Biden denounces anti-Arab rhetoric after an article described Dearborn as “the jihad capital of America”

Biden denounces anti-Arab rhetoric after an article described Dearborn as “the jihad capital of America”

    Sunday, February 04, 2024   No comments

US President Joe Biden on Sunday denounced anti-Arab rhetoric following an opinion article published by the Wall Street Journal that pointed the finger at the city of Dearborn, Michigan, and described its mayor as “fanatic” and “anti-Islam.”

The newspaper published the article on Friday entitled “Welcome to Dearborn, the jihad capital of America.”

The city's mayor and human rights advocates at the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee denounced this article as anti-Arab and racist because it suggests that city residents, including religious and political leaders, support the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and extremism.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud described the Wall Street Journal article, written by Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, as “reckless, fanatical, and anti-Islam.”

“New procedures will be effective immediately,” the mayor said. “Dearborn Police will intensify their presence in all places of worship and major infrastructure sites.” “This is a direct result of an inflammatory opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and anti-Islamic rhetoric on social media targeting the city of Dearborn.”

Biden, without mentioning the newspaper or the author of the article by name, said on the X platform that it is wrong to blame “a group of individuals based on the words of a very few of them.”

He added, "This is exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and Arab hatred. This should not happen to the residents of Dearborn or any (other) American city."

Dearborn is one of the American cities in which a majority of people of Arab origin live, as census figures show that about 54 percent of its population are Arab Americans.

The Islamic Center of America, Dearborn. 

Media Review: Washington Post, Arabs are beginning to wonder about their place in the world

Media Review: Washington Post, Arabs are beginning to wonder about their place in the world

    Saturday, December 30, 2023   No comments

Writer Abdul Rahman Elgendy said, in a report in the American newspaper The Washington Post, that the recent events in Gaza made Arabs talk about how “this world was never built to accommodate them.”

Elgendy added that even in the most progressive circles, Arabs represent a disturbed state that cannot be tolerated.

He continued that between the situation of the Arabs between the countries that crushed them and the countries of exile, it seems that there will be no life before death, and if this is what the average person feels, then what is the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza?

Elgendy said that he knew that the facade of Western moral superiority had collapsed, and called on the Arabs to get rid of the feeling of “internal inferiority” and work to “make our way back to language and history: our language and history, and gather around our collective grief and groaning.”

The writer stated that the Arabs are now asking fundamental questions about their place in the world, as they have begun to realize that their “controllability” does not represent a failure of the global system, but rather is one of its basic functions.

The writer considered that when he left Egypt in 2020 after his release from prison, he sought a new birth and to be recognized as a suffering body, highlighting that he did not have any romantic ideas about the American dream.

He continued that he often faced a condescending idea that his immigration represented a pursuit of higher values, and not an escape from the chaos caused by the wars imposed by the United States, or the kings and military dictatorships that Washington installed and continues to support, or the environmental devastation caused by Washington.

Elgendy spoke about his recent attendance at a pro-Palestinian rally in Pittsburgh, USA, where demonstrators carried their signs in solidarity, chanting “End the occupation” and “Stop shooting now.”

Then the demonstrators quickly chanted, "We Arabs are respectful, civilized, and peaceful. We are not anti-Semitic and we are not savages as they claim."

Suddenly, the writer heard his wife screaming, as a large, bald, white American man threw her and several other demonstrators to the ground, and began cursing the protesters and calling them disgusting descriptions, before a group of demonstrators surrounded him and pushed him towards the police present at the site.

He continued, "The look in his eyes was unforgettable, a look not filled with hatred or violence, but with confidence that he would never be described as a terrorist or a barbarian," because they are descriptions that seem to be specific to Arabs only.

Media review: Western warning against use of the term “Gaza genocide” despite the continued killing and displacement of people

Media review: Western warning against use of the term “Gaza genocide” despite the continued killing and displacement of people

    Tuesday, December 26, 2023   No comments

The New York Times: There is no food or water... Two million displaced people are living in a difficult crisis in southern Gaza

The American newspaper "The New York Times" revealed that the residents of the Gaza Strip are suffering from a lack of food or water, as well as from a lack of sanitation, with the Israeli aggression and siege continuing for the 81st day, noting that the humanitarian crisis has worsened since the end of the temporary truce, and because the occupation forced the population to evacuate some Regions.

