• Call for immediate cease-fire in Gaza reverberates in Australian parliament
    Call for immediate cease-fire in Gaza reverberates in Australian parliament
    ISTANBUL

    A call for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip was echoed in the Australian parliament on Monday, when a group of people spoke up in support of Palestinians, with the government benches staying silent during the proceedings.

    A group of pro-Palestinian people used the gallery section of parliament to demand a cease-fire in Gaza, which has been bombed extensively by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, killing and injuring over 100,000 Palestinians.

    According to SBS News, security personnel removed the group, which demanded a "cease-fire now," from the gallery as Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus rose to answer a question from a lawmaker.

    “Shame, shame,” the protesters yelled.

    "You support genocide… Albanese, your hands are red. 15,000 children dead,” the protestors shouted.

    Anthony Albanese is the leader of the Australian Labor Party and prime minister.

    Video footage of the gallery cannot be made public unless authorized by the Australian parliament speaker.

    Greens Senator Max Chandler-Mather came out in support of the protesting group.

    “Solidarity with the protestors for Palestine in Question Time (in parliament) today peacefully fighting for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza," Chandler-Mather wrote on X. "History will remember you well."

    Na'ama Carlin, a sociologist, who posted a video of government officials and lawmakers sitting in the parliament on X, wrote: “Smirking & eye rolling while people who have not been heard in any other platform are MADE to protest at the house of reps (representatives) against this bloody war. Over 30k (30,000) Palestinians massacred by Israel. And you’re EYE ROLLING???”

    Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

    More than 31,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in the enclave, and nearly 73,700 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

    The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

    Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

    Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.

    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/call-for-immediate-cease-fire-in-gaza-reverberates-in-australian-parliament/3167450
    Call for immediate cease-fire in Gaza reverberates in Australian parliament Call for immediate cease-fire in Gaza reverberates in Australian parliament ISTANBUL A call for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip was echoed in the Australian parliament on Monday, when a group of people spoke up in support of Palestinians, with the government benches staying silent during the proceedings. A group of pro-Palestinian people used the gallery section of parliament to demand a cease-fire in Gaza, which has been bombed extensively by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, killing and injuring over 100,000 Palestinians. According to SBS News, security personnel removed the group, which demanded a "cease-fire now," from the gallery as Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus rose to answer a question from a lawmaker. “Shame, shame,” the protesters yelled. "You support genocide… Albanese, your hands are red. 15,000 children dead,” the protestors shouted. Anthony Albanese is the leader of the Australian Labor Party and prime minister. Video footage of the gallery cannot be made public unless authorized by the Australian parliament speaker. Greens Senator Max Chandler-Mather came out in support of the protesting group. “Solidarity with the protestors for Palestine in Question Time (in parliament) today peacefully fighting for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza," Chandler-Mather wrote on X. "History will remember you well." Na'ama Carlin, a sociologist, who posted a video of government officials and lawmakers sitting in the parliament on X, wrote: “Smirking & eye rolling while people who have not been heard in any other platform are MADE to protest at the house of reps (representatives) against this bloody war. Over 30k (30,000) Palestinians massacred by Israel. And you’re EYE ROLLING???” Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people. More than 31,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in the enclave, and nearly 73,700 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN. Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza. Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/call-for-immediate-cease-fire-in-gaza-reverberates-in-australian-parliament/3167450
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    Call for immediate cease-fire in Gaza reverberates in Australian parliament
    'You support genocide… Albanese, your hands are red. 15,000 children dead,' protestors shout from gallery section of parliament - Anadolu Ajansı
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  • "It is obviously un-American for the government to develop a ‘hit list’ of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies."

    This Country Can't Afford A SCOTUS Weak On Internet Censorship
    Joy Pullmann
    The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans’ speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday. It sounded like several justices followed the feds’ waving red flag.

    “The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers,” said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks. He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down.

    The government doesn’t have constitutional rights. Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government. The people’s right to speak may not be abridged. Government officials’ speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged. Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state’s monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom.

    It is obviously un-American and unconstitutional for the government to develop a “hit list” of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies beholden to the government for their monopoly powers. There is simply no way it’s “protected speech” for the feds to use intermediaries to silence anyone who disagrees with them on internet forums where the majority of the nation’s political organizing and information dissemination occurs.

    Bullying, Not the Bully Pulpit

    What’s happening is not government expressing its views to media, or “encouraging press to suppress their own speech,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. This is government bullying third parties to suppress Americans’ speech that officials dislike.

    In the newspaper analogy, it would be like government threatening an IRS audit or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation, or pulling the business license of The Washington Post if the Post published an op-ed from Jay Bhattacharya. As Norwood v. Harrison established in 1973, that’s blatantly unconstitutional. Government cannot “induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

    Yet, notes Matt Taibbi, some justices and Fletcher “re-framed the outing of extravagantly funded, ongoing content-flagging programs, designed by veterans of foreign counterterrorism operations and targeting the domestic population, as a debate about what Fletcher called ‘classic bully pulpit exhortations.’”

    Every Fake Excuse for Censorship Is Already Illegal

    We have laws against all the harms the government and several justices put forth as excuses for government censorship. Terrorism is illegal. Promoting terrorism is illegal, as an incitement to treason and violence. Inciting children to injure or murder themselves by jumping out windows — a “hypothetical” brought up by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and discussed at length in oral arguments — is illegal.

    If someone is spreading terrorist incitements to violence on Facebook, law enforcement needs to go after the terrorist plotters, not Facebook. Just like it’s unjust to punish gun, knife, and tire iron manufacturers for the people who use their products to murder, it’s unjust and unconstitutional for government to effectively commandeer Facebook under the pretext of all the evils people use it to spread. If they have a problem with those evils, they should address those evils directly, not pressure Facebook to do what they can’t get through Congress like it’s some kind of substitute legislature.

    It’s also ridiculous to, as Jackson and Fletcher did in oral argument, assume that the government is the only possible solution to every social ill. Do these hypothetically window-jumping children not have parents? Teachers? Older siblings? Neighbors? Would the social media companies not have an interest in preventing their products from being used to promote death, and wouldn’t that be an easy thing to explain publicly? Apparently, Jackson couldn’t conceive of any other solution to problems like these than government censorship, when our society has handled far bigger problems like war, pandemics, and foreign invasion without government censorship for 250 years!

    Voters Auditing Government Is Exactly How Our System Should Work

    Fletcher described it as a “problem” that in this case, “two states and five individuals are trying to use the Article III courts to audit all of the executive branch’s communications with and about social media platforms.” That’s called transparency, and it’s only a problem if the government is trying to escape accountability to voters for its actions.

    The people have a fundamental right to audit what their government is doing with public positions, institutions, and funds! How do we have government by consent of the governed if the people can have no idea what their government is doing?

    Under federal laws, all communications like those this lawsuit uncovered are public records. Yet these public records are really hard to get. The executive branch has been effectively nullifying open records laws by absurdly lengthening disclosure times — to as long as 636 days — increasingly forcing citizens to wage expensive lawsuits to get federal agencies to cough up records years beyond the legal deadline.

    Congress should pass a law forcing the automatic disclosure of all government communications with tech monopolies that don’t concern actual classified information and “national security” designations, which the government expands unlawfully to avoid transparency. No justice should support government secrecy about its speech pressure efforts outside of legitimate national security actions.

    Government Is So Big, It’s Always Coercive

    Fletcher’s argument also claimed to draw a line between government persuasion and government coercion. The size and minute harassment powers of our government long ago obliterated any such line, if it ever existed. Federal agencies now have the power to try citizens in non-Article III courts, outside constitutional protections for due process. Citizens can be bankrupted long before they finally get to appeal to a real court. That’s why most of them just do whatever the agencies say, even when it’s clearly unlawful.

    Federal agencies demand power over almost every facet of life, from puddles in people’s backyards to the temperature of cheese served in a tiny restaurant. If they put a target on any normal citizen’s back, he goes bankrupt after regulatory torture.

    As Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” planned, government is now the “senior partner” of every business, giving every “request” from government officials automatic coercion power. Federal agencies have six ways from Sunday of getting back at a noncompliant company, from the EEOC to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency to Health and Human Services to Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and more. Use an accurate pronoun? Investigation. Hire “one too many” white guys? Investigation.

    TikTok legislation going through Congress right now would codify federal power to seize social media companies accused of being owned by foreign interests. Shortly after he acquired X, Elon Musk faced a regulatory shakedown costing him tens of millions, and more on the way. He has money like that, but the rest of us don’t.

    Speech from a private citizen does not have the threat of violence behind it. Speech from a government official, on the other hand, absolutely does and always has. Government officials have powers that other people don’t, and those powers are easily abused, which is exactly why we have a Constitution. SCOTUS needs to take this crucial context into account, making constitutional protections stronger because the government is far, far outside its constitutional bounds.

    Big tech companies’ very business model depends on government regulators and can be destroyed — or kneecapped — at the stroke of an activist president’s pen. Or, at least, that’s what the president said when Facebook and Twitter didn’t do what he wanted: Section 230 should “immediately be revoked.” This is a president who claims the executive power to unilaterally rewrite laws, ignore laws, and ignore Supreme Court decisions. It’s a president who issues orders as press releases so they go into effect months before they can even begin to be challenged in court.

    Constitutionally Protected Speech Isn’t Terrorism

    If justices buy the administration’s nice-guy pretenses of “concern about terrorism,” and “once in a lifetime pandemic measures,” they didn’t read the briefs in this case and see that is simply a cover for the U.S. government turning counterterrorism tools on its own citizens in an attempt to control election outcomes. This is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to check, and we Americans need our Supreme Court to understand that and act to protect us. Elections mean nothing when the government is secretly keeping voters from talking to each other.

    The Supreme Court may not be able to return the country to full constitutional government by eradicating the almost entirely unconstitutional administrative state. But it should enforce as many constitutional boundaries as possible on such agencies. That clearly includes prohibiting all of government from outsourcing to allegedly “private” organizations actions that would be illegal for the government to take.

    That includes not just coercive instructions to social media companies, but also developing social media censorship tools and organizations as cutouts for the rogue security state that is targeting peaceful citizens instead of actual terrorists. Even false speech is not domestic terrorism, and no clearheaded Supreme Court justice looking at the evidence could let the Biden administration weaponize antiterrorism measures to strip law-abiding Americans of our fundamental human rights.

    Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include "Classic Books For Young Children," and "101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation." An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.


    https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/21/this-country-cannot-afford-a-weak-supreme-court-decision-on-internet-censorship/

