The Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman issues an official statement about the death of Sinwar

The Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman issues an official statement about the death of Sinwar

    Monday, October 21, 2024   No comments

A few hours after the Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad Al-Khalili, mourned the Palestinians and “the entire nation for the martyrdom of the head of the political bureau of the Hamas movement", Yahya Sinwar, calling on the nation to support the resistance with all its might, he issued a strongly worded second statement against anyone who mocks the martyrs of the resistance. His Eminence said in a statement on Saturday: “No one mocks the honorable people who die as martyrs in the fields of honor in jihad for the sake of God except the vile, who has been deprived of a mind that enables him to think, (And he for whom Allah has not given light - for him there is no light). 

 The Grand Mufti’s statement came said, Friday: “We received with pride and honor the news of the martyrdom of the heroic leader Yahya Sinwar, after he spent a period in jihad and the enemy was unable to capture him.” He added, praising Sinwar: “Congratulations to him, as he passed away facing the enemy and not turning his back. For that, we, the struggling Palestinian people, and the entire nation offer our condolences.”

Al-Khalili continued: “It is a matter that calls for the entire nation to unite, and for its scholars to rise like the wind sent forth to defend its rights, and to urge it to stand up to the Zionist entity, and to support this resistance with all its might.”

The Grand Mufti of Oman praised what Sinwar had offered, stressing that “he passed away to his Lord after a journey full of holy jihad, and joined those who preceded him, men who were true to their covenant with God,” expressing his hope that those who follow him “will fill his void with the same determination and resolve.”

The Grand Mufti of Oman concluded his post by saying: “The entire nation must unite, and its scholars must rise like the wind sent forth to defend its rights,” he said. We received with great pride the news of the martyrdom of the heroic leader Yahya Sinwar, after a long career in the holy jihad, following in the footsteps of his jihadist predecessors. We hope that someone will soon succeed him to fill his void with the same determination and resolve. The entire nation must unite, and its scholars must rise like the wind to defend its rights.

Massive demonstrations in cities across Morocco with thousands demanding an end to the Israeli genocide

Massive demonstrations in cities across Morocco with thousands demanding an end to the Israeli genocide

    Monday, October 21, 2024   No comments

Middle East News Review: Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated in the city of Casablanca (west) on Sunday, rejecting the Israeli genocide that the Gaza Strip has been subjected to since October 7, 2023.

The demonstration, called for by the "Moroccan Front to Support Palestine" (non-governmental), toured the main streets of the city, before heading to Al-Shajar Street, according to an Anadolu Agency correspondent.

The participants expressed their rejection of targeting leaders and the sovereignty of states, demanding an end to the aggression against Palestine and Lebanon.

The demonstration was organized under the slogan "Stop the barbaric Zionist aggression against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples", and was attended by human rights activists and politicians.

The participants raised the flags of Palestine and Lebanon, and pictures of the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, its former leader, and Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of "Hezbollah", denouncing their assassination.

The participants chanted slogans in support of the Gazans, including "Moroccan greetings... to proud Gaza", "Morocco and Palestine... one people, not two peoples", "Haniyeh left a will, no compromise on the cause", "Sinwar, martyr, we are still on the path", and "Sinwar, rest, we will continue the struggle".

In Morocco, extensive solidarity campaigns with Gaza continue, including demonstrations and protests, donation campaigns and solidarity evenings.

With American support, Israel has been waging a genocidal war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 142,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and elderly people, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Tel Aviv continues this war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolution to end it immediately, and the International Court of Justice’s orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Biden makes statement on the anniversary of killing of Palestinian American boy, stabbing of mother

Biden makes statement on the anniversary of killing of Palestinian American boy, stabbing of mother

    Tuesday, October 15, 2024   No comments

US President Joe Biden commemorated the one year anniversary of what he called a "heinous" fatal assault on a Palestinian American mother and son that left the 6-year-old dead. 

Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden "continue to think" about Wadea Al-Fayoume, 6, and his mother, Hanaan Shahin, saying they are "grateful for Hanan’s recovery and her powerful voice for peace." He further hailed Wadea as "a bright and cheerful American Muslim boy of Palestinian descent."