The newspaper explained that more than 1.7 million displaced people were registered in shelters in the southern regions, including several hundred thousand people who cannot be accommodated within their walls, and who sleep along roads and in open spaces.

According to analysis of satellite images, damage caused by Israeli air strikes was identified in the vicinity of almost every shelter in the southern areas of Gaza, and in some cases the shelters were directly bombed, doubling the suffering of the displaced.

The newspaper confirmed that the Israeli bombing, especially which “was relentless during the first 6 weeks of the war,” also affected the areas “to which the occupation asked the residents of Gaza to move.”

She indicated that Rafah is the area most crowded with displaced people in the Strip, as data indicates that the United Nations shelters in Rafah host, on average, more than 15,000 registered people each, although most shelters are designed to accommodate only 2,000 people.

On the other hand, officials of relief organizations said that the region is not equipped to provide basic services to the displaced, noting that its 3 hospitals are only partially functioning, and people in shelters and camps live in difficult conditions with little food or water, and approximately 500 people share a toilet. One.

According to the World Food Programme, 93% of Gaza's population currently suffers from "severe food insecurity," and the UN Security Council issued a resolution calling for "large-scale" humanitarian aid to be delivered to the Gaza Strip.

The irreparable damage to Western civilization due to its complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity

The irreparable damage to Western civilization due to its complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity

    Monday, December 11, 2023   No comments

The rapid descent in credibility of the Western civilization in the eyes of the people of the Global South is as fast as the speed of bombs and rockets dropped on the people of Gaza that killed more children in the shortest time than in any other war. 

For those who have been already skeptical of the genuineness of the Western values of human life and human dignity, this trend is not a major event worthy of reflection. 

However, when individuals who have been steeped in Western lifestyle and who were mesmerized by Western glitter are now speaking out loud about Western decadence and moral bankruptcy, that should worry the Western elite. 

This sentiment is beautifully rendered by an artist, Omar Rammal, Omar Rammal, Director and Cinematographer:

In my eyes, things are no longer the way they were before, I no longer love talking their language, or watch their movies and cinematic productions or songs or even follow their famous people..

I am no longer seduced by their calm countries for visiting them and roaming their streets.. I no longer desire their fast food .. 

Nor their drinks.. 

I no longer want to pay attention to their problems and conflicts..

I do not want to have an relation with them in any shape or form..

In my eyes, now, they are all the same.. 

Their hearts are like stone or more cruel than stone.. 

They are the ones who look at me and at those like me as subhuman.

They do not deserve from us all this courtesy, attention, and emulation.. I, now, belong to my people, those who are of me and that is it.

Why are many people abandoning the narrative of the shining city on the hill, the home of the decent society, you might ask. Because no reasonable decent human being would consider the killing of mothers and their children, turning an entire city into a graveyard for children in the name of self-defense a decent soceity; no reasonable decent human being would consider a society that allows a government to commit this cruelty or to support and shield another government to exact this supremacy-driven revenge in its name is a decent society.  

Israeli minister suggesting "dropping an atomic bomb" and doctors recommending bombing of hospitals in Gaza

Israeli minister suggesting "dropping an atomic bomb" and doctors recommending bombing of hospitals in Gaza

    Sunday, November 05, 2023   No comments

Extremist, Jewish supremacist Israeli Heritage Minister and member of the Otzma Yehudit Party Amichai Eliyahu says dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza is a possibility. These comments were made during an interview with Israeli Radio Kol Berama.

In response, Israeli PM Netanyahu has reportedly suspended Eliyahu's membership, describing the comments as "divorced from reality."

Eliyahu also said that:

○ "They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves."

○ "We wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid... there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

Since then, Israel has carried out a devastating bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip, and recently launched a ground operation in the Strip, which is subject to an absolute siege.

In response to the journalist’s question about whether he was calling for dropping “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone,” Eliyahu replied, “This is one of the options.”

Netanyahu's office quickly responded to the minister's statements, describing them in a statement as "far from reality" and noting that Israel is trying to spare "non-combatants" in the Gaza Strip.

After the uproar caused by Eliyahu’s statements, the minister said through his account on the X platform (formerly Twitter) that his statements were “metaphorical.”

Israel has never admitted that it possesses a nuclear bomb.