    Join ➡️ @MartinKulldorf
    "It is obviously un-American for the government to develop a ‘hit list’ of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies." This Country Can't Afford A SCOTUS Weak On Internet Censorship Joy Pullmann The Biden administration attempted to distract the Supreme Court from the voluminous evidence of federal abuse of Americans’ speech rights during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri Monday. It sounded like several justices followed the feds’ waving red flag. “The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech, but it is entitled to speak for itself by informing, persuading, or criticizing private speakers,” said Biden administration lawyer Brian Fletcher in his opening remarks. He and several justices asserted government speech prerogatives that would flip the Constitution upside down. The government doesn’t have constitutional rights. Constitutional rights belong to the people and restrain the government. The people’s right to speak may not be abridged. Government officials’ speaking, in their official capacities, may certainly be abridged. Indeed, it often must be, precisely to restrict officials from abusing the state’s monopoly on violence to bully citizens into serfdom. It is obviously un-American and unconstitutional for the government to develop a “hit list” of citizens to mute in the public square through secret pressure on communications monopolies beholden to the government for their monopoly powers. There is simply no way it’s “protected speech” for the feds to use intermediaries to silence anyone who disagrees with them on internet forums where the majority of the nation’s political organizing and information dissemination occurs. Bullying, Not the Bully Pulpit What’s happening is not government expressing its views to media, or “encouraging press to suppress their own speech,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. This is government bullying third parties to suppress Americans’ speech that officials dislike. In the newspaper analogy, it would be like government threatening an IRS audit or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigation, or pulling the business license of The Washington Post if the Post published an op-ed from Jay Bhattacharya. As Norwood v. Harrison established in 1973, that’s blatantly unconstitutional. Government cannot “induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Yet, notes Matt Taibbi, some justices and Fletcher “re-framed the outing of extravagantly funded, ongoing content-flagging programs, designed by veterans of foreign counterterrorism operations and targeting the domestic population, as a debate about what Fletcher called ‘classic bully pulpit exhortations.’” Every Fake Excuse for Censorship Is Already Illegal We have laws against all the harms the government and several justices put forth as excuses for government censorship. Terrorism is illegal. Promoting terrorism is illegal, as an incitement to treason and violence. Inciting children to injure or murder themselves by jumping out windows — a “hypothetical” brought up by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and discussed at length in oral arguments — is illegal. If someone is spreading terrorist incitements to violence on Facebook, law enforcement needs to go after the terrorist plotters, not Facebook. Just like it’s unjust to punish gun, knife, and tire iron manufacturers for the people who use their products to murder, it’s unjust and unconstitutional for government to effectively commandeer Facebook under the pretext of all the evils people use it to spread. If they have a problem with those evils, they should address those evils directly, not pressure Facebook to do what they can’t get through Congress like it’s some kind of substitute legislature. It’s also ridiculous to, as Jackson and Fletcher did in oral argument, assume that the government is the only possible solution to every social ill. Do these hypothetically window-jumping children not have parents? Teachers? Older siblings? Neighbors? Would the social media companies not have an interest in preventing their products from being used to promote death, and wouldn’t that be an easy thing to explain publicly? Apparently, Jackson couldn’t conceive of any other solution to problems like these than government censorship, when our society has handled far bigger problems like war, pandemics, and foreign invasion without government censorship for 250 years! Voters Auditing Government Is Exactly How Our System Should Work Fletcher described it as a “problem” that in this case, “two states and five individuals are trying to use the Article III courts to audit all of the executive branch’s communications with and about social media platforms.” That’s called transparency, and it’s only a problem if the government is trying to escape accountability to voters for its actions. The people have a fundamental right to audit what their government is doing with public positions, institutions, and funds! How do we have government by consent of the governed if the people can have no idea what their government is doing? Under federal laws, all communications like those this lawsuit uncovered are public records. Yet these public records are really hard to get. The executive branch has been effectively nullifying open records laws by absurdly lengthening disclosure times — to as long as 636 days — increasingly forcing citizens to wage expensive lawsuits to get federal agencies to cough up records years beyond the legal deadline. Congress should pass a law forcing the automatic disclosure of all government communications with tech monopolies that don’t concern actual classified information and “national security” designations, which the government expands unlawfully to avoid transparency. No justice should support government secrecy about its speech pressure efforts outside of legitimate national security actions. Government Is So Big, It’s Always Coercive Fletcher’s argument also claimed to draw a line between government persuasion and government coercion. The size and minute harassment powers of our government long ago obliterated any such line, if it ever existed. Federal agencies now have the power to try citizens in non-Article III courts, outside constitutional protections for due process. Citizens can be bankrupted long before they finally get to appeal to a real court. That’s why most of them just do whatever the agencies say, even when it’s clearly unlawful. Federal agencies demand power over almost every facet of life, from puddles in people’s backyards to the temperature of cheese served in a tiny restaurant. If they put a target on any normal citizen’s back, he goes bankrupt after regulatory torture. As Franklin Roosevelt’s “brain trust” planned, government is now the “senior partner” of every business, giving every “request” from government officials automatic coercion power. Federal agencies have six ways from Sunday of getting back at a noncompliant company, from the EEOC to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the Environmental Protection Agency to Health and Human Services to Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and more. Use an accurate pronoun? Investigation. Hire “one too many” white guys? Investigation. TikTok legislation going through Congress right now would codify federal power to seize social media companies accused of being owned by foreign interests. Shortly after he acquired X, Elon Musk faced a regulatory shakedown costing him tens of millions, and more on the way. He has money like that, but the rest of us don’t. Speech from a private citizen does not have the threat of violence behind it. Speech from a government official, on the other hand, absolutely does and always has. Government officials have powers that other people don’t, and those powers are easily abused, which is exactly why we have a Constitution. SCOTUS needs to take this crucial context into account, making constitutional protections stronger because the government is far, far outside its constitutional bounds. Big tech companies’ very business model depends on government regulators and can be destroyed — or kneecapped — at the stroke of an activist president’s pen. Or, at least, that’s what the president said when Facebook and Twitter didn’t do what he wanted: Section 230 should “immediately be revoked.” This is a president who claims the executive power to unilaterally rewrite laws, ignore laws, and ignore Supreme Court decisions. It’s a president who issues orders as press releases so they go into effect months before they can even begin to be challenged in court. Constitutionally Protected Speech Isn’t Terrorism If justices buy the administration’s nice-guy pretenses of “concern about terrorism,” and “once in a lifetime pandemic measures,” they didn’t read the briefs in this case and see that is simply a cover for the U.S. government turning counterterrorism tools on its own citizens in an attempt to control election outcomes. This is precisely what the First Amendment was designed to check, and we Americans need our Supreme Court to understand that and act to protect us. Elections mean nothing when the government is secretly keeping voters from talking to each other. The Supreme Court may not be able to return the country to full constitutional government by eradicating the almost entirely unconstitutional administrative state. But it should enforce as many constitutional boundaries as possible on such agencies. That clearly includes prohibiting all of government from outsourcing to allegedly “private” organizations actions that would be illegal for the government to take. That includes not just coercive instructions to social media companies, but also developing social media censorship tools and organizations as cutouts for the rogue security state that is targeting peaceful citizens instead of actual terrorists. Even false speech is not domestic terrorism, and no clearheaded Supreme Court justice looking at the evidence could let the Biden administration weaponize antiterrorism measures to strip law-abiding Americans of our fundamental human rights. Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include "Classic Books For Young Children," and "101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation." An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books. https://thefederalist.com/2024/03/21/this-country-cannot-afford-a-weak-supreme-court-decision-on-internet-censorship/ Join ➡️ @MartinKulldorf
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    This Country Can't Afford A SCOTUS Weak On Internet Censorship
    It is obviously un-American for the government to develop a 'hit list' of citizens to mute through secret pressure on tech monopolies.
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  • Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today.

    His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir.

    The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious.

    “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists.

    Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy”

    Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium.

    “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad.

    He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad.

    He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility.

    By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours.

    And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.”

    The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy.

    Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”.

    The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.”

    Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.”

    On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”.

    Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews.

    At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance.

    The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed.

    And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army.

    The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group.

    When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.”

    “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.”

    For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father.

    “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”.

    His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.”

    He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

    And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view.

    His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.”

    Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.”


    https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’ This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today. His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir. The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious. “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists. Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy” Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium. “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad. He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad. He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility. By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours. And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.” The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy. Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”. The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.” Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.” On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”. Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews. At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance. The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed. And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army. The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group. When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.” “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.” For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father. “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”. His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.” He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.” And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view. His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.” Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.” https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
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  • Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today.

    His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir.

    The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious.

    “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists.

    Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy”

    Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium.

    “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad.

    He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad.

    He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility.

    By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours.

    And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.”

    The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy.

    Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”.

    The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.”

    Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.”

    On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”.

    Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews.

    At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance.

    The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed.

    And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army.

    The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group.

    When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.”

    “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.”

    For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father.

    “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”.

    His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.”

    He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

    And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view.

    His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.”

    Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.”


    https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’ This beautiful, inspiring, elegiac book is the story of the author’s journey – a journey from Baghdad to Israel in 1950, aged five, and from Israel to England. But Avi Schlaim’s journey was at different levels. It was geographical and it was cultural. It also became a political journey to his own position today. His personal experiences illustrate a bigger story of the Jewish exodus from Iraq to Israel in 1950 following the creation of Israel in 1948. His story and his words speak more eloquently than any reviewer can, and so for the most part, I quote directly from his memoir. The book is “a glimpse into the lost and rich world of the Iraqi-Jewish community”. Perhaps, coming from what he describes as a prosperous, privileged family, he may see the past through rose-tinted glasses. But his memories are precious. “We belonged to a branch of the global Jewish community that is now almost extinct. We were Arab-Jews. We lived in Baghdad and were well integrated into Iraqi society. We spoke Arabic at home, our social customs were Arab, our lifestyle was Arab, our cuisine was exquisitely Middle Eastern and my parents’ music was an attractive blend of Arabic and Jewish…We in the Jewish community had much more in common, linguistically and culturally, with our Iraqi compatriots than with our European co-religionists. Of all the Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire, the one in Mesopotamia was the most integrated into local society, the most Arabised in its culture and the most prosperous… When the British created the Kingdom of Iraq…the Jews were the backbone of the Iraqi economy” Jewish lineage in Mesopotamia stretched as far back as Babylonian times, pre-dating the rise of Islam by a millenium. “Their influence was evident in every branch of Iraqi culture, from literature and music to journalism and banking. Banks – with the exception of government owned banks – and all the big markets remained closed on the Sabbath and the other Jewish holy days.” By the 1880s there were 55 synagogues in Baghdad. He describes how in Iraq there was a long tradition of religious tolerance and harmony. “The Jews were neither newcomers nor aliens in Iraq. They were certainly not intruders”. By the time of the First World War, Jews constituted one third of the population of Baghdad. He contrasts Europe and the Middle East. “Unlike Europe the Middle East did not have a ‘Jewish Question’. “Iraq’s Jews did not live in ghettos, nor did they experience the violent repression, persecution and genocide that marred European history. There were of course exceptions, notably the infamous pogrom against Jews in June 1941, for which the actions of British imperialism must take substantial responsibility. By 1941, antisemitism in Baghdad was on the increase but was more a foreign import than a home grown product. There was a violent pogrom against the Jewish community named the farhud. The Jews were seen as friends of the British. 179 Jews were murdered and several hundred injured. It was completely unexpected and unprecedented. There had been no other attack against the Jews for centuries. Avi gives many examples of Muslims assisting their Jewish neighbours. And yet he writes: “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful co-existence and fruitful interaction.” The critical moment was the creation of Israel. “As a result of the Arab defeat, there was a backlash against the Jews throughout the Arab world. “What had been a pillar of Iraqi society was increasingly perceived as a sinister fifth column”, with Islamic fundamentalists and Arab nationalists identifying the Jews in their countries with the hated Zionist enemy. Palestinians “were the main victims of the Zionist project. More than half their number became refugees and the name Palestine was wiped off the map. But there was another category of victims, less well known and much less talked about: the Jews of the Arab lands”. The sub-title of the book refers to ‘Arab-Jews’. “The hyphen is significant. Critics of the term Arab-Jew see it as… conflating two separate identities. As I see it, the hyphen unites: an Arab can also be a Jew and a Jew can also be an Arab…We are told that there is a clash of cultures, an unbridgeable gulf between Muslims and Jews… The story of my family in Iraq -and that of many forgotten families like mine – points to a dramatically different picture. It harks back to an era of a more pluralist Middle East with greater religious tolerance and a political culture of mutual respect and co-operation.” Yet the Zionists portray the Jews as the victims of endemic Arab persecution and this is used to justify the atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. Thus the narrative of the ‘Jewish Nakba’ to create a ‘false symmetry between the fate of two communities. This narrative is not history; it is the propaganda of the victors.” On 29th November 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted for the partition of mandate Palestine into two states: one Arab, one Jewish. The General Council of the Iraqi Jewish community sent a telegram to the UN opposing the partition resolution and the creation of a Jewish state. “Like my family, the majority of Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi first and Jewish second; they feared that the creation of a Jewish state would undermine their position in Iraq… The distinction between Jews and Zionists, so crucial to interfaith harmony in the Arab world, was rapidly breaking down”. Iraq’s participation in the war for Palestine fuelled tensions between Muslims and Jews. Iraqi Jews were widely suspected of being secret supporters of Israel. With the defeat of Palestine a wave of hostility towards Israel and the Jews living in their midst swept through the Arab world. Demonstrators marched through the streets of Baghdad shouting “Death to the Jews.” And the government needing a scapegoat did not simply respond to public anger but actively whipped up public hysteria and suspicion against the Jews. At this point official persecution against the Jews began. In July 1948 a law was passed making Zionism a criminal offence punishable by death or a minimum sentence of seven years in prison. Jews were fired from government jobs and from the railways, post office and telegraph department, Jewish merchants were denied import and export licences, restrictions placed on Jewish banks to trade in foreign currency, young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of education and the entire community was put under surveillance. The number of Jewish immigrants leaving Iraq to the end of 1953 numbered almost 125,000 out of a total of 135,000. The Jewish presence going back well over 2,000 years was destroyed. And yet for all this the mass exodus did not occur till 1950/1951 in what was known as the ‘Big Aliyah”. The majority of Iraqi Jews did not want to leave Iraq and had no affinity with Zionism. Most who emigrated to Israel did so only after a wave of five bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad. It has long been argued that the bombings were instigated by Israel and the Zionists to spark a mass flight of Iraqi Jews to Israel, needed as they were to do many of the menial jobs and to boost numbers in the army. The author makes a forensic examination of the evidence – based on examination of documents and on interviews – and concluded that three out of the five bombings were carried out by the Zionist underground in Baghdad, a fourth – the bombing of the Mas’uda Shemtob synagogue, which was the only one that resulted in fatalities – was the result of Zionist bribery and there was one carried out by a far right wing, anti-Jewish Iraqi nationalist group. When the Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel, their experience fell short of the Zionist myth. At the airport in Israel, many were sprayed with DDT pesticides “to disinfect them as if they were animals.” They were then taken to squalid and unsanitary transit camps. Some camps were surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by policemen. The immigration and settlement authorities had no understanding of their customs and culture. “They thought of them as backward and primitive and expected them to take their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy and be grateful for whatever they were given… The lens through which the new immigrants were viewed was the same colonialist lens through which the Ashkenazi establishment viewed the Palestinians.” “We were Jews from an Arab country that was still officially at war with Israel. European Jews.. looked down on us as socially and culturally inferior. They despised the Arabic language…I was an Iraqi boy in a land of Europeans.” For his grandmothers, Iraq was the beloved homeland while Israel was the place of exile. “Migration to Israel is usually described as Aliyah or ascent. For us the move from Iraq to Israel was decidedly a Yeridah, a descent down the economic and social ladder. Not only did we lose our property and possessions; we also our lost our strong sense of identity as proud Iraqi Jews as we were relegated to the margins of Israeli society.” The experience was to break his father. “The unstated aims of the official policy for schools were to undermine our Arab-Jewish identity… A systematic process was at work to delegitimise our heritage and erase our cultural roots” It was a clash of cultures. The Mizrahim were earmarked to be the proletariat – the fodder to support the country’s industrial and agricultural development. As one author put it, “We left Iraq as Jews and arrived in Israel as Iraqis.” They were clearly, to borrow from current jargon, “the wrong kind of Israeli”. His journey was a political one too. His message and his warnings are unequivocally universalist. “The Holocaust stands out as an archetype of a crime against humanity. For me as a Jew and an Israeli therefore the Holocaust teaches us to resist the dehumanising of any people, including the Palestinian ‘victims of victims’, because dehumanising a people can easily result, as it did in Europe in the 1940s, in crimes against humanity.” He had previously argued that it was only after the 1967 war that Israel became a colonial power, oppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territories. However, “a deeper analysis… led me to the conclusion that Israel had been created by a settler-colonial movement. The years 1948 and 1967 were merely milestones in the relentless systematic takeover of the whole of Palestine… Since Zionism was an avowedly settler-colonial movement from the outset, the building of civilian settlements on occupied land was only a new stage in the long march… The most crucial turning point was not the war of 1967 but the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.” And more: “the two-state solution is dead or, to be more accurate, it was never born… The outcome I have come to favour is one democratic state… with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of ethnicity or religion.” He is absolutely right in my view. His family’s story “serves as a corrective to the Zionist narrative which views Arabs and Jews as congenitally incapable of dwelling together in peace and doomed to permanent conflict and discord… My experience as a young boy and that of the whole Jewish community in Iraq, suggests there is nothing inevitable or pre-ordained about Arab-Jewish antagonism… Remembering the past can help us to envisage a better future… Arab-Jewish co-existence is not something that my family imagined in our minds; we experienced it, we touched it.” Optimistic? Yes, perhaps over-optimistic. But towards the end of this masterpiece, Avi Schlaim justifies his message. “Recalling the era of cosmopolitanism and co-existence that some Jews, like my family, enjoyed in Arab countries before 1948 offers a glimmer of hope… It’s the best model we have for a better future.” https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/avi-shlaim-three-worlds-memoirs-of-an-arab-jew/
    WWW.JEWISHVOICEFORLABOUR.ORG.UK
    Avi Shlaim: ‘Three Worlds – Memoirs of an Arab – Jew’
    Graham Bash reviews this groundbreaking personal and political memoir by Avi Shlaim in which he laments the lost world of…
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  • From this article about the collapse of #Haiti (https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/haiti-cannibal-gang-eating-people-32281273), when it says, "Cannibalism is not widespread, but definitely an indication of the worsening situation. It definitely happens on a few occasions." It kind of reminds me of when CNN covers radical left-wing Antifa uprisings where they're burning police vehicles and throwing Molotov cocktails, and CNN says it's, "mostly peaceful."

