, women and children.

    Whether Freeman likes it or not Ghazi Hamad’s appearance on Channels proved to yours truly and millions of other Nigerians that the leadership of Hamas are not the primitive, barbaric and ignorant stone age cavemen and blood-lusting terrorists that Israel and the West portrays them to be.

    They are not a bunch of ignorant and illiterate savages, village idiots, genocidal maniacs, cruel beasts,  unrefined field hands, war mongering and blood lusting meglomaniacs and primitive barbarians that they have been portrayed to the world to be but rather a cerebal, intellectual and highly knowledgeable group of civilised men and women who have leaders that are quite capable of holding their own with any others in the world.

    It is no wonder that the Zionists have not been able to defeat them or break their spirit despite the fact that no less than 70% of Gazans have at one time or the other been detained in Israeli prisons.

    It is no wonder that if there is an election in Gaza today Hamas would win hands down just as they did in previous elections.

    This is the bitter truth and unpalatable reality that the world does not wish to hear.

    We pray for peace and justice for the Palestinian people and we cry to the Living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to bring the State of Israel back to her senses before it is too late. Shalom.

  • Erdogan, el-Sisi demand Israel halt looming offensive on Rafah

    Erdogan, el-Sisi demand Israel halt looming offensive on Rafah

    Turkey’s  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi leader have called for a halt to Israel’s looming offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza as the leaders held bilateral talks in Cairo.

     Erdogan’s visit to Egypt yesterday comes as ties between Ankara and Cairo are back on track after years of tensions and frosty relations.

     The Turkish leader arrived in the Egyptian capital, his first visit to Cairo in over a decade, after visiting the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, where he met UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

     Erdogan met el-Sisi at Cairo’s Ittihadiya palace, according to Egyptian state media. Their talks focused on bilateral relations and regional challenges, especially efforts to stop the war in Gaza, el-Sisi later said at a joint news conference.

     “We agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire [in Gaza] and the need to achieve calm in the West Bank” to relaunch Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with the ultimate goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state, el-Sisi said.

     Erdogan said Turkey was determined to step up talks with Egypt at all levels to establish peace and stability in the region.

     “We will continue to cooperate and stand in solidarity with our Egyptian brothers to put an end to the bloodshed in Gaza,” he said.

     Egypt and Turkey fell out after the Egyptian military in 2013 removed President Mohammed Morsi, who hailed from the Muslim Brotherhood, amid mass protests against his government.

     Over the past few years, Ankara abandoned its criticism of el-Sisi’s government as it tried to repair frayed ties with Egypt and other regional powers. In November 2022, Erdogan and el-Sisi were photographed shaking hands during the World Cup in Qatar.

     The war in Gaza has reached a critical point, with an impending Israeli offensive on the city of Rafah, along the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, where some 1.4 million people – more than half the territory’s population – are crammed into tent camps and overflowing apartments and shelters.

    Speaking at the news conference with el-Sisi, Erdogan urged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid a ground offensive in Rafah and accused the Israeli government of committing “massacres” in Gaza.

    Read Also: Saudi Arabia: no diplomatic ties with Israel without independent Palestine

    “Efforts to depopulate Gaza are not acceptable,” he said.

    Egypt is concerned that a ground assault on Rafah would push hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians across the border and into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It has threatened to suspend the country’s decades-old peace treaty with Israel.

    Egypt, together with Qatar and the United States, a key Israel ally, has been working to try and broker a ceasefire and the return of the remaining 130 captives held by Hamas, around a quarter of whom Israel believes to be dead. The negotiators held talks in Cairo on Tuesday but there were no signs of a breakthrough.

    Erdogan also said that Turkey was ready to cooperate with Egypt to rebuild Gaza, pledging to boost trade with Egypt to $15bn in the short term.

    Israel launched its war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas fighters carried out a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing at least 1,139 people and seizing around 250 others as hostages, according to Israeli authorities.