In the first reaction to the minister’s statements, Hamas described them as “an expression of the occupation’s Nazism and its practice of genocide.”

In response to a question in an interview with Kol Berama Radio about “whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said: “This is one of the possibilities,” according to the Times of Israel newspaper.

Eliyahu belongs to the “Jewish Power” party, to which National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir also belongs, a party that supports building settlements and regaining control over the Gaza Strip’s lands.

For his part, Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, launched a sharp attack on Eliyahu, saying that his statement was “shocking, crazy, and issued by an irresponsible minister.”

He continued: “The presence of extremists in the government puts us in danger, and Netanyahu must dismiss the Minister of Heritage.”

Israeli doctors demand the bombing of hospitals in Gaza

Related, dozens of doctors in Israel signed a petition calling on the security services and the Israeli army to bomb hospitals in Gaza.

The doctors, who were framed under the title “Doctors for Soldiers,” said in their letter that whoever confuses hospitals with terrorism must understand that hospitals are not a safe place for him, and terrorism must be fought everywhere and in every way, they said.

So far, more than 100 Israeli doctors have signed to on the recommendation. 

The Israeli doctors see that Palestinian hospitals have become a legitimate target for the Israeli occupation forces, upholding the narrative that Palestinian Resistance groups are using hospitals for protection.

In response to this, the Israeli Association Physicians for Human Rights said that even if “the information that speaks about the presence of Hamas infrastructure under hospitals is true, this does not justify the bombing of thousands of innocent patients and displaced people in hospitals.”

US Central Command announces the arrival of a nuclear submarine in the Middle East

The threat to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza was not limited to words by an extremist in the Israeli cabinet. Instead of de-escalation, the US seemed to validate that the threat instead of condemning. 

US Central Command announced on Sunday evening that the Ohio-class nuclear submarine had arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility in the Middle East.

The Ohio-class submarine will join the Eisenhower and Gerald Ford aircraft carriers and their group of warships, which the US military had previously deployed in the region.

This news story was updated to include the US sending the nuclear sub.

Israeli leaders threaten civilians trapped in Gaza: "leave now" because Gaza will be turned "into rubble"

Israeli leaders threaten civilians trapped in Gaza: "leave now" because Gaza will be turned "into rubble"

    Sunday, October 08, 2023   No comments

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Palestinians to leave Gaza Strip on Saturday and said the army will turn Hamas sites “into rubble.”

“We will turn all the places in which Hamas is based … all the places Hamas is hiding in, acting from into rubble,” Netanyahu said in a televised address.

He called on Palestinians in the area to “leave now.”

Implementing the threats, and signaling their intent to commit war crimes, other Israeli leaders provided more details. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant: 

"I ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We fight against human animals and act accordingly."

Responding to the threat, Gaza factions' leaders said that Tel Aviv will be attacked and asked people there to leave. This is why Netanyahu's use of the words "Leave now" will come back to haunt the Israelis. Because those who can leave will leave, and that will be mostly Israelis, not Palestinians.

Given that Gazans have been under siege and with no place to go, asking them to leave or face death under the rubble is not an option between two things, it is a single option: die under the ruble.

The dramatic events that started on Saturday morning are not completely a surprise. For weeks, Hamas and other factions have been conducting live ammunition drills practicing the very same actions they took on Saturday. The Israeli leaders claimed, then, that the war games were designed to attract outside support and funding and doubted the groups’ ability to carry out attacks outside Gaza. On Saturday, those drills were put in action with deadly precision.

All this marks a new cycle of violence that could have been avoided any time over the past 50 years at least. For nearly 30 years since the Oslo agreement that promoted the two state solutions did not go anywhere. It merely created a Palestinian security apparatus in the West Bank that freed Israeli troops from patrolling Palestinian towns. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders continued the funding of illegal settlements making it impossible for the two state solution to remain viable. In the last decade, Israel has been ruled by increasingly right-wing factions hostile to any deal with the Palestinians. The lack of hope brings despair and desperate people do unimaginable things.

The chinese government seems to see the occupation to be the problem and ending it as the path to a solution. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry called for the creation of the state of Palestine. The ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning voiced "concerns about the escalation of the conflict" and condemned the "damage to civilians" but said that "the fundamental path out of the conflict lies through the implementation of a two-state solution and the creation of an independent State of Palestine."