    Now the #cannibalism is just "occasional."

    As in, hey, we mostly eat breakfast, lunch and dinner WITHOUT consuming human flesh, but from time to time, there's a human meat burger thrown into the mix, no big deal.

    Whaaah?

    When people in your city start EATING OTHER PEOPLE, it's a big deal. Major sh#t has gone wrong. Probably worth having an exfil plan at the ready.
    From this article about the collapse of #Haiti (https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/haiti-cannibal-gang-eating-people-32281273), when it says, "Cannibalism is not widespread, but definitely an indication of the worsening situation. It definitely happens on a few occasions." It kind of reminds me of when CNN covers radical left-wing Antifa uprisings where they're burning police vehicles and throwing Molotov cocktails, and CNN says it's, "mostly peaceful." Now the #cannibalism is just "occasional." As in, hey, we mostly eat breakfast, lunch and dinner WITHOUT consuming human flesh, but from time to time, there's a human meat burger thrown into the mix, no big deal. Whaaah? When people in your city start EATING OTHER PEOPLE, it's a big deal. Major sh#t has gone wrong. Probably worth having an exfil plan at the ready.
    WWW.DAILYSTAR.CO.UK
    The Daily Star: Home of Fun Stuff
    All the best news stories, sport & showbiz from the Daily Star, the top destination for big laughs.
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  • Singaporeans stand firm in support for Palestine amidst police scrutiny
    Singapore for Palestine organizers assert their right to advocate for Palestine, amid police scrutiny. They emphasize their peaceful acts of solidarity and commitment to speaking up against injustices, despite facing investigations.

    Staff writer14 February 2024

    In the wake of investigations by the Singapore Police Force (SPF) into two events held on February 2nd, the organizers of “Singapore for Palestine” issued a powerful statement on Wednesday (14 Feb), emphasizing their commitment to advocating for Palestinian rights.

    The SPF’s probe is centred on potential violations of the Public Order Act amid heightened tensions due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has resulted in allegations of genocide committed by the Israel administration against the Palestinians.

    During one event, approximately 70 individuals marched to the Istana, carrying umbrellas adorned with watermelon motifs—a symbol of Palestinian resistance—to deliver letters to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.


    70 people peacefully walked to the Istana in an orderly fashion to deliver their letters to the Prime Minister. (Photo:Amrita Chandradas)
    This peaceful act of solidarity, which allegedly had police reports filed against it, has been scrutinized by the police for its potential to incite public disorder, especially given the sensitive location.

    Another event, a private gathering, saw expressions of support for Palestine, including calls to end Singapore’s military and diplomatic ties with Israel. The use of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during this event has particularly drawn the SPF’s attention due to its contentious implications.

    The participants in the private event advocated for stopping the purchase of Israeli arms, ending partnerships with Israeli institutions, halting all diplomatic relations with Israel, ceasing participation in the US-led attacks in the Red Sea, and calling for an end to police investigations into peaceful expressions of support for Palestine.


    160 people of various racial and religious backgrounds squeezed together for the private event ‘Steadfast for Palestine’. (Photo: zack dilaroca)
    The organizing team of “Singapore for Palestine” has responded with fervor, underscoring their activities as expressions of “humanity and love” rather than threats to public order.

    “As citizens of Singapore, it is both our right and our moral responsibility to call on the Singapore state to stop fuelling Israel’s genocide in Palestine,” the organizers declared, challenging the SPF’s portrayal of their actions.

    They criticized the police for not acknowledging the widespread support for Palestine, including actions by students across major universities and the public wearing armbands in solidarity.

    “In their press release, the SPF failed to mention that on the same day, hundreds also wore armbands in the colors of the Palestinian flag, to show their solidarity. What’s more, apart from the actions we organized, around a hundred students across NTU, NUS, and SMU also organized events on their respective campuses to mourn the loss of Palestinian lives and express their commitment to a free Palestine.”


    In NTU, more than 40 students did a teach-in on Palestine.
    Highlighting the irony in the state’s actions, the organizers noted, “It is really difficult to accept that while the police required the cancellation of the public event we had planned on 2nd Feb – Show Up for Palestine – to promote peace in Palestine, they are allowing Israel to promote their weapons of mass murder at the Airshow next week.”

    “We are not intimidated by the SPF’s allegations. But it appears that the government is threatened by our umbrellas decorated beautifully with hand-drawn watermelons!” said the organizers in their statement.

    The team’s resolve remains unshaken, committed to continuing their advocacy: “We will not be silenced. As long as Palestine remains unfree, we will continue to act, speak, and show up for Palestine.”

    They draw attention to the grave situation in Gaza, particularly in Rafah, where over a million civilians face the threat of Israeli aggression. “We must not let Palestinians become extinct,” they implore, calling for global and local support for the Palestinian cause.

    In response to these developments, the SPF, supported by Minister Josephine Teo, has reiterated the importance of maintaining respectful discourse, stressing that Singapore’s laws against unauthorized public gatherings aim to preserve public order and inter-community harmony.

    The government maintains its stance on contributing to humanitarian efforts and seeking peaceful resolutions through international dialogue.

    The death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 7 October last year.

    On 26 January, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to limit deaths and damage but stopped short of demanding a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory. South Africa has accused Israel of genocide and requested the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, to impose interim measures as the case proceeds, including ordering Israel to halt its offensive, allowing Gaza residents access to aid, and taking “reasonable measures” to prevent genocide.

    Israel has denied committing genocide and asked the court to dismiss the case, which the panel of 17 judges refused to do. And despite the ruling, Israel has since stepped up its offensive on Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.4 million civilians are crammed into the city.

    Casualties in Gaza are expected to increase as Palestinians crammed into the city are trapped between Israel’s offensive in the north and Egypt’s border, which has been said not to allow passage.



    Singapore for Palestine organizers assert their right to advocate for Palestine, amid police scrutiny. They emphasize their peaceful acts of solidarity and commitment to speaking up against injustices, despite facing investigations.

    https://gutzy.asia/2024/02/14/singaporeans-stand-firm-in-support-for-palestine-amidst-police-scrutiny/

    https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/singaporeans-stand-firm-in-support-for.html
    Singaporeans stand firm in support for Palestine amidst police scrutiny Singapore for Palestine organizers assert their right to advocate for Palestine, amid police scrutiny. They emphasize their peaceful acts of solidarity and commitment to speaking up against injustices, despite facing investigations. Staff writer14 February 2024 In the wake of investigations by the Singapore Police Force (SPF) into two events held on February 2nd, the organizers of “Singapore for Palestine” issued a powerful statement on Wednesday (14 Feb), emphasizing their commitment to advocating for Palestinian rights. The SPF’s probe is centred on potential violations of the Public Order Act amid heightened tensions due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has resulted in allegations of genocide committed by the Israel administration against the Palestinians. During one event, approximately 70 individuals marched to the Istana, carrying umbrellas adorned with watermelon motifs—a symbol of Palestinian resistance—to deliver letters to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. 70 people peacefully walked to the Istana in an orderly fashion to deliver their letters to the Prime Minister. (Photo:Amrita Chandradas) This peaceful act of solidarity, which allegedly had police reports filed against it, has been scrutinized by the police for its potential to incite public disorder, especially given the sensitive location. Another event, a private gathering, saw expressions of support for Palestine, including calls to end Singapore’s military and diplomatic ties with Israel. The use of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during this event has particularly drawn the SPF’s attention due to its contentious implications. The participants in the private event advocated for stopping the purchase of Israeli arms, ending partnerships with Israeli institutions, halting all diplomatic relations with Israel, ceasing participation in the US-led attacks in the Red Sea, and calling for an end to police investigations into peaceful expressions of support for Palestine. 160 people of various racial and religious backgrounds squeezed together for the private event ‘Steadfast for Palestine’. (Photo: zack dilaroca) The organizing team of “Singapore for Palestine” has responded with fervor, underscoring their activities as expressions of “humanity and love” rather than threats to public order. “As citizens of Singapore, it is both our right and our moral responsibility to call on the Singapore state to stop fuelling Israel’s genocide in Palestine,” the organizers declared, challenging the SPF’s portrayal of their actions. They criticized the police for not acknowledging the widespread support for Palestine, including actions by students across major universities and the public wearing armbands in solidarity. “In their press release, the SPF failed to mention that on the same day, hundreds also wore armbands in the colors of the Palestinian flag, to show their solidarity. What’s more, apart from the actions we organized, around a hundred students across NTU, NUS, and SMU also organized events on their respective campuses to mourn the loss of Palestinian lives and express their commitment to a free Palestine.” In NTU, more than 40 students did a teach-in on Palestine. Highlighting the irony in the state’s actions, the organizers noted, “It is really difficult to accept that while the police required the cancellation of the public event we had planned on 2nd Feb – Show Up for Palestine – to promote peace in Palestine, they are allowing Israel to promote their weapons of mass murder at the Airshow next week.” “We are not intimidated by the SPF’s allegations. But it appears that the government is threatened by our umbrellas decorated beautifully with hand-drawn watermelons!” said the organizers in their statement. The team’s resolve remains unshaken, committed to continuing their advocacy: “We will not be silenced. As long as Palestine remains unfree, we will continue to act, speak, and show up for Palestine.” They draw attention to the grave situation in Gaza, particularly in Rafah, where over a million civilians face the threat of Israeli aggression. “We must not let Palestinians become extinct,” they implore, calling for global and local support for the Palestinian cause. In response to these developments, the SPF, supported by Minister Josephine Teo, has reiterated the importance of maintaining respectful discourse, stressing that Singapore’s laws against unauthorized public gatherings aim to preserve public order and inter-community harmony. The government maintains its stance on contributing to humanitarian efforts and seeking peaceful resolutions through international dialogue. The death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 7 October last year. On 26 January, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to limit deaths and damage but stopped short of demanding a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory. South Africa has accused Israel of genocide and requested the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, to impose interim measures as the case proceeds, including ordering Israel to halt its offensive, allowing Gaza residents access to aid, and taking “reasonable measures” to prevent genocide. Israel has denied committing genocide and asked the court to dismiss the case, which the panel of 17 judges refused to do. And despite the ruling, Israel has since stepped up its offensive on Gaza, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.4 million civilians are crammed into the city. Casualties in Gaza are expected to increase as Palestinians crammed into the city are trapped between Israel’s offensive in the north and Egypt’s border, which has been said not to allow passage. Singapore for Palestine organizers assert their right to advocate for Palestine, amid police scrutiny. They emphasize their peaceful acts of solidarity and commitment to speaking up against injustices, despite facing investigations. https://gutzy.asia/2024/02/14/singaporeans-stand-firm-in-support-for-palestine-amidst-police-scrutiny/ https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/singaporeans-stand-firm-in-support-for.html
    GUTZY.ASIA
    Singaporeans stand firm in support for Palestine amidst police scrutiny
    Singapore for Palestine organizers assert their right to advocate for Palestine, amid police scrutiny. They emphasize their peaceful acts of solidarity and commitment to speaking up against injustices, despite facing investigations.
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  • Singapore Police investigate two events amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza
    Singapore Police Force in a statement said it is probing two events on 2 Feb for Public Order Act breaches, urging lawful, respectful dialogue on Israel-Hamas conflict as death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded.