"On this day, let us all take steps that honor Wadee’s memory and reaffirm together that there is no place for hate in America, including hatred of Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. We can all reject hatred and expose misinformation and disinformation that is cynically aimed at turning us against one another," he added.

Al-Fayoume was fatally stabbed 26 times at his Plainfield, Illinois, apartment with his mother, Hanaan Shahin, on Oct. 14, 2023. Shahin was critically injured after being stabbed more than a dozen times. The killing of the child and the attempted killing on the mother came just days after President Biden amplified a false claim that Hamas beheaded 40 babies, a fake story that still repeated by US officials including US senators and House leaders.

Nihon Hidankyo: "In Gaza, bleeding children are like in Japan 80 years ago"

Nihon Hidankyo: "In Gaza, bleeding children are like in Japan 80 years ago"

    Monday, October 14, 2024   No comments

The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at the end of World War Two, won the award on Friday in what was seen as a plea to nuclear-armed countries not to use those weapons. Toshiyuki Mimaki co-chairs the organization.

Mimaki said after the prize was announced on Friday that the plight of children in Gaza was similar to what Japan faced at the end of World War II.

"In Gaza, bleeding children are being held (by their parents). It's like in Japan 80 years ago," Mimaki said.

Responding to Mimaki, Israel's ambassador to Japan attacked the comparison as "outrageous and baseless", and said such comparisons "distort history and dishonor the victims".

A representative for the Hiroshima chapter of Nihon Hidankyo could not be reached for comment about Cohen's post.

Around 140,000 people were killed when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and 74,000 more were killed in Nagasaki three days later.

Survivors of the blasts later formed Nihon Hidankyo to tell the stories of those atomic bombings and to press for a world without nuclear weapons.

   

The National is publishing a full chronology of Israel's war on Gaza

The National is publishing a full chronology of Israel's war on Gaza

    Friday, October 11, 2024   No comments

Message from the editor of The National: Tomorrow's front page explained

It is a year since Israel began the deadliest attack on Palestine in modern history.

According to Oxfam, more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza this past year than in the equivalent period of any other conflict in the last two decades.

I could go on and on, provide statistic after statistic from respected charities and NGOs. But none of it could ever fully capture the reality of the situation in Gaza.

One of our political reporters attended a devastating press conference this week, hosted by the Palestinian ambassador, hearing from two women who had lost dozens of family members who described the horrors facing their people every day.

There were three journalists from English-language outlets there. Just three.

We are a very small team compared to some of the legacy titles in the UK, and we could find the time to send a reporter to this important event. Why couldn't our other media colleagues?

You could fill every newspaper in the country from cover to cover, reporting news on the horrors occurring in Gaza. But many papers can't even fill a news brief.

So we decided to work with dedicated campaigners, and fill our front page, and a huge chunk of our newspaper, with a detailed chronology of exactly what Israel has done to Gaza.

Tomorrow's front page of The National aims to highlight the scale of the atrocities taking place in Palestine, and shows that the media have a responsibility to use their platforms to share the reality of the situation with the world.

We publish a timeline of a year of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. It’s all here in black and white—the war crimes, murdered journalists, flattened hospitals, orphaned children. 7567 words, 42,000 deaths. Don’t look away.’ - Laura Webster, Editor.

                            Message from the editor of The National (https://www.thenational.scot/)

Media review: "Flattened in a year"

Media review: "Flattened in a year"

    Friday, October 11, 2024   No comments

A news story by CNN writer Sana Noor Haq, in collaboration with visuals team, over weeks of painstaking work, produced this review of what they think has happened to Gaza in one year, although Gaza Strip is flat by nature, they, nonetheless concluded it was flattened Israeli bombardment. It must take extraordinarily powerful weapons, and endless supply thereof, to flatten already flat densely populated piece of land.

Prestigious academic institutions' declining prestige

Prestigious academic institutions' declining prestige

    Friday, October 11, 2024   No comments

Princeton Praised a Professor for Winning a MacArthur; and at the same time, Princeton launches a Probe Into Her stance on Palestine.