    Israel responded with a devastating bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, killing more than 28,500 people, according to Palestinian authorities. The Israeli assault has reduced much of the besieged territory to rubble and displaced more than 80 percent of the population, according to aid agencies.

  • Israel faces UN court after South Africa accuses it of genocide

    Israel faces UN court after South Africa accuses it of genocide

    Israel on Thursday faces accusations of genocide over the war in Gaza before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

    The ICJ, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, will hear a case brought by South Africa that accuses Israel of violating the UN Genocide Convention due to its bombing of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

    According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, the number of Palestinians killed since the start of the war in October has risen to 23,357.

    Israel rejects the accusation of genocide and said it is defending itself after militants from the Palestinian organization Hamas and other extremist groups killed about 1,200 people during attack in Israel on October 7.

    The judges must first rule on an urgent request by South Africa for the immediate cessation of the military operation, a decision that could take several weeks.

    Read Also: Israel DMW blasts estranged wife’s friend, Ginika over their marriage crash

    Afterwards, the judges will deliberate on the allegations of genocide.

    South Africa and Israel both have high-ranking legal experts.

    South Africa, which brought the case because it saw echoes of apartheid from its own history in Israel’s actions, will have the floor first, while Israel will respond on Friday, but a ruling could take years.

    The international community is split on whether the case should be heard.

    (dpa/NAN)

  • Has Israel forfeited her right to exist?

    Has Israel forfeited her right to exist?

    The genocidal monster and strange little creature that appears in a video which I posted on X boastfully proclaiming that “every single Gazan is an enemy of Israel” & that “every man, woman & child in Gaza should be killed”, proves that the Jewish state is now a nation of demonically-inspired souls that are in the grip & power of satan.

    The creature, whose name is Eliyahu Yossian and who is a former member of an elite Intelligence Unit of the Israeli Defence Force, spoke with the same murderous intention and homicidal obession that his Jewish forefathers did 2000 years ago when they insisted on the cold-blooded murder and crucifixion of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ and when they proudly and foolishly proclaimed,

    “Let His blood be upon us and upon our children”.

    For those that have not seen or heard the creatures vile, venomous and incendiary contribution the video can be found on my X handle (@realFFK) or @intifada.

    In case his display of madness was not enough to invoke your boiling and inconsolable rage, consider the words of yet another mentally ill malefactor.

    This time it was a serving Israeli Army officer, fresh out of Gaza, who was recorded whilst proclaiming the following with a big smile on his face.

    He said,

    “we are looking for babies to kill! I have killed a girl who was around 12 but I want to kill a baby”.

    For those that doubt that anyone could speak like this and are skeptical about my representation of his sentiments, kindly view them yourself on my X handle (@realFFK) or on @tparsi and @Khaledyoursy22.

    If one is looking for good examples of what the English common law describes as “a diseased mind” & what Romans 1:28 of the Holy Bible describes as a “reprobate” one, these two troubled, twisted souls readily provide them.

    Sadly this depravity is not limited to them alone and does not stop there.

    It is a general, widespread malaise which is shared by most Israelis and particularly by those in the ruling Likud party, the Government, the Parliament (the Knesset), the security and intelligence agencies (Mossad and Shin Bet) and the Israeli Defence Force.

    Permit me to share a few examples of their barbarous disposition.

    Palestinian men, women and CHILDREN who have been arrested by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza are routinely stripped naked & paraded through the streets before being spat on, tortured, mocked, defecated & urinated over & finally murdered.

    Even in death they are not spared but are subjected to even more humiliation as their bodies are desecrated and mutilated and their vital organs are skillfully and clinically carved out and sent back to Israel for sale on the flourishing international and national black market for human parts!

    I will not speak of the mass rape and group sodomy that Palestinian men, women and CHILDREN are subjected to by the Israeli Army.

    I will not speak about the fact that the Israeli Army are using shells containing internationally-banned white phosphorus and that they have launched more than a thousand artillery strikes on densely populated areas since the start of their bloody war on the Gaza Strip on 7 October.

    I will not speak about the fact that they burn little children from head to toe with their flame throwers, Nepam bombs and white phosphorus shells and the fact that the few that are left alive suffer the most excruciating form of unbearable pain before they eventually die.

    I know this because I have seen the videos and they are far too troubling and graphic for me to post or share.

    They were sent to me by my friend and brother His Excellency Abdullah Abu Sawesh, the Palestinian Ambassador to Nigeria.

    After watching them in absolute shock, horror and disbelief I wept for the children of Gaza and the people of Palestine and I told him that I honestly believe that all the demons had fled hell and had relocated to the State of Israel.

    These are just a few of the unspeakable things and abominable atrocities that are being committed against innocent and defenceless Palestinians in the name of waging war against Hamas by the Jews and frankly it beggars belief and is  utterly mind-boggling.

    They are targetting and killing women, infants and babies as if they were shooting fish in a barrel.

    All this yet the world sits back and does NOTHING whilst what is fast developing into the greatest massacre of non-combatants and civilians by one of the world’s most powerful armies is taking place right under our noses and before our eyes.

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    What a tragedy this is and what a terrible stain on humanity.

    Yet despite the horrors that the Jews are subjecting the Palestinians to they insist on rejoicing about their shameless barbarity and unconciable cruelty with loud roars of triumph and wild, far-fetched notions and claims of victory.

    Unknown to them, this so-called “victory” comes at a great cost.

    I say this because given the savagery and barbarity that we are witnessing in Gaza, many are of the view that the Jewish state may have proved her historical and modern-day detractors right and FORFEITED her right to exist.

    The notion that she should be wiped off the face of the earth is beginning to gain traction and appear attractive to millions of people throughout the world.

    The relentless madness and murderous disposition of Prime Minister Bibi “Satanyahu”, the blood-lusting barbarity of the Israeli Defence Force and the insidious and malevolent intention of the Zionist lunatic fringe to unleash the worlds second holocaust on the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank and effect what Adolf Hitler described as the “Final Solution” by eliminating and exterminating every single Palestinian man, woman and child on the face of the earth have made many reconsider their position and come to the chilling conclusion that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran and all the other notable individuals and state and non-state actors in world history and from time immemorial who believed that the Jews and the State of Israel should be erased from existence may have had a point.

    Let me be clear.

    As a strong believer in the resolutions of the Oslo Accords and the “two-state solution” and a believer in justice, equity and the Jewish state’s right to exist, I do NOT share this view and neither do I believe that Israel could ever be wiped out but if truth be told, as a consequence of events in Gaza and particularly the wilful and premeditated slaughter of women and children, many that think like me are beginning to reconsider their views.

    Worse still most people, quite erroneously in my view, no longer care to make a distinction between Zionism and Judaism and, as each day passes, they say more and more that the Jews and the Zionists are one and the same and are BOTH the enemies of not just the Arabs but of  the whole of humanity!

    That is where “Satanyahu” and his insidious supremacist philosophy, racist disposition and apartheid mindset has taken his country.

    He has made more enemies for the Jews than any other leader in their 6000 year history.

    Permit me to shed more light on his dark and sinister mindset and that of those that are members of his inner circle by sharing the following.

    A few days ago on X @CensoredMen posted the following insightful and revealing contribution titled “Netanyahu’s Superstars”.

    They wrote,

    “Benjamin Netanyahu has a wide range of personalities serving inside his government but two names in particular separate themselves from the rest.

    These two people are: Itamar Ben-Gvir (National Security Minister of Israel) and Bezalel Yoel Smotich (Finance Minister of Israel)

    Before we continue I want you to know that these two men were PERSONALLY appointed by Netanyahu to their positions.

    Now let us go through their highlight reels.

    Itamar Ben-Gvir:

    ⁃ He believes that the Jewish tradition of spitting on Christians, Priests and Churches is perfectly fine and should NOT be punishable by law.

    ⁃ He is a firm Israeli Supremacist.

    He proved this when he said:

    ‘The right of me, my wife and my children to move around the West Bank is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs.’

    ⁃He has pulled a gun on multiple Palestinian parking attendants in Tel Aviv.

    ⁃He was notorious for having a portrait of Baruch Goldstein on his wall.

    For those who do not know, Baruch was an American-Israeli terrorist who massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in Hebron in 1994.

    ⁃ In June, he entered Al-Aqsa Mosque and declared Israel “in charge” to deliberately cause tension.

    ⁃He has been convicted of all the following:

    ▪Incitement to racism.

    ▪Destroying property.

    ▪Possessing a “terror” organization’s propaganda material.

    ▪Supporting a “terror” organization.

    Now that you have the rundown of Israel’s National Security Minister, let’s move onto Israel’s Finance Minister.

    Bezalel Smotrich:

    – In 2016 Smotrich made a statement in which he said Jewish mothers should not share maternity wards with Arab mothers.

    – In February 2023 he was in favour of “wiping out” a Palestinian village and called for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be “erased”.

    – In March 2023 he said “there is no such thing as Palestine and there are no such people as Palestinians.”

    – In March 2023, Smotrich visited France and spoke at a podium featuring a map of “Greater Israel”.

    “Greater Israel” includes:

    ▪The entirety of Palestine

    ▪The entirety of Jordan

    ▪Parts of Iraq

    ▪Parts of Lebanon

    ▪Parts of Syria

    ▪Parts of Egypt

    ▪Parts of Turkey

    ▪Parts of Saudi Arabia

    I refer to these two as “Netanyahu’s Superstars”.

    Why?

    Because no matter what they say or do Netanyahu will always defend them and refuses to remove them from their positions inside the Israeli Government.

    I hope this tweet gave you a better understanding of the mentality of Israel’s leadership”.

    This is a useful contribution from @CensoredMen and I commend them for their courage.

    It is not only disturbing but also revealing and one wonders whether there is any other Government in the world that harbours such deranged,  psychopathic, vicious and Nazi-like thugs at the highest level within its ranks .

    Could this have been the mindset that Adolf Hitler, another monster of history and author of the infamous and rabidly racist treatise titled ‘Mein Kampf’ (My Struggle), envisioned many years ago and attempted to warn the world against?

    To be sure I deplore Hitler and all that he stood for and I have nothing but contempt for his Nazis and their despicable Aryan dream and vision.

    Needless to say I wholeheartedly and categorically condemn EVERYTHING that they said and did to the Jews, the Slavs, the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the disabled, the deformed and indeed the rest of humanity but my question is pertinent and needs to be answered.

    That question is whether it is possible that Hitler prophetically foresaw and envisioned a mirror of his evil self in the Satanyahu’s of this world and decided to rid us of the insidious Zionist plot and barbarous plague that lay many years ahead?

    Much like the murderous, homicidal, conniving, treacherous, cruel, insidious and dark soul depicted in the Holy Bible by the name of Haman, Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews, wipe out their faith and take their land, worldly possessions and money whilst todays Jewish Zionists want to kill all the Arabs, wipe out their faith and take away all that they have.

    Is it not an irony of fate that yesterday’s victims of terror, racism and genocide are today the greatest oppressors, terrorists and perpetrators of ethnic and religious cleansing?

    Are the Zionists, led by Bibi and the lunatics in his cabinet, any different from Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Goring, Hess and all the other German Nazis?

    The latter caused the death of no less than 50 million people in WW11 and the former may well cause the death of billions in what may end up being Ww111.

    Are the two not one and the same?

    We can debate this from morning till night but the little Palestinian girl who has lost her entire family, including her parents, grandparents and siblings and that was beaten to a pulp, raped, sodomised, mutilated and burnt alive by the heartless butchers of the Israeli Defence Force will certainly tell you that there is no difference at all.

    She will confirm to anyone that cares to listen that both the German Nazis and the Jewish Zionists are two sides of the same coin and that the only difference is that the latter literally own and control the United States of America and indeed the Western world.

    Is it any wonder that South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice to probe the State of Israel for genocide in Gaza?

    Just last week in an open letter that yours truly wrote to Satanyahu titled, “An Open Letter To Bibi” I submitted that he was mentally ill and that he needed psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

    My assessment was borne out of an honestly held opinion and strong conviction and not malice and my observation and counsel was later confirmed by no less a person than the famous Hollywood blockbuster film producer Roger Stone who said, in a widely publicised television interview a few days ago, that he had met Satanyahu and that based on what he had told him and the way he behaved at that meeting he had no doubt that the man was  “raving mad”.

    Stone’s assertion and assessment of the Israeli Prime Minister’s failing mental health coupled with the revelations by @Censoredmen exposing the reckless sociopaths and psychopaths that he insists on keeping in his cabinet has confirmed my views about Satanyahu.

    He is totally and completely unhinged and the fact that his nation has a nuclear bomb which he has the power to set off at any time is indeed a sobering and frightful thought.

    Something needs to be done before it is too late and the sooner the people of Israel insist on a ceasefire in Gaza, bring an end to the war, remove Satanyahu from power and either jail him or hand him over to the International Criminal Court where he will undoubtedly be successfully prosecuted and handed a life sentence for genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, war crimes, crimes against humanity and infanticide, the better.

    Yesterday the world rose up and came to the aid of the Jews when Hitler sought to eliminate them.

    Today the world WILL rise up and come to the aid of the Palestinians.

    It is just a matter of time.

    O Israel, once loved and cherished by virtually all, you have now become a stench to everyone’s nose.

    What a tragedy!

  • Evangelist backs Israel’s war against Hamas

    Evangelist backs Israel’s war against Hamas

    Evang. Hon. Mati Acka, the Interim National Coordinator for the Christians United For Israel (CUFI), Prayer Outreach, Nigeria, led a three-man CUFI delegation to pay solidarity with Israel in the heat of the continued Hamas hostility against Israel.

    Reassuring the Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador, Micheal Freeman of CUFI’s unflinching solidarity, Evangelist Mati Acka said that given divine antecedents contained in the scriptures dating back since the patriarch  Abraham’s call, God has maintained his covenant to bless, prosper and keep Israel for Himself and would grant her astounding victory even this time around as he had always done.

    Evang. Hon. Acka called on authorities and people of good conscience across the globe to unite in pressuring Hamas to release the remaining hostages immediately if possible before Christmas.

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    In his response, Freeman thanked CUFI America and Nigeria for their ever constant stand with the state of Israel, and encouraged CUFI delegation and the Christian community in Nigeria in addition to fervent prayers, to continue in their show of practical solidarity with Israel.

    Ambassador Freeman lamented the hardships and trauma brought upon both hostages and other innocent Palestinians in Gaza due to Hamas brutality and callous nature against humanity and invoked God’s intervention in the matter.

  • U.S., Spanish, Irish leaders to Israel: you are losing support

    U.S., Spanish, Irish leaders to Israel: you are losing support

    • UK-based NGOs demand British govt halt arm flows to Israel
    • Sanders presses Biden to deny Jewish State $10.1b in military aid

    Israel is facing mounting international pressure over its war in Gaza, with even key backer the United States criticising the “indiscriminate” bombing.

    U.S. President Joe Biden told a campaign event that Israel had “most of the world supporting it” immediately after the October 7 attack, but that “they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place”.

    The White House said it has conveyed its concerns to Israel about the military campaign on Gaza yesterday.

    “We have had concerns and we have expressed those concerns about the prosecution of this military campaign, even while acknowledging that it’s Hamas that started this, and it’s Hamas that is continuing,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing.

    Washington’s support for Tel Aviv is not diminished, he reiterated a day after US President Joe Biden said Israel is losing support around the world due to its indiscriminate bombing in the Palestinian enclave.

    Kirby said the U.S. president was expressing concern about civilian casualties in Gaza.

    Now in its third month, the war has left Gaza in ruins, killing more than 18,600 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll from the Hamas-run health ministry, and causing “unparalleled” damage to its roads, schools and hospitals.

    The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly backed a non-binding resolution for a ceasefire on Tuesday.

    However, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged the European Union yesterday to speak out against Israel as it continues to pursue its relentless attacks on the Gaza Strip.

    “It is time to speak openly about what is happening in Israel and Palestine,” Pedro Sanchez said at the General Assembly of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

    Sanchez called on European lawmakers to “stop the silence and speak with the same clarity and unity about what is happening in Israel and Palestine.”

    “If we want the world to respect us as a coherent and relevant geopolitical actor, if we want our citizens to be proud of our actions and to see that European values are not just words, we must speak loudly, clearly and with one voice,” he continued.

    Also, Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said yesterday that what is happening in Gaza is also a disaster for Israel because it is losing support and sympathy.

    It is a disaster “because this will not bring them security,” Varadkar told parliament in the nation’s capital, Dublin.

    “What the Israeli government is doing is jeopardising the long-term and medium-term security of the Israeli people.

    “It won’t bring them peace, and they are very quickly losing support and sympathy all around the world. Even their closest ally, the United States, I believe, is beginning to have second thoughts about what they’re seeing unfolding in Gaza,” he noted.

    Defining Tuesday’s UN General Assembly vote for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the Irish premier said it was significant and Ireland welcomed it.

    “Only 10 countries now siding with Israel and what we’re seeing unfolding in Gaza is an absolute disaster for the Palestinian people, and they are experiencing such terrible suffering,” said Varadkar.

    The non-binding resolution, presented by Egypt, with the support of nearly 100 countries, including Türkiye, passed with 153 votes in favour as the 193-member General Assembly gathered for an emergency special session on Palestine.

    Read Also: Violence escalates between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah amid Gaza assault

    Several NGOs demanded yesterday that the British government “immediately” halt arms transfers to the Israeli government and suspend relevant licenses.

    In a joint letter to Foreign Secretary David Cameron, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the UK government should immediately suspend extant licences for military equipment and technology.

    “There is a clear risk that arms and military equipment transferred to Israel might be used to facilitate or commit serious violations of international law, including attacks that may amount to war crimes,” said the letter that was released by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), which was among the signatories.

    It said it should also suspend the issuing of new licenses “while the Israel Defence Forces continue to carry out widespread serious violations including war crimes, with impunity.”

    Also yesterday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged President Biden to withhold $10.1 billion in military aid to Israel that would support the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza, arguing that the Netanyahu government’s military offensive “is being conducted in a deeply immoral way.”

  • Violence escalates between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah amid Gaza assault

    Violence escalates between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah amid Gaza assault

    Violence has escalated at Lebanon’s border with Israel as Hezbollah launched explosive drones and missiles at Israeli positions, and Israeli air strikes rocked several towns and villages in south Lebanon.

    An Israeli air strike on the town of Aitaroun destroyed five homes and damaged many more, Ali Hijazi, a local official, said yesterday.

    “Divine intervention prevented anyone being martyred. Three women and two men were wounded,” he told Reuters news agency.

    Senior Hezbollah politician, Hassan Fadlallah, in a statement to Reuters, said Israeli air strikes were a “new escalation” to which the group was responding with new types of attacks, be it “in the nature of the weapons [used] or the targeted sites”.

    The Israeli army earlier said “suspicious aerial targets” had crossed from Lebanon, and two were intercepted. Two Israeli soldiers were moderately wounded and a number of others lightly injured from shrapnel and smoke inhalation, it said.

    Israeli fighter jets carried out “an extensive series of strikes on Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanese territory”, it said. Sirens sounded in Israel at several locations at the border.

    In Beirut, residents saw what appeared to be two warplanes streaking across a clear blue sky, leaving vapour trails behind them.

    Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah have been trading fire since the war in Gaza erupted two months ago in their worst hostilities since a 2006 conflict. The violence has largely been contained to the border area.

    Hezbollah says its attacks aim to support the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 18,000 people – most of them women and children – have been killed by Israel in two months.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Beirut would be turned “into Gaza” if Hezbollah started an all-out war.

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    UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, said in a statement “the potential for a miscalculation that could trigger a wider conflict is increasing”.

    In one of several attacks announced by Hezbollah on Sunday, the group said it had launched the explosive drones at an Israeli command position near Ya’ara. In another, Hezbollah said it had fired Burkan (Volcano) missiles, which carry hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives.

    Israeli air strikes were also reported on the outskirts of the Lebanese village of Yaroun, not far from the location of another of the Israeli positions Hezbollah said it had targeted on Sunday.

    Those air strikes broke windows of houses, shops and a school in the nearby village of Rmeich, Toni Elias, a priest in Rmeich, told Reuters by phone.

    Violence at the border has killed more than 120 people in Lebanon, including 85 Hezbollah fighters and 16 civilians. In Israel, the hostilities have killed seven soldiers and four civilians.

  • Is global opinion shifting against Israel?

    Is global opinion shifting against Israel?

    • By Leila Nezirevic 

    The initial sympathy for Israel in the immediate wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks is diminishing as Tel Aviv’s response is widely viewed as disproportionate.

    Nearly 17,200 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, with an estimated 70% being women and children.

    After Oct. 7, ruling elites, government officials, establishment media and mainstream intellectuals were solidly pro-Israel, but there seems to be a shift as many scholars are now suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is using the attacks as a pretext to commit genocide against Palestinian people.

    A group of UN experts last month also called on the international community to “prevent genocide against the Palestinian people,” warning that violations committed by Israel “point to a genocide in the making.”

    Government officials in the West are still very pro-Israel, but “now they have to respond to outraged public opinion,” Nader Hashemi, associate professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told Anadolu.

    That is forcing them “to make statements that attempt to acknowledge the Palestinian dimension of this crisis, the suffering in Gaza, the need for a Palestinian state,” he said.

    Western nations have historically looked at the issue through the prism of historic antisemitism in the West, culminating in the horrors of the Holocaust and the need to support the creation of a Jewish state, said Hashemi, who is also the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

    When you have a “big catastrophe, like what we saw on Oct. 7” people initially “retrenched to those positions,” he explained.

    Western governments and intellectuals viewed what has happened as largely a story that focuses on Israel, while “the Palestinian side of the equation is, at best, just an appendage, a somewhat afterthought to this horror story,” he said.

    In other words, the grievances of the Palestinians and the need for the Palestinians to have equal rights to Israelis are “not given the same type of consideration by Western ruling elites, as they should,” Hashemi added.

    According to him, historical differences separate the West from the Global South and other states that are more sympathetic toward Palestinians, as those countries tend to view the conflict through the prism of the history of colonialism and imperialism.

    Limited to rhetoric

    Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned last month that Tel Aviv has only weeks to eliminate Hamas, as public opinion is rapidly swinging against its attacks on Gaza.

    Barak, the former prime minister and military chief who led the country between 1999 and 2001, said the rhetoric of US officials had shifted and sympathy toward Israel was diminishing, particularly because of the staggering civilian death toll in Gaza and fears of a regional spillover.

    “You can see the window is closing. It’s clear we are heading towards friction with the Americans about the offensive. America cannot dictate to Israel what to do. But we cannot ignore them,” he told the news outlet Politico.

    According to Anwar Mhajne, assistant professor of political science at Stonehill College, Israel “knew from the beginning that they have a limited time to respond” before the world starts raising questions.

    While the rhetoric has changed, it is yet unclear if the policy has shifted, with many suggesting that the shift in the Biden administration is simply due to domestic considerations for next year’s elections.

    Muslim voters are already threatening not to vote for President Joe Biden and Democrats are slowly changing their tune, said Mhajne.

    Young voters who usually lean toward Democrats are also not satisfied with his administration’s handling of the crisis, she said.

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    According to Mhajne, the US providing military aid, vetoing resolutions and allowing Tel Aviv to respond in whatever way it deems appropriate is the reason why people are turning against the government.

    “With the human cost so high, it’s becoming really hard to justify that Hamas is still intact, and people are questioning the strategy and also the goals of this,” she said.

    Hashemi emphasized that “it’s mostly rhetoric … not policy.”

    Washington has a lot of leverage that it could use to force Israel to comply with international humanitarian law and push for a serious peace process, he argued.

    However, “up until now, the US has been very reluctant to even contemplate that idea,” he said.

    In Hashemi’s opinion, the US should send a clear message to Israel that its support will be put in doubt unless it stops human rights violations against the Palestinians and enters a serious peace process.

    But, unfortunately, he does not see the US “doing what … is needed.”

    Hashemi said Washington’s unwillingness to withdraw its support is largely to do with its influence in the Middle East, but also domestic reasons related to the influence of Israeli lobby groups.

    Divided Europe

    While Israel has so far dismissed US pressure about minimizing civilian casualties, former Premier Barak said the country would not be able to ignore Washington and the EU for much longer.

    Israel is “losing public opinion” and will “start to lose governments in Europe,” while “friction with the Americans will emerge to the surface,” he told Politico.

    However, according to Hashemi, Europe remains divided on the issue.

    Major countries such as the UK, France and Germany are very pro-Israel, particularly in segments of the ruling elite, establishment voices and establishment media, but we see the most pro-Palestinian sentiment in Spain and Ireland, he said.

    In terms of public opinion and from what we have seen from large protests in Europe, “people are more critical of their governments” and their position on Israel, said Hashemi.

    The EU, which tries to act with one voice on the issue, is “still very much in Israel’s camp,” with some dissenting voices such as Spain and Ireland, and maybe Portugal to a certain extent, he added.

    US losing influence

    In the Global South, in the Islamic world, in parts of Africa and large parts of Asia, there is outrage at the US and Europe for demonstrating a “total abandonment of the principles that the West articulated were foundational to the world order” after Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine, according to Hashemi.

    These Western nations said “we had to abide by international law, that we had to oppose the occupation, we had to oppose annexation, we had to support the criminal prosecution of those people who are guilty of war crimes,” he said.

    These principles announced in the context of Ukraine “have completely been abandoned” when it comes to Palestine, Hashemi asserted, adding that the Global South has taken notice and “it’s very difficult to take the West seriously anymore on these questions.”

    Hashemi believes there is no going back to the world that existed before the current Gaza crisis, where the US and the West could claim some sort of moral leadership.

    The biggest beneficiaries are China and Russia, who will capitalize on the “hypocrisy” and “double standards” of the West to send a message to the Global South to ally and support them in their attempt to rewrite the rules of the international order, he said.

    ·               This article was first published in www.aa.com.tr

  • Erdogan: Israel’s Netanyahu ‘will be tried as war criminal’

    Erdogan: Israel’s Netanyahu ‘will be tried as war criminal’

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would eventually be tried as a war criminal over Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip, while slamming Western countries supporting Israel.

    Turkiye, which supports a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, has sharply criticised Israel over its campaign in Gaza, launched in response to militant group Hamas’ rampage on October 7. More than 15,500 people have been killed in the Israeli air and ground attacks, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

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    In a speech to an Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) committee meeting in Istanbul, Erdogan said the Western nations supporting Israel were giving it “unconditional support to kill babies” and were complicit in its crimes.

    “Beyond being a war criminal, Netanyahu, who is the butcher of Gaza right now, will be tried as the butcher of Gaza, just as Milosevic was tried,” Erdogan said, in reference to Yugoslav ex-President Slobodan Milosevic who was tried for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes at a tribunal in The Hague.

    “Those who try to skip over the deaths of all those innocent people by using the excuse of Hamas have nothing left to say to humanity,” he added, referring to Western powers, which he said were “blind and deaf”.