    Staff writer13 February 2024

    SINGAPORE: The Singapore Police Force (SPF) is currently investigating two events held on 2 February that may have breached the Public Order Act amidst the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict and genocide in Gaza.

    In their statement on Tuesday (13 Feb), the SPF also emphasized the importance of maintaining respectful and responsible discussions concerning the conflict, highlighting the illegal nature of participating in public protests without the requisite permit.

    The first event under investigation saw approximately 70 individuals congregating along Orchard Road, proceeding towards the Istana with umbrellas adorned with watermelon imagery—a recognized symbol of Palestinian resistance.

    This march, potentially advocating for the political causes of other countries, has raised concerns over stirring tensions and leading to public disorder, particularly given the security sensitivity of the Istana area.

    A second incident involved a private gathering which was captured and shared online where a subject was seen live streaming publicly and chanting, “From the river to the sea”, and others chanting “, Palestine will be free”, in response.

    The participants in the private event called for stopping the purchase of Israeli arms, ending Singaporean partnerships with Israeli institutions, halting all diplomatic relations with Israel, ceasing participation in the US-led attacks in the Red Sea, and stopping police investigations into peaceful expressions of support for Palestine.

    SPF states, “The phrase “From the river to the sea” is associated with calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. The use of such phrases can lead to racial tensions in our society, and may be an offence under Section 298A(a) of the Penal Code 1871. We must also not condone calls for violence.”

    The participants in the private event, made calls for the Singapore government

    Reflecting on these incidents, the SPF reiterated its stance from October 2023, alongside the National Parks Board, that applications for public events related to the Israel-Hamas conflict would be systematically rejected due to public safety and security concerns.

    The SPF’s statement further stressed the importance of not allowing international events to disrupt Singapore’s internal harmony, pointing out the “real risk” assemblies related to the Gaza situation pose to public order and inter-community relations.

    In line with this, the SPF has made it clear that no permits will be granted for gatherings that risk inciting disorder or advocate for foreign political causes.

    Additionally, SPF noted that unauthorized posting of materials such as stickers on properties remains a punishable offence under the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act.

    In a supportive stance, Josephine Teo, Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for the Ministry of Home Affairs, echoed the police’s sentiments in a Facebook post.

    She reassured that the advisory is not aimed at stifling expression but rather at ensuring that public discourse does not infringe upon the law or threaten societal cohesion.

    Minister Teo also highlighted Singapore’s proactive stance on the conflict, noting the country’s contribution to humanitarian efforts and its call for an immediate ceasefire through international platforms.

    The death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 7 October last year.

    On 26 January, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to limit deaths and damage but stopped short of demanding a cease-fire in the Palestinian territory.

    South Africa has accused Israel of genocide and requested the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, to impose interim measures as the case proceeds. These requested measures include ordering Israel to halt its offensive, allowing Gaza residents access to aid, and taking “reasonable measures” to prevent genocide.

    Israel has denied committing genocide and asked the court to dismiss the case, which the panel of 17 judges refused to do.

    Casualties in Gaza are expected to increase as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls for a ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.4 million civilians are crammed into the city, trapped between Isreal’s offensive in the north and Egypt’s border where it has been said that it would not allow passage.

    Gutzy has checked with the organisers of the events and understands that they have yet to be contacted by the police and that the President has yet respond to the letters that were sent on 2 February.


    Singapore Police Force in a statement said it is probing two events on 2 Feb for Public Order Act breaches, urging lawful, respectful dialogue on Israel-Hamas conflict as death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded.




    https://gutzy.asia/2024/02/13/singapore-police-investigate-two-events-amid-israels-genocide-in-gaza/

    https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/singapore-police-investigate-two-events.html
    Singapore Police investigate two events amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza Singapore Police Force in a statement said it is probing two events on 2 Feb for Public Order Act breaches, urging lawful, respectful dialogue on Israel-Hamas conflict as death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded. Staff writer13 February 2024 SINGAPORE: The Singapore Police Force (SPF) is currently investigating two events held on 2 February that may have breached the Public Order Act amidst the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict and genocide in Gaza. In their statement on Tuesday (13 Feb), the SPF also emphasized the importance of maintaining respectful and responsible discussions concerning the conflict, highlighting the illegal nature of participating in public protests without the requisite permit. The first event under investigation saw approximately 70 individuals congregating along Orchard Road, proceeding towards the Istana with umbrellas adorned with watermelon imagery—a recognized symbol of Palestinian resistance. This march, potentially advocating for the political causes of other countries, has raised concerns over stirring tensions and leading to public disorder, particularly given the security sensitivity of the Istana area. A second incident involved a private gathering which was captured and shared online where a subject was seen live streaming publicly and chanting, “From the river to the sea”, and others chanting “, Palestine will be free”, in response. The participants in the private event called for stopping the purchase of Israeli arms, ending Singaporean partnerships with Israeli institutions, halting all diplomatic relations with Israel, ceasing participation in the US-led attacks in the Red Sea, and stopping police investigations into peaceful expressions of support for Palestine. SPF states, “The phrase “From the river to the sea” is associated with calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. The use of such phrases can lead to racial tensions in our society, and may be an offence under Section 298A(a) of the Penal Code 1871. We must also not condone calls for violence.” The participants in the private event, made calls for the Singapore government Reflecting on these incidents, the SPF reiterated its stance from October 2023, alongside the National Parks Board, that applications for public events related to the Israel-Hamas conflict would be systematically rejected due to public safety and security concerns. The SPF’s statement further stressed the importance of not allowing international events to disrupt Singapore’s internal harmony, pointing out the “real risk” assemblies related to the Gaza situation pose to public order and inter-community relations. In line with this, the SPF has made it clear that no permits will be granted for gatherings that risk inciting disorder or advocate for foreign political causes. Additionally, SPF noted that unauthorized posting of materials such as stickers on properties remains a punishable offence under the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act. In a supportive stance, Josephine Teo, Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for the Ministry of Home Affairs, echoed the police’s sentiments in a Facebook post. She reassured that the advisory is not aimed at stifling expression but rather at ensuring that public discourse does not infringe upon the law or threaten societal cohesion. Minister Teo also highlighted Singapore’s proactive stance on the conflict, noting the country’s contribution to humanitarian efforts and its call for an immediate ceasefire through international platforms. The death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded since the Israeli offensive on Gaza began on 7 October last year. On 26 January, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to limit deaths and damage but stopped short of demanding a cease-fire in the Palestinian territory. South Africa has accused Israel of genocide and requested the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, to impose interim measures as the case proceeds. These requested measures include ordering Israel to halt its offensive, allowing Gaza residents access to aid, and taking “reasonable measures” to prevent genocide. Israel has denied committing genocide and asked the court to dismiss the case, which the panel of 17 judges refused to do. Casualties in Gaza are expected to increase as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls for a ground invasion of Rafah, where 1.4 million civilians are crammed into the city, trapped between Isreal’s offensive in the north and Egypt’s border where it has been said that it would not allow passage. Gutzy has checked with the organisers of the events and understands that they have yet to be contacted by the police and that the President has yet respond to the letters that were sent on 2 February. Singapore Police Force in a statement said it is probing two events on 2 Feb for Public Order Act breaches, urging lawful, respectful dialogue on Israel-Hamas conflict as death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded. https://gutzy.asia/2024/02/13/singapore-police-investigate-two-events-amid-israels-genocide-in-gaza/ https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/singapore-police-investigate-two-events.html
    GUTZY.ASIA
    Singapore Police investigate two events amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza
    Singapore Police Force in a statement said it is probing two events on 2 Feb for Public Order Act breaches, urging lawful, respectful dialogue on Israel-Hamas conflict as death toll in the Gaza Strip has surpassed 28,000, with more than 67,600 Palestinians wounded.
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  • The Committee of 300 - Dr. John Coleman (1994)
    RULERS OF OUR WORLD:
    The Committee of 300 is a small group of insidious people
    who control all aspects of our world. Through MI6 they ordered
    the murder of President Lincoln and President Kennedy.
    AIDS was created and WHO injected it into millions through the Smallpox vaccines.

    THEIR GOALS:

    🔹 (1) A One World Government with a unified church and
    monetary system under their direction.
    🔹 (2) The utter destruction of all national identity
    and national pride.
    🔹 (3) The destruction of religion and more especially
    the Christian religion, with the one exception,
    their own creation mentioned above.
    🔹 (4) Control of each and every person through means
    of mind control and nanotechnology which would create
    human-like robots and a system of terror.
    🔹 (5) An end to all industrialization and the production of
    nuclear generated electric power in what they call
    "the post-industrial zero-growth society."
    🔹 (6) Legalization of drugs and pornography.
    🔹 (7) Depopulation of large cities.
    🔹 (8) Suppression of all scientific development except for those
    deemed beneficial by the Committee. Especially targeted is
    nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
    🔹 (9) Cause by means of limited wars in the advanced countries,
    and by means of starvation and diseases
    in Third World countries, the death of 3 billion people
    by the year 2050, people they call "useless eaters."
    🔹 (10) To weaken the moral fiber of the nation and
    to demoralize workers in the labor class
    by creating mass unemployment.
    🔹 (11) To keep people everywhere from deciding
    their own destinies by means of one created crisis
    after another and then "managing" such crises.
    🔹 (12) To introduce new cults.
    🔹 (13) To cause a total collapse of the world's economies
    and engender total political chaos.
    🔹 (14) To take control of all Foreign and
    domestic policies of the United States.
    🔹 (15) Give full support to supranational institutions such as
    the United Nations (UN),
    the World Health Organization (WHO),
    the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
    the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and
    the World Economic Forum(WEF)
    and the World Court.
    🔹 (16) Penetrate and subvert all governments, and
    work from within them to destroy
    the sovereign integrity of nations represented by them.
    🔹 (17) Organize a world-wide terrorist apparatus and
    negotiate with terrorists
    whenever terrorist activities take place.
    🔹 (18) Take control of education in America with the intent and
    purpose of utterly and completely destroying it.


    ❇️ The Club of Rome,

    ❇️ The Venetian Black Nobility,

    ❇️ The Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA),
    Chatham House

    ❇️ The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),

    ❇️ The Bilderbergers,

    ❇️ Trilaterals,

    ❇️ The Zionists, Freemasonry,
    The Illuminati, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

    🔹 https://rumble.com/v26xzwy--1994-lecture-dr.-john-coleman-reveals-the-dark-secrets-of-the-committee-of.html

    🔹 https://www.bitchute.com/video/9Nj36i6RgPvL/

    Follow https://t.me/sgdefense and share 😇
    The Committee of 300 - Dr. John Coleman (1994) RULERS OF OUR WORLD: The Committee of 300 is a small group of insidious people who control all aspects of our world. Through MI6 they ordered the murder of President Lincoln and President Kennedy. AIDS was created and WHO injected it into millions through the Smallpox vaccines. THEIR GOALS: 🔹 (1) A One World Government with a unified church and monetary system under their direction. 🔹 (2) The utter destruction of all national identity and national pride. 🔹 (3) The destruction of religion and more especially the Christian religion, with the one exception, their own creation mentioned above. 🔹 (4) Control of each and every person through means of mind control and nanotechnology which would create human-like robots and a system of terror. 🔹 (5) An end to all industrialization and the production of nuclear generated electric power in what they call "the post-industrial zero-growth society." 🔹 (6) Legalization of drugs and pornography. 🔹 (7) Depopulation of large cities. 🔹 (8) Suppression of all scientific development except for those deemed beneficial by the Committee. Especially targeted is nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 🔹 (9) Cause by means of limited wars in the advanced countries, and by means of starvation and diseases in Third World countries, the death of 3 billion people by the year 2050, people they call "useless eaters." 🔹 (10) To weaken the moral fiber of the nation and to demoralize workers in the labor class by creating mass unemployment. 🔹 (11) To keep people everywhere from deciding their own destinies by means of one created crisis after another and then "managing" such crises. 🔹 (12) To introduce new cults. 🔹 (13) To cause a total collapse of the world's economies and engender total political chaos. 🔹 (14) To take control of all Foreign and domestic policies of the United States. 🔹 (15) Give full support to supranational institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the World Economic Forum(WEF) and the World Court. 🔹 (16) Penetrate and subvert all governments, and work from within them to destroy the sovereign integrity of nations represented by them. 🔹 (17) Organize a world-wide terrorist apparatus and negotiate with terrorists whenever terrorist activities take place. 🔹 (18) Take control of education in America with the intent and purpose of utterly and completely destroying it. ❇️ The Club of Rome, ❇️ The Venetian Black Nobility, ❇️ The Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), Chatham House ❇️ The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), ❇️ The Bilderbergers, ❇️ Trilaterals, ❇️ The Zionists, Freemasonry, The Illuminati, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. 🔹 https://rumble.com/v26xzwy--1994-lecture-dr.-john-coleman-reveals-the-dark-secrets-of-the-committee-of.html 🔹 https://www.bitchute.com/video/9Nj36i6RgPvL/ Follow https://t.me/sgdefense and share 😇
    Like
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    1 Comments 1 Shares 7698 Views
  • ICJ Failed The Palestinians | VT Foreign Policy
    February 2, 2024
    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    ICJ Failed The Palestinians

    By Dr. Elias Akleh

    January 31st. 2024

    The International Criminal Court (ICJ) had failed the Palestinians. It did not protect them and allowed the Israeli genocide to continue. Similar to all the hypocritically self-acclaimed international legal, justice, and humanitarian organizations the ICJ failed to protect the Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip by not acknowledging the Israeli brutal genocide despite the fact that such genocide is broadcasted live on air and on the internet all over the world.

    Wall Street Journal had reported by December 30th that more than 70% of Gaza’s homes and half of its public buildings and most of its infrastructure have been completely destroyed. Israeli bombers targeted and destroyed complete residential blocks, single homes, tower apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, public buildings, cultural site and virtually everything that is built. Evern cemeteries were not spared from the Israeli savage attacks. At least 600 cemeteries have been bulldozed, corpses vandalized, and many snatched away for body parts.

    More destruction has been inflicted during the month of January. It was conservatively estimated that Israel has dropped American-supplied bombs on the most densely populated 141 square miles Gaza with a total devastating power far exceeds three nuclear bombs of the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb that was dropped on Japanese city of Hiroshima. By January 31st the Israeli terrorist forces have killed 26,900 Palestinians mostly women and children and wounded 65,949 Palestinians while many other estimated 7,000 killed are not accounted for buried under the rubble.

    Large part of Gaza Palestinians are originally Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes during the 1948 Israeli occupation (the Nakba). Another large part are refugees, who were expelled from their homes during the 1967 Israeli war (the Naksah). Palestinians are killed by Israeli bombers. They are killed by Israeli soldiers. They are killed by Israeli tanks. Wounded Palestinians are killed by lack of medicine. Palestinian families are killed by hunger and thirst. They are killed by severe cold and heavy rain for lack of shelters. They are killed by imprisonment in the largest ever concentration prison and lack of safety. They are killed by psychological pain, confusion, grief, anger, frustration, and lack of hope. Israel had turned Gaza Strip into the largest ever open-air concentrated prison, now Israel, with the help of Biden’s administration, Israel is turning Gaza Strip into the largest ever concentrated graveyard.

    Today’s, January 31st, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report about the economic impact of Israeli military war on Gaza states that the unprecedented level of destruction in the Gaza Strip rendered it uninhabitable. Some areas have been completely destroyed by the Israeli aggression. Tens of billions of dollars are needed to rehabilitate and rebuild, which will take long decades.

    Yet the ICJ had a problem recognizing all this as a genocide even though many Israeli political leaders, Israeli military leaders, and even Israeli religious leaders are calling for complete destruction of Gaza, and the annihilations and expulsion of Palestinians (called Amalek and human animals). Although the court recognized Palestinians as a “protected group” (raising their status from “human animals” as described by Gallant) under the provisions of the Genocide Convention it did not recognize the Palestinian’s right of self-defense against the brutal 75 years long Israeli genocidal settler occupation. The court failed short of not accusing Israel of committing a genocidal crime, an obvious genocide that is being broadcasted live on air throughout the whole world.



    The court did not order Israel to immediately halt its military attacks against Gaza, or even to lift its state of siege. Instead, it ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide convention.” This gives a green light for Israel to continue its military assault on Gaza up to a level not to be considered a genocide. This is practically similar to what Biden’s administration have been instructing Israeli leaders to do. That is instead of killing one thousand Palestinian civilians a day, kill only five hundred, instead of destroying a whole residential block with every dropped bomb, destroy only one or two houses at a time, instead of detonating many schools and universities in one day, detonate only one school and one university every other day, instead of destroying the 700 mosques Israeli bombers did within two months, destroy only one or two mosques per month.

    The court was “humanitarian” enough to remind Israel of its duty to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Yet, how could any delivery of humanitarian aid be accomplished when there is no ceasefire. Such an attempt is a suicidal mission. Without a ceasefire all other decisions are senseless. The Gaza Strip concentrated prison is besieged with barbed wires and has only two crossing gates; Rafah crossing to Egypt, and Karm Abu Salem crossing to occupied Palestine (Israel). Entry and exit through the two crossings are virtually controlled by Israel. Israeli tanks and fighter planes block entry of humanitarian aid through Rafah crossings. After ICJ’s ruling armed extremist Israeli settlers (colonizers, who are usually part of the Israeli army since the age of 18 years old) have been blocking humanitarian aid through Karm Abu Salem crossing. No humanitarian aid is allowed in.



    Israeli leaders have no respect for international legal organizations. Israel had never respected or conformed to any UN resolutions but violated each and every one of them. They consider themselves above the law since they believe they are “god’s chosen”. Netanyahu vowed that “No one will stop us – not the Hague, not the axis of evil, and no one else.” He would not stop the war until he destroys Hamas (Gaza and Palestinians) and release the hostages as he keeps promising. Israeli war minister, Yoav Gallant, keeps threatening and promising that after the war Israel would impose a military rule over the Gaza Strip.



    On January 28th. Israel’s extremist far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir convened what was called “Victory conference” attended by sixteen members of the Israeli Knesset. Ben-Gvir repeated his support for what he called “voluntary immigration” {compulsory expulsion}of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians as the most moral and logical solution” and for Israeli re-settlement of the Gaza Strip. All these Israeli members of Knesset showed no respect to the ruling of the International Court of Justice. Forced expulsion of any group is a crime against humanity, and Israeli colonies (settlements) on stolen Palestinian land are a violation of international law. Yet Biden’s administration still wants to reward Israel with $14 billion of American hard earning tax money and punish the Palestinian victims by cutting aid to UNRWA the agency that is providing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian refugees.



    Israeli soldiers did not stop murdering Palestinian civilians even those who raise white flags. Israeli military vehicles did not stop raiding Palestinian cities of the West Bank destroying homes and taking hostages (6,420 Palestinian hostages as of January 31st.), they also attack hospitals and murder sick and wounded Palestinian in cold blood. Israeli bombers did not stop destroying Palestinian civilian buildings knowing very well that such buildings as schools, hospitals, religious centers are used as refugee centers. Israeli political and religious leaders did not stop calling for Gaza destruction and forced expulsion of Palestinians.



    Yet, ICJ had a problem recognizing the obvious Israeli genocide of Gaza Palestinians. This same court did not have problem recognizing genocide in the Russian Ukraine case, It did not have any problem recognizing a genocide in the Serbia Herzegovina case, and it did not have any problem recognizing a genocide in the Myanmar Rohingya case. So, what is different in Israel Palestine case?

    The failure of the ICJ, as well as the UN and every other international legal organization who failed to protect Palestinians for the last 75 years from the deliberate Zionist Israeli genocidal campaign of the Greater Israel scheme, uncovers the underlying fact that all these international organizations had been established by the victors of the WWII to serve their own colonial schemes rather than protecting humanitarian civil rights.

    Palestinians have learned this fact the hard way. After 75 years of peaceful political negotiations to protect their lives and their homeland, they discovered that such negotiations will not put an end to the Israeli genocidal attacks that are encouraged, armed, and politically protected by successive American administrations. They learned the hard fact that this world runs mainly by power enforced rules not by humanitarian rules. They either silently watch one hundred of their children slaughtered daily by Israeli forces, or stand up and fight back. They could protect their children and free their homeland from Israeli occupation only through military power not by the fake internationals laws. Since they are occupied they have the legal, moral, and also religious right for militarized self-defense. Palestine, similar to Vietnam and Afghanistan among others, will only be liberated by force of arms and not by force of hypocritical international laws.



    Dr. Elias Akleh
    Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab-American from Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine after the 1948 Nakba when Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after Zionists again, occupied the rest of Palestine.



    ATTENTION READERS

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    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/02/icj-failed-the-palestinians/

    https://telegra.ph/ICJ-Failed-The-Palestinians--VT-Foreign-Policy-02-02


    https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/icj-failed-palestinians-vt-foreign.html
    ICJ Failed The Palestinians | VT Foreign Policy February 2, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. ICJ Failed The Palestinians By Dr. Elias Akleh January 31st. 2024 The International Criminal Court (ICJ) had failed the Palestinians. It did not protect them and allowed the Israeli genocide to continue. Similar to all the hypocritically self-acclaimed international legal, justice, and humanitarian organizations the ICJ failed to protect the Palestinian civilians of the Gaza Strip by not acknowledging the Israeli brutal genocide despite the fact that such genocide is broadcasted live on air and on the internet all over the world. Wall Street Journal had reported by December 30th that more than 70% of Gaza’s homes and half of its public buildings and most of its infrastructure have been completely destroyed. Israeli bombers targeted and destroyed complete residential blocks, single homes, tower apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, public buildings, cultural site and virtually everything that is built. Evern cemeteries were not spared from the Israeli savage attacks. At least 600 cemeteries have been bulldozed, corpses vandalized, and many snatched away for body parts. More destruction has been inflicted during the month of January. It was conservatively estimated that Israel has dropped American-supplied bombs on the most densely populated 141 square miles Gaza with a total devastating power far exceeds three nuclear bombs of the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb that was dropped on Japanese city of Hiroshima. By January 31st the Israeli terrorist forces have killed 26,900 Palestinians mostly women and children and wounded 65,949 Palestinians while many other estimated 7,000 killed are not accounted for buried under the rubble. Large part of Gaza Palestinians are originally Palestinian refugees expelled from their homes during the 1948 Israeli occupation (the Nakba). Another large part are refugees, who were expelled from their homes during the 1967 Israeli war (the Naksah). Palestinians are killed by Israeli bombers. They are killed by Israeli soldiers. They are killed by Israeli tanks. Wounded Palestinians are killed by lack of medicine. Palestinian families are killed by hunger and thirst. They are killed by severe cold and heavy rain for lack of shelters. They are killed by imprisonment in the largest ever concentration prison and lack of safety. They are killed by psychological pain, confusion, grief, anger, frustration, and lack of hope. Israel had turned Gaza Strip into the largest ever open-air concentrated prison, now Israel, with the help of Biden’s administration, Israel is turning Gaza Strip into the largest ever concentrated graveyard. Today’s, January 31st, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report about the economic impact of Israeli military war on Gaza states that the unprecedented level of destruction in the Gaza Strip rendered it uninhabitable. Some areas have been completely destroyed by the Israeli aggression. Tens of billions of dollars are needed to rehabilitate and rebuild, which will take long decades. Yet the ICJ had a problem recognizing all this as a genocide even though many Israeli political leaders, Israeli military leaders, and even Israeli religious leaders are calling for complete destruction of Gaza, and the annihilations and expulsion of Palestinians (called Amalek and human animals). Although the court recognized Palestinians as a “protected group” (raising their status from “human animals” as described by Gallant) under the provisions of the Genocide Convention it did not recognize the Palestinian’s right of self-defense against the brutal 75 years long Israeli genocidal settler occupation. The court failed short of not accusing Israel of committing a genocidal crime, an obvious genocide that is being broadcasted live on air throughout the whole world. The court did not order Israel to immediately halt its military attacks against Gaza, or even to lift its state of siege. Instead, it ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the Genocide convention.” This gives a green light for Israel to continue its military assault on Gaza up to a level not to be considered a genocide. This is practically similar to what Biden’s administration have been instructing Israeli leaders to do. That is instead of killing one thousand Palestinian civilians a day, kill only five hundred, instead of destroying a whole residential block with every dropped bomb, destroy only one or two houses at a time, instead of detonating many schools and universities in one day, detonate only one school and one university every other day, instead of destroying the 700 mosques Israeli bombers did within two months, destroy only one or two mosques per month. The court was “humanitarian” enough to remind Israel of its duty to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Yet, how could any delivery of humanitarian aid be accomplished when there is no ceasefire. Such an attempt is a suicidal mission. Without a ceasefire all other decisions are senseless. The Gaza Strip concentrated prison is besieged with barbed wires and has only two crossing gates; Rafah crossing to Egypt, and Karm Abu Salem crossing to occupied Palestine (Israel). Entry and exit through the two crossings are virtually controlled by Israel. Israeli tanks and fighter planes block entry of humanitarian aid through Rafah crossings. After ICJ’s ruling armed extremist Israeli settlers (colonizers, who are usually part of the Israeli army since the age of 18 years old) have been blocking humanitarian aid through Karm Abu Salem crossing. No humanitarian aid is allowed in. Israeli leaders have no respect for international legal organizations. Israel had never respected or conformed to any UN resolutions but violated each and every one of them. They consider themselves above the law since they believe they are “god’s chosen”. Netanyahu vowed that “No one will stop us – not the Hague, not the axis of evil, and no one else.” He would not stop the war until he destroys Hamas (Gaza and Palestinians) and release the hostages as he keeps promising. Israeli war minister, Yoav Gallant, keeps threatening and promising that after the war Israel would impose a military rule over the Gaza Strip. On January 28th. Israel’s extremist far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir convened what was called “Victory conference” attended by sixteen members of the Israeli Knesset. Ben-Gvir repeated his support for what he called “voluntary immigration” {compulsory expulsion}of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians as the most moral and logical solution” and for Israeli re-settlement of the Gaza Strip. All these Israeli members of Knesset showed no respect to the ruling of the International Court of Justice. Forced expulsion of any group is a crime against humanity, and Israeli colonies (settlements) on stolen Palestinian land are a violation of international law. Yet Biden’s administration still wants to reward Israel with $14 billion of American hard earning tax money and punish the Palestinian victims by cutting aid to UNRWA the agency that is providing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian refugees. Israeli soldiers did not stop murdering Palestinian civilians even those who raise white flags. Israeli military vehicles did not stop raiding Palestinian cities of the West Bank destroying homes and taking hostages (6,420 Palestinian hostages as of January 31st.), they also attack hospitals and murder sick and wounded Palestinian in cold blood. Israeli bombers did not stop destroying Palestinian civilian buildings knowing very well that such buildings as schools, hospitals, religious centers are used as refugee centers. Israeli political and religious leaders did not stop calling for Gaza destruction and forced expulsion of Palestinians. Yet, ICJ had a problem recognizing the obvious Israeli genocide of Gaza Palestinians. This same court did not have problem recognizing genocide in the Russian Ukraine case, It did not have any problem recognizing a genocide in the Serbia Herzegovina case, and it did not have any problem recognizing a genocide in the Myanmar Rohingya case. So, what is different in Israel Palestine case? The failure of the ICJ, as well as the UN and every other international legal organization who failed to protect Palestinians for the last 75 years from the deliberate Zionist Israeli genocidal campaign of the Greater Israel scheme, uncovers the underlying fact that all these international organizations had been established by the victors of the WWII to serve their own colonial schemes rather than protecting humanitarian civil rights. Palestinians have learned this fact the hard way. After 75 years of peaceful political negotiations to protect their lives and their homeland, they discovered that such negotiations will not put an end to the Israeli genocidal attacks that are encouraged, armed, and politically protected by successive American administrations. They learned the hard fact that this world runs mainly by power enforced rules not by humanitarian rules. They either silently watch one hundred of their children slaughtered daily by Israeli forces, or stand up and fight back. They could protect their children and free their homeland from Israeli occupation only through military power not by the fake internationals laws. Since they are occupied they have the legal, moral, and also religious right for militarized self-defense. Palestine, similar to Vietnam and Afghanistan among others, will only be liberated by force of arms and not by force of hypocritical international laws. Dr. Elias Akleh Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab-American from Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine after the 1948 Nakba when Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after Zionists again, occupied the rest of Palestine. ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/02/icj-failed-the-palestinians/ https://telegra.ph/ICJ-Failed-The-Palestinians--VT-Foreign-Policy-02-02 https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/02/icj-failed-palestinians-vt-foreign.html
    WWW.VTFOREIGNPOLICY.COM
    ICJ Failed The Palestinians
    ICJ Failed The Palestinians By Dr. Elias Akleh January 31st. 2024 The International Criminal Court (ICJ) had failed the Palestinians. It did not protect them and allowed the Israeli genocide to continue. Similar to all the hypocritically self-acclaimed international legal, justice, and humanitarian organizations the ICJ failed to protect the Palestinian civilians of the...
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  • Thanks to a subscriber with an appropriate handle, Chaos, I’ve been alerted to this lickspittle memo of appalling treachery from our government in U.K. to that crook running the criminal operation aka the WHO.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/who-executive-board-22-27-january-2024

    “2024 is an important year for WHO. The UK looks forward to a successful Investment Round underpinned by a new General Programme of Work (GPW) that sets out clearly WHO’s priorities. WHO’s unique added value in the global health architecture will help accelerate progress towards the SDGs, taking a gender-responsive approach”.

    Means we’ve sold you down the river to the UN2030 sustainable development goals, which imply things like no private transportation, little meat, very few new clothes, no “fossil fuel” heating and rare, if any, short haul flights. That’s imprisonment.

    “The UK underlines our commitment to agreement of a new Pandemic Accord and targeted amendments of the International Health Regulations, which together ensure our preparedness for future health threats with stronger prevention, and response, whilst respecting national sovereignty”.

    Signing up to the IHR effectively makes Tedros “World King”, or rather, his financial backers, like Gates, will hold the power to lock us down for no reason and prescribe mass poisoning via mRNA injections that definitely won’t be vaccines. Failure to comply would precipitate as best a civil war & at worst, a form of martial law.

    “The UK welcomes this week’s focus on climate and health. At COP28, leaders noted that climate change is now a health crisis, as you have said many times DG. One we can only face collectively with WHO playing a key role”.

    What can I say? It’s a pack of lies.

    It’s little more than a page. Please don’t let them get away with it. Show to everyone who’ll listen. We’re going to need all the peaceful but irresistible opposition to this nonsense.

    Best wishes
    Mike
    Thanks to a subscriber with an appropriate handle, Chaos, I’ve been alerted to this lickspittle memo of appalling treachery from our government in U.K. to that crook running the criminal operation aka the WHO. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/who-executive-board-22-27-january-2024 “2024 is an important year for WHO. The UK looks forward to a successful Investment Round underpinned by a new General Programme of Work (GPW) that sets out clearly WHO’s priorities. WHO’s unique added value in the global health architecture will help accelerate progress towards the SDGs, taking a gender-responsive approach”. Means we’ve sold you down the river to the UN2030 sustainable development goals, which imply things like no private transportation, little meat, very few new clothes, no “fossil fuel” heating and rare, if any, short haul flights. That’s imprisonment. “The UK underlines our commitment to agreement of a new Pandemic Accord and targeted amendments of the International Health Regulations, which together ensure our preparedness for future health threats with stronger prevention, and response, whilst respecting national sovereignty”. Signing up to the IHR effectively makes Tedros “World King”, or rather, his financial backers, like Gates, will hold the power to lock us down for no reason and prescribe mass poisoning via mRNA injections that definitely won’t be vaccines. Failure to comply would precipitate as best a civil war & at worst, a form of martial law. “The UK welcomes this week’s focus on climate and health. At COP28, leaders noted that climate change is now a health crisis, as you have said many times DG. One we can only face collectively with WHO playing a key role”. What can I say? It’s a pack of lies. It’s little more than a page. Please don’t let them get away with it. Show to everyone who’ll listen. We’re going to need all the peaceful but irresistible opposition to this nonsense. Best wishes Mike
    WWW.GOV.UK
    WHO Executive Board 22-27 January 2024
    The United Kingdom's National Statement delivered at the World Health Organization's Executive Board in Geneva.
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  • Is Gaza Genocide Just Your “Anti-Semitic Imagination”?
    Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 18, 2024

    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.



    Rumble link Bitchute link

    This week’s False Flag Weekly News featured J. Michael Springmann and I discussing the historic story “Israel Busted For Genocide.” Needless to say, we sided with the prosecution.

    Then last night I appeared on Charles Moscowitz’s podcast and heard Charles’ brief for the defense. Though I like Charles Moscowitz, and have a fair bit in common with him both philosophically and politically, I find his take on Zionism infuriating. Moscowitz’s new book The Anti-Semitic Imagination goes over a long list of “conspiracy theories” and absolves organized Jewry of involvement in pretty much all of them. Even the conspiracy to invade, occupy, and ethnically-cleanse Palestine, according to Moscowitz, is really the Palestinians’ fault. It’s also the fault of “radical jihadist Islam.” (Eyeball roll.)

    Below are excerpts from the two conversations.

    Kevin Barrett and J. Michael Springmann on Zionist genocide

    Kevin Barrett: Here’s the top war crime story this week: South Africa is leading the prosecution of Israel for genocide in The Hague.

    Sam Husseini (listen to our interview) has been tirelessly pushing this idea for months. Now it finally happened. Shout out to South Africa for making it happen.

    South Africa presented the case for the prosecution last Thursday, and then Friday was Israel’s response. The prosecution’s five-point accusation included mass killings of Palestinians, bodily and mental harm, forced displacement, a food blockade, destruction of the health care system, and preventing Palestinian births. All of these fit the definition of genocide under international law.

    J. Michael Springmann: I think South Africa has it right. Genocide was defined at the convention in 1948, which the Israelis signed and which they got because of the way the Europeans treated the Jews.

    Now they’re claiming that the Palestinians are engaging in genocide against them, when in actual fact the definition is along the lines of trying to wipe out or displace or remove by threats, by statements, by actions and by killings, a people or an ethnic group or a religious group.

    That it pretty much fits the Palestinians. They’re Muslims. They’re a coherent group of people. The Zionists have been working on this since the 20s and 30s with Plan Dalet cooked up by David Ben-Gurion, one of the terrorist leaders of the Haganah. He became a prime minister and he pushed through the genocide, the Nakba, the Holocaust against the Palestinians, in 1948 and subsequently.

    So I think the case is strong. The court has jurisdiction. The only problem is that it doesn’t have any power to enforce its decisions.

    Kevin Barrett: That’s right. But every nation on earth can say that it is enforcing international law once the decision gets handed down. So that means that, for example, the Yemeni government led by the Houthis would have a strong case that it has the right to impose a blockade on the Zionist entity to stop the genocide.

    And of course, that story has been heating up this week. We have had more drone attacks on Israeli oil tankers. And then the Americans went just yesterday and started bombing Yemen. There have been two rounds of bombings. They’ve hit dozens of targets in Yemen. And the Yemenis are up in arms. There is drone footage of millions of people titting the streets.

    Messing with Yemen is not a smart move, as the Saudis learned to their chagrin about seven or eight years ago. So is this going to be another case of a relatively poor and not that heavily armed country like Afghanistan kicking Uncle Sam’s butt?

    J. Michael Springmann: I think so. They’ve done a good job of flooding the Red Sea, which may become the Iron Bottom Sea if they hit enough ships with their missiles and drones. The foolish Americans and the British and the Canadians and the Australians and the Dutch have got themselves in the middle of a hornet’s nest.

    The Yemenis are battle-tested. Tor 10 years they’ve been fighting the Saudis, backed by the United States, and the Saudis couldn’t win, even though they bombed school buses and funeral processions and wedding receptions and so forth. So the Yemenis are tough, they have weapons, they’re not stupid, they’ve repurposed some Scud missiles to improve them and fire them at the Saudis.

    And of course the lamestream media controlled by the Zio-Nazis—that’s an insult to the Nazis actually—they keep claiming that the Iranians are doing all this, the Iranians somehow are backing Hamas and Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah freedom fighters and the people in Iraq and people in Syria. And you think that Iran is this great octopus, but in fact the Americans and the British are creating more problems for themselves, and sooner or later the Houthis are going to hit some very expensive warships and kill a lot of sailors

    Kevin Barrett: Yeah, and then all bets are off. It could be World War III for all we know. And one of the real shameful things about this is that the United States is officially at war, conducting an act of aggression against Yemen, bombing Yemen, killing people. They already killed Yemenis last week. And they’re doing this to protect a genocide. That makes them war criminals of the highest order. And every American leader with any responsibility whatsoever for this needs to be tried, convicted, sentenced and hanged until dead.

    Israel’s Massacre of Journalists

    Kevin Barrett: The Washington Post is the Anglo-Zionist Empire’s propaganda organ, and even they admit that there’s a horrific massacre of journalists going on. Wael Al-Dahdouh just lost his son. He lost most of his family a month and a half ago. And now the Zionists just targeted a car that his son was riding in and murdered him, too. There was a really touching film of his wedding video, the son’s wedding video, with Wael the Father celebrating the wedding. And now here he is with his son’s corpse.

    The Zionists have murdered over 100 journalists, according to the Palestinian authorities, and at least 79 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. About one out of every 10 reporters in Gaza has been murdered by the Zionists. I guess maybe there’s something they’re trying to hide.

    J. Michael Springmann: Yeah, they’re trying to hide the truth. And if you notice in the picture there, as in all the other pictures, the journalists that have been murdered, like the Al Mayadeen journalist and her cameraman, were all wearing “PRESS” emblazoned across their their flak vest in English and Arabic on their helmets, and yet somehow that this makes them targets instead of protecting them from the crazed creatures that are occupying Palestine and attempting to destroy the rest of the world.


    Kevin Barrett on Charles Moscowtiz’s Podcast (Excerpts)

    Podcast link

    Charles Moscowitz: Kevin, thanks for joining me.

    Kevin Barrett: Hey, it’s good to be with you, Charles.

    Charles Moscowitz: So before we get into the subjects of the day, I wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit about your story and how you arrived at where you are in terms of writing a book like Truth Jihad, your point of view, how it is you became Muslim.

    Kevin Barrett: It’s kind of a long, convoluted story, but basically, I came from a family of lapsed Unitarians, and that’s as lapsed as it gets. We didn’t even go to church to sing Kumbaya.

    Charles Moscowitz: Can I just interject briefly here, because I did, when I was on conventional radio, I used to do a segment on religions, and I’d have various people from all religions join me, and I had someone from the Unitarian Church join me. And I asked her, could you give me a thumbnail sketch on what it is that the Unitarians believe in? Are there any basic principles? And she said to me, funny, you should mention that we have a convention next month, we’re going to be figuring that out.

    Kevin Barrett: Well, I think they figured it out. And they said, “we don’t have any principles.” They actually have an atheist minister now in Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to church maybe two or three times at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed church in Madison when I was a kid.

    So I grew up in a very secular materialistic family, and I had spiritual experiences as a teenager, and knew there was a lot more to life than what the materialist paradigm was presenting. I read widely, looked into Buddhism as well as all sorts of other things when I was young, but I never really got monotheism. When my parents sent me to go to church with a Catholic next door neighbor to see what the Catholics do, it didn’t make any sense to me at all. The notion of this patriarchal God with Jesus as his son who died as redemption for everybody else’s sins, this whole story didn’t make any sense to me. But at the same time, I understood that there’s a real spiritual dimension to life. And so I looked into Buddhism, which did make a fair bit of sense.

    And then in 1989 through the grace of God, what many would call a coincidence or synchronicity, I happened to walk into a class taught by Dr. Jacob Needleman (and wound up reading Traditionalist authors like Guénon, Schuon and Lings, who became Muslims because they understood that Islam was the best-preserved authentic revealed religion as well as the one that is most rationally defensible).

    And the more I looked into it, the more I was convinced that that was the case. Islam also happened to have a very powerful mystical tradition and Sufism is a big part of that. And I very much related to that as well.

    So that’s how I came to Islam. I said, I better go study Arabic and Islamic studies to figure out what the heck I got myself into. So I went back to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent years learning Arabic and studying comparative religion and mostly Islam in the context of North Africa and Sufism.

    I’d probably still be teaching that stuff today, except 9/11 happened. And in late 2003, I heard David Ray Griffin, one of my great heroes—he’s a brilliant scholar, not so much a theologian as a guy who studies empirical reality and tries to figure out scientific questions—looked into 9/11.

    I looked into it, and I saw they (the 9/11 truthers) were right. And so I was very angry and upset again, and I flashed back to my JFK days and said, am I going to spend 6 or 7 years getting tenure and just let this thing go? Hell no.

    So I started doing teach-ins on the University of Wisconsin campus, became locally notorious. I had the first three mainstream pro-9/11 truth op-eds published in a mainstream newspaper in Madison, the Capital Times, and got involved in 9-11 Truth, brought Dr. Griffin to speak in Madison in 2005. I became kind of a figure in the 9/11 Truth movement.

    And then in 2006, when the opposition research guys decided to try to shut down 9/11 truth, because they couldn’t ignore it anymore, they came after me. And so I was basically beat up in mainstream media as “that evil 9/11 truth professor who’s corrupting the youth of Athens.”

    That made me permanently unemployable in the American academy. I lost a tenure-track job as well as any other possibility of employment. And so since then I’ve just been a freelance troublemaker and alternative media type guy like you.

    Charles Moscowitz: Exactly. And I think that people generally are coming around to viewing 9/11 as having more to it than what we were conventionally fed by the media.

    And in my own experience, when I ran for Congress in 2004 against Barney Frank, I discovered that he had authored this amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which basically forbade the United States from denying visas to people who were involved in terrorist activities. And it also had the effect of preventing all of our various so-called national security agencies from talking to each other and exchanging information, which, you know, led me to think that there’s something bigger going on here. There was some kind of an establishment agenda…

    I discovered… there is a peaceful element, or at least an element within Islam, as expressed by the Mufti of Rome, Palasi, who says that Islamic texts, including the Quran and the Hadith, they recognize the, quote, people of the book, which is the Islamic word for the Jews, as being sovereign in that tiny little swath of beachfront known as Israel. And that there’s a religious side to that in that such sovereignty will result in the… I mean, I suppose it’s similar to Christianity in the coming of the Mahdi or the coming of the final prophet and the ushering in of a messianic era.

    And his work has not been refuted by Islamic scholars.

    I don’t think it’s certainly the mainstream.

    But I’m wondering what you think of that, and will you lie, will you come down on that question?

    Kevin Barrett: Well, you and I actually, Charles, are on totally polar opposite sides of that question, even though maybe our philosophical framework isn’t so different. That is, your ideas about the core values of Judaism, which I respect as the core values of Islam and indeed all monotheism…

    (But) I couldn’t come up with somebody who more exemplifies what I would say is the absolutely, just utterly wrong position on Zionism, as you.

    My view of it—and I realize this is probably going to sound shocking or strange to you— agrees with Sheikh Imran Hussein’s interpretation of eschatology. And essentially, as I see it, Charles, Zionism is Antichrist or Dajjal. It’s a false messiah.

    I think that it began with Shabtai Zvi and Jacob Frank, who you agree are false messiahs and false prophets. And I agree with the Neturei Karta people from the Jewish viewpoint that God is asking all of us to be the best people that we can and to offer complete and perfect justice to everybody regardless of their nominal faith or ethnicity or religious affiliation or what have you. And I think Zionism is an expression of a pernicious and toxic Jewish supremacism that has been part of the shadow side of the Jewish faith.

    And from a Muslim perspective, we would say that emerges in part because of what we see as inaccuracies in the Torah, leading to abominations in the Talmud.

    And I think that the notion of a chosen people is, well, problematic. Of course, it can be interpreted in a way that encourages good behavior, which is your interpretation, and I honor that. But it also lends itself to interpretations that basically create a kind of supremacism that denies the rights of others and denies the viewpoints of others.

    And I think your book’s approach to Zionism horrifically denies the viewpoint and the rights and the human dignity of others, non-Zionists and non-Jews, especially Palestinians, who are the victims of genocide. And they didn’t start being the victims of genocide on October 7th. The’ve been victims of genocide nonstop ever since the earliest Zionists, who were mostly atheists and satanists, showed up in Palestine with a supremacist attitude. Rather than being immigrants who were going to work with the local people and help them and be part of their community, these people were supremacists who said, “it’s going to be a Jewish state. Jews are going to rule. Jews are the chosen people here. And we’re ultimately going to have to expel these native Palestinians.” And all the founders of Zionism knew they were going to have to commit genocide, that is expel, destroy, the local Palestinian community.

    Now that’s unacceptable, Charles. And I’ll tell you one of the reasons why. Not only because it requires genocide against the Palestinians, but also because that holy land is holy to all of us. It’s holy to Christians, to Jews, and to Muslims. Whoever has custody over that land has to administer it with perfect justice for all faiths. No special dispensations for any faith.

    The monotheists today consist of about 15 million Jews, 2 billion Muslims, and 3 billion Christians. So there are five billion monotheists today (who honor Abraham and the prophets) who are Muslim and Christian. And there are 15 million who are Jewish. All of those five billion plus people have equal rights to being equal citizens in every possible sense in that holy land.

    If I said, “it should be a Muslim state in which only Muslims are allowed to immigrate there, only Muslims are allowed to have the best property, Muslims are going to put up checkpoints so all the non-Muslims basically have to go through apartheid checkpoints to go to the store every day, Muslims are going to be shooting non-Muslim children for sport, which happens on a regular basis in Israel as the Israeli Defense Forces literally murder Palestinian children for sport on a constant basis and never face any consequences…

    If the Muslims acted like this against the Jews and the Christians in that holy land, it would be an abomination.

    So, the fact that this grotesquely deluded and egotistical and egocentric and arguably tribally psychopathic group of 15 million of the world’s 5 billion monotheists has seen fit to invade the Holy Land and commit genocide against the people who live there and erect a supremacist, apartheid, genocidal entity there and call it some kind of quasi-messianic entity and bow down and worship this genocidal entity as a golden calf–that’s Antichrist, that’s Dajjal, that’s the False Prophet, that’s another Shabtai Zvi.

    So I think that you’ve made a terrible mistake. I think you’re a good man, I think your basic values are good. But I think you’ve made a horrific mistake by grossly misinterpreting Israel, reading the history from a very, very biased viewpoint, an utterly one-sided viewpoint, that denies the story of the other, denies the humanity of the other, denies the facts that we all should be agreeing on, and instead replaces them with big lies and propaganda that are completely false about the history of what’s happened there.

    (How did Charles Moscowitz respond? Listen to the full podcast)



    Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

    He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN).

    He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

    Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

    Archived Articles (2004-2016)

    www.truthjihad.com


    ATTENTION READERS

    We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
    In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

    About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
    Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.

    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/is-gaza-genocide-just-your-anti-semitic-imagination/
    Is Gaza Genocide Just Your “Anti-Semitic Imagination”? Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 18, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Rumble link Bitchute link This week’s False Flag Weekly News featured J. Michael Springmann and I discussing the historic story “Israel Busted For Genocide.” Needless to say, we sided with the prosecution. Then last night I appeared on Charles Moscowitz’s podcast and heard Charles’ brief for the defense. Though I like Charles Moscowitz, and have a fair bit in common with him both philosophically and politically, I find his take on Zionism infuriating. Moscowitz’s new book The Anti-Semitic Imagination goes over a long list of “conspiracy theories” and absolves organized Jewry of involvement in pretty much all of them. Even the conspiracy to invade, occupy, and ethnically-cleanse Palestine, according to Moscowitz, is really the Palestinians’ fault. It’s also the fault of “radical jihadist Islam.” (Eyeball roll.) Below are excerpts from the two conversations. Kevin Barrett and J. Michael Springmann on Zionist genocide Kevin Barrett: Here’s the top war crime story this week: South Africa is leading the prosecution of Israel for genocide in The Hague. Sam Husseini (listen to our interview) has been tirelessly pushing this idea for months. Now it finally happened. Shout out to South Africa for making it happen. South Africa presented the case for the prosecution last Thursday, and then Friday was Israel’s response. The prosecution’s five-point accusation included mass killings of Palestinians, bodily and mental harm, forced displacement, a food blockade, destruction of the health care system, and preventing Palestinian births. All of these fit the definition of genocide under international law. J. Michael Springmann: I think South Africa has it right. Genocide was defined at the convention in 1948, which the Israelis signed and which they got because of the way the Europeans treated the Jews. Now they’re claiming that the Palestinians are engaging in genocide against them, when in actual fact the definition is along the lines of trying to wipe out or displace or remove by threats, by statements, by actions and by killings, a people or an ethnic group or a religious group. That it pretty much fits the Palestinians. They’re Muslims. They’re a coherent group of people. The Zionists have been working on this since the 20s and 30s with Plan Dalet cooked up by David Ben-Gurion, one of the terrorist leaders of the Haganah. He became a prime minister and he pushed through the genocide, the Nakba, the Holocaust against the Palestinians, in 1948 and subsequently. So I think the case is strong. The court has jurisdiction. The only problem is that it doesn’t have any power to enforce its decisions. Kevin Barrett: That’s right. But every nation on earth can say that it is enforcing international law once the decision gets handed down. So that means that, for example, the Yemeni government led by the Houthis would have a strong case that it has the right to impose a blockade on the Zionist entity to stop the genocide. And of course, that story has been heating up this week. We have had more drone attacks on Israeli oil tankers. And then the Americans went just yesterday and started bombing Yemen. There have been two rounds of bombings. They’ve hit dozens of targets in Yemen. And the Yemenis are up in arms. There is drone footage of millions of people titting the streets. Messing with Yemen is not a smart move, as the Saudis learned to their chagrin about seven or eight years ago. So is this going to be another case of a relatively poor and not that heavily armed country like Afghanistan kicking Uncle Sam’s butt? J. Michael Springmann: I think so. They’ve done a good job of flooding the Red Sea, which may become the Iron Bottom Sea if they hit enough ships with their missiles and drones. The foolish Americans and the British and the Canadians and the Australians and the Dutch have got themselves in the middle of a hornet’s nest. The Yemenis are battle-tested. Tor 10 years they’ve been fighting the Saudis, backed by the United States, and the Saudis couldn’t win, even though they bombed school buses and funeral processions and wedding receptions and so forth. So the Yemenis are tough, they have weapons, they’re not stupid, they’ve repurposed some Scud missiles to improve them and fire them at the Saudis. And of course the lamestream media controlled by the Zio-Nazis—that’s an insult to the Nazis actually—they keep claiming that the Iranians are doing all this, the Iranians somehow are backing Hamas and Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah freedom fighters and the people in Iraq and people in Syria. And you think that Iran is this great octopus, but in fact the Americans and the British are creating more problems for themselves, and sooner or later the Houthis are going to hit some very expensive warships and kill a lot of sailors Kevin Barrett: Yeah, and then all bets are off. It could be World War III for all we know. And one of the real shameful things about this is that the United States is officially at war, conducting an act of aggression against Yemen, bombing Yemen, killing people. They already killed Yemenis last week. And they’re doing this to protect a genocide. That makes them war criminals of the highest order. And every American leader with any responsibility whatsoever for this needs to be tried, convicted, sentenced and hanged until dead. Israel’s Massacre of Journalists Kevin Barrett: The Washington Post is the Anglo-Zionist Empire’s propaganda organ, and even they admit that there’s a horrific massacre of journalists going on. Wael Al-Dahdouh just lost his son. He lost most of his family a month and a half ago. And now the Zionists just targeted a car that his son was riding in and murdered him, too. There was a really touching film of his wedding video, the son’s wedding video, with Wael the Father celebrating the wedding. And now here he is with his son’s corpse. The Zionists have murdered over 100 journalists, according to the Palestinian authorities, and at least 79 according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. About one out of every 10 reporters in Gaza has been murdered by the Zionists. I guess maybe there’s something they’re trying to hide. J. Michael Springmann: Yeah, they’re trying to hide the truth. And if you notice in the picture there, as in all the other pictures, the journalists that have been murdered, like the Al Mayadeen journalist and her cameraman, were all wearing “PRESS” emblazoned across their their flak vest in English and Arabic on their helmets, and yet somehow that this makes them targets instead of protecting them from the crazed creatures that are occupying Palestine and attempting to destroy the rest of the world. Kevin Barrett on Charles Moscowtiz’s Podcast (Excerpts) Podcast link Charles Moscowitz: Kevin, thanks for joining me. Kevin Barrett: Hey, it’s good to be with you, Charles. Charles Moscowitz: So before we get into the subjects of the day, I wouldn’t mind hearing a little bit about your story and how you arrived at where you are in terms of writing a book like Truth Jihad, your point of view, how it is you became Muslim. Kevin Barrett: It’s kind of a long, convoluted story, but basically, I came from a family of lapsed Unitarians, and that’s as lapsed as it gets. We didn’t even go to church to sing Kumbaya. Charles Moscowitz: Can I just interject briefly here, because I did, when I was on conventional radio, I used to do a segment on religions, and I’d have various people from all religions join me, and I had someone from the Unitarian Church join me. And I asked her, could you give me a thumbnail sketch on what it is that the Unitarians believe in? Are there any basic principles? And she said to me, funny, you should mention that we have a convention next month, we’re going to be figuring that out. Kevin Barrett: Well, I think they figured it out. And they said, “we don’t have any principles.” They actually have an atheist minister now in Madison, Wisconsin, where I went to church maybe two or three times at the Frank Lloyd Wright designed church in Madison when I was a kid. So I grew up in a very secular materialistic family, and I had spiritual experiences as a teenager, and knew there was a lot more to life than what the materialist paradigm was presenting. I read widely, looked into Buddhism as well as all sorts of other things when I was young, but I never really got monotheism. When my parents sent me to go to church with a Catholic next door neighbor to see what the Catholics do, it didn’t make any sense to me at all. The notion of this patriarchal God with Jesus as his son who died as redemption for everybody else’s sins, this whole story didn’t make any sense to me. But at the same time, I understood that there’s a real spiritual dimension to life. And so I looked into Buddhism, which did make a fair bit of sense. And then in 1989 through the grace of God, what many would call a coincidence or synchronicity, I happened to walk into a class taught by Dr. Jacob Needleman (and wound up reading Traditionalist authors like Guénon, Schuon and Lings, who became Muslims because they understood that Islam was the best-preserved authentic revealed religion as well as the one that is most rationally defensible). And the more I looked into it, the more I was convinced that that was the case. Islam also happened to have a very powerful mystical tradition and Sufism is a big part of that. And I very much related to that as well. So that’s how I came to Islam. I said, I better go study Arabic and Islamic studies to figure out what the heck I got myself into. So I went back to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent years learning Arabic and studying comparative religion and mostly Islam in the context of North Africa and Sufism. I’d probably still be teaching that stuff today, except 9/11 happened. And in late 2003, I heard David Ray Griffin, one of my great heroes—he’s a brilliant scholar, not so much a theologian as a guy who studies empirical reality and tries to figure out scientific questions—looked into 9/11. I looked into it, and I saw they (the 9/11 truthers) were right. And so I was very angry and upset again, and I flashed back to my JFK days and said, am I going to spend 6 or 7 years getting tenure and just let this thing go? Hell no. So I started doing teach-ins on the University of Wisconsin campus, became locally notorious. I had the first three mainstream pro-9/11 truth op-eds published in a mainstream newspaper in Madison, the Capital Times, and got involved in 9-11 Truth, brought Dr. Griffin to speak in Madison in 2005. I became kind of a figure in the 9/11 Truth movement. And then in 2006, when the opposition research guys decided to try to shut down 9/11 truth, because they couldn’t ignore it anymore, they came after me. And so I was basically beat up in mainstream media as “that evil 9/11 truth professor who’s corrupting the youth of Athens.” That made me permanently unemployable in the American academy. I lost a tenure-track job as well as any other possibility of employment. And so since then I’ve just been a freelance troublemaker and alternative media type guy like you. Charles Moscowitz: Exactly. And I think that people generally are coming around to viewing 9/11 as having more to it than what we were conventionally fed by the media. And in my own experience, when I ran for Congress in 2004 against Barney Frank, I discovered that he had authored this amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which basically forbade the United States from denying visas to people who were involved in terrorist activities. And it also had the effect of preventing all of our various so-called national security agencies from talking to each other and exchanging information, which, you know, led me to think that there’s something bigger going on here. There was some kind of an establishment agenda… I discovered… there is a peaceful element, or at least an element within Islam, as expressed by the Mufti of Rome, Palasi, who says that Islamic texts, including the Quran and the Hadith, they recognize the, quote, people of the book, which is the Islamic word for the Jews, as being sovereign in that tiny little swath of beachfront known as Israel. And that there’s a religious side to that in that such sovereignty will result in the… I mean, I suppose it’s similar to Christianity in the coming of the Mahdi or the coming of the final prophet and the ushering in of a messianic era. And his work has not been refuted by Islamic scholars. I don’t think it’s certainly the mainstream. But I’m wondering what you think of that, and will you lie, will you come down on that question? Kevin Barrett: Well, you and I actually, Charles, are on totally polar opposite sides of that question, even though maybe our philosophical framework isn’t so different. That is, your ideas about the core values of Judaism, which I respect as the core values of Islam and indeed all monotheism… (But) I couldn’t come up with somebody who more exemplifies what I would say is the absolutely, just utterly wrong position on Zionism, as you. My view of it—and I realize this is probably going to sound shocking or strange to you— agrees with Sheikh Imran Hussein’s interpretation of eschatology. And essentially, as I see it, Charles, Zionism is Antichrist or Dajjal. It’s a false messiah. I think that it began with Shabtai Zvi and Jacob Frank, who you agree are false messiahs and false prophets. And I agree with the Neturei Karta people from the Jewish viewpoint that God is asking all of us to be the best people that we can and to offer complete and perfect justice to everybody regardless of their nominal faith or ethnicity or religious affiliation or what have you. And I think Zionism is an expression of a pernicious and toxic Jewish supremacism that has been part of the shadow side of the Jewish faith. And from a Muslim perspective, we would say that emerges in part because of what we see as inaccuracies in the Torah, leading to abominations in the Talmud. And I think that the notion of a chosen people is, well, problematic. Of course, it can be interpreted in a way that encourages good behavior, which is your interpretation, and I honor that. But it also lends itself to interpretations that basically create a kind of supremacism that denies the rights of others and denies the viewpoints of others. And I think your book’s approach to Zionism horrifically denies the viewpoint and the rights and the human dignity of others, non-Zionists and non-Jews, especially Palestinians, who are the victims of genocide. And they didn’t start being the victims of genocide on October 7th. The’ve been victims of genocide nonstop ever since the earliest Zionists, who were mostly atheists and satanists, showed up in Palestine with a supremacist attitude. Rather than being immigrants who were going to work with the local people and help them and be part of their community, these people were supremacists who said, “it’s going to be a Jewish state. Jews are going to rule. Jews are the chosen people here. And we’re ultimately going to have to expel these native Palestinians.” And all the founders of Zionism knew they were going to have to commit genocide, that is expel, destroy, the local Palestinian community. Now that’s unacceptable, Charles. And I’ll tell you one of the reasons why. Not only because it requires genocide against the Palestinians, but also because that holy land is holy to all of us. It’s holy to Christians, to Jews, and to Muslims. Whoever has custody over that land has to administer it with perfect justice for all faiths. No special dispensations for any faith. The monotheists today consist of about 15 million Jews, 2 billion Muslims, and 3 billion Christians. So there are five billion monotheists today (who honor Abraham and the prophets) who are Muslim and Christian. And there are 15 million who are Jewish. All of those five billion plus people have equal rights to being equal citizens in every possible sense in that holy land. If I said, “it should be a Muslim state in which only Muslims are allowed to immigrate there, only Muslims are allowed to have the best property, Muslims are going to put up checkpoints so all the non-Muslims basically have to go through apartheid checkpoints to go to the store every day, Muslims are going to be shooting non-Muslim children for sport, which happens on a regular basis in Israel as the Israeli Defense Forces literally murder Palestinian children for sport on a constant basis and never face any consequences… If the Muslims acted like this against the Jews and the Christians in that holy land, it would be an abomination. So, the fact that this grotesquely deluded and egotistical and egocentric and arguably tribally psychopathic group of 15 million of the world’s 5 billion monotheists has seen fit to invade the Holy Land and commit genocide against the people who live there and erect a supremacist, apartheid, genocidal entity there and call it some kind of quasi-messianic entity and bow down and worship this genocidal entity as a golden calf–that’s Antichrist, that’s Dajjal, that’s the False Prophet, that’s another Shabtai Zvi. So I think that you’ve made a terrible mistake. I think you’re a good man, I think your basic values are good. But I think you’ve made a horrific mistake by grossly misinterpreting Israel, reading the history from a very, very biased viewpoint, an utterly one-sided viewpoint, that denies the story of the other, denies the humanity of the other, denies the facts that we all should be agreeing on, and instead replaces them with big lies and propaganda that are completely false about the history of what’s happened there. (How did Charles Moscowitz respond? Listen to the full podcast) Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN). He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Archived Articles (2004-2016) www.truthjihad.com ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/is-gaza-genocide-just-your-anti-semitic-imagination/
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    Is Gaza Genocide Just Your “Anti-Semitic Imagination”?
    A grotesquely deluded and egotistical and egocentric and arguably tribally psychopathic group of 15 million of the world's 5 billion monotheists has seen fit to invade the Holy Land and commit genocide...
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  • Rajab: The Forgotten Sacred Month
    We may be well aware of the significance of Ramadan, Syawal, and Zulhijjah, to name a few. However, what about Rajab? In fact, Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam.

    We may be well aware of the significance of Ramadan, Syawal, and Zulhijjah, to name a few. However, what about Rajab? In fact, Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam.
    The month of Rajab is the seventh month of the Islamic calendar and a prelude to the ninth month, Ramadan. The classical Muslim scholar Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali quoted another scholar, Abu Bakr Al-Warraq, in his book Lataif al-Ma’arif:

    “Rajab is a month of cultivation, Sha'ban is the month of irrigating the fields, and Ramadan is the month of reaping and harvesting.”

    Preparing before the arrival of Ramadan is crucial. Rajab could be the starting point for these preparations. Our deeds can (hope to) be compared to a tree, where the seeds are planted in Rajab, the tree begins to take shape in Sha’ban, and the fruits are harvested in Ramadan.

    Therefore, it is recommended that we take advantage of Rajab so that they may hope to perform well in Ramadan. This article will delve into the origin of "Rajab", significant events that happened in Rajab, and four acts you can perform during this period.

    Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month

    Etymology of Rajab (the origin of Rajab and the historical development of its meaning)

    The word “Rajab” (رجب) comes from the word 'at-tarjeeb' (الترجيب), which means revered/reverence. The month also goes by Rajab Al-Haram, Rajab Al-Fard, and Rajab Mudhar, just to name a few.

    The reason it is named Rajab Al-Haram (Rajab the sacred one) is because it is one of the four sacred months in Islam, as mentioned in Surah At-Tawbah, verse 36. The Quran states:

    إِنَّ عِدَّةَ ٱلشُّهُورِ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِى كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ مِنْهَآ أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ

    “Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve—in Allah’s Record since the day He created the heavens and the earth—of which four are sacred…”

    (Surah At-Tawbah, 9:36)

    Many classical scholars have interpreted this verse with the accompanying hadith whereby the Prophet s.a.w. mentioned in a hadith:

    إنَّ الزَّمانَ قد استدار كهيئتِه يومَ خَلَق اللهُ السَّمواتِ والأرضَ، السَّنةُ اثنا عَشَرَ شَهرًا، منها أربعةٌ حُرُمٌ، ثلاثٌ متوالياتٌ: ذو القَعْدةِ، وذو الحِجَّةِ، والمحَرَّمُ، ورَجَبُ مُضَرَ الذي بين جُمادى وشَعبانَ

    “Time has completed its cycle and has come to the state of the day when Allah created the heavens and the earth. The year consists of twelve months of which four are inviolable; three of them consecutive - Dhul-Qa'dah, Dhul-Hijjah and Muharram and Rajab, the month of Mudar (tribe), which comes between Jumada and Sha'ban.”

    (Sahih Al-Bukhari)

    Read: Muslim SG | 4 Sacred Months in Islam

    Rajab is also called Rajab Al