As congratulations poured in for the recipients of this year’s MacArthur Award, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, should have been celebrating a career-defining achievement. But the full story was a bit more complicated. Around the same time that she had been awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in intellectual circles, Dr. Benjamin was being chastised for pro-Palestine activism by her university.  

                                                                    Read full article...

Media review: "The biggest problem with Western media is more in what they don't show than in what they do show"

Media review: "The biggest problem with Western media is more in what they don't show than in what they do show"

    Friday, October 11, 2024   No comments

The true face of Israel's war on Gaza is hidden from Western public opinion through the Western media’s ignoring of Israel's attacks and war crimes, according to a US journalist.

Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of the independent news website The Grayzone, spoke to Anadolu at a conference in Istanbul, Türkiye about his views on how Western media portrays Israel's attacks on Gaza and the role of the US in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“On Oct. 7, the Western media did not show the losses that the Israeli military took at the hands of Hamas and other factions in Gaza. They focused exclusively on civilians being kidnapped and then began with not just the killings that took place of civilians on Oct. 7, which were real and documented, but fabricating atrocities about beheaded babies and babies burned in ovens, and so on, in order to create leverage and political space for Israel to totally destroy Gaza,” said Blumenthal... > source article ...

Our Galaxy Appears To Be Part Of Structure So Large It Challenges Our Models Of Cosmology

Our Galaxy Appears To Be Part Of Structure So Large It Challenges Our Models Of Cosmology

    Wednesday, October 09, 2024   No comments

Astronomers have found that our galaxy, the Milky Way, may be a tiny part of an even larger local structure than we thought. The research, if confirmed by further observations and studies, may be evidence that we haven't quite nailed down our model of the evolution of the universe.

As we study the universe more, we have found ourselves to be part of much larger structures, formed by gravitational interactions. We orbit the Sun, the Sun is part of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which includes several small galaxies as well as Andromeda, of "it may collide with us" fame.

But it doesn't stop there. The Local Group is on the outer edge of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself part of a giant basin known as Laniakea. According to the new study, Laniakea too resides within a larger "basin of attraction" (BoA) potentially 10 times its volume.

"The entire Universe can be considered a patchwork of abutting BoA, just as the terrestrial landscape is separated into watersheds," the team explains in their paper. "A BoA is generally not gravitationally bound because the relative motion of distant points within it is usually dominated by cosmic expansion."

Media review: What does CBS's handling of Ta-Nehisi Coates' interview tell us about US media when it comes to telling the story of Palestininas?

Media review: What does CBS's handling of Ta-Nehisi Coates' interview tell us about US media when it comes to telling the story of Palestininas?

    Wednesday, October 09, 2024   No comments

News stories about Palestine cannot be covered by news media like any other news subject. That is the main point of the recent controversy surrounding CBS's interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Coates response to the challenge tells the full story: Dokoupil accusing Coates of leaving some information out is not the real issue. The real issue is that Western media outlets have already set the standard for the plight of Palestinians: They should not be given any space, not an equal space, not enough space... they should be given any space at all. And that is the main point in Coates' response. 

The story of Palestinians is not told enough, and when it is, those attempting to tell it, are accused of "supporting terrorism" and of being anti-Semitic. Even Semitic persons--Jews who survived (or who are children of survivors of) the European crime against humanity inflicted on Jews, who object to a genocide committed in their name or the name of their religion or their identity, are attacked as sympathizers with terrorists.

So Dokoupil was not interested in pushing back against unbalanced "reporting", he pushed back because Coates was telling a story that no one is willing to tell for the reasons that were playing out before him live and where he was living the true experience of doing so. There is no record of Mr. Dokoupil pushing back against those who come to tell the Israeli point of view, telling them that they left out the story of Palestinians being subjected to apartheid system, the stories of Palestinians' rights to self-determination being denied by Israel for more than 75 years...

“Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it?” Dokoupil asked. “Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it?”

“There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” Coates replied. “I am most concerned, always, with those who don’t have a voice.”

This exchange says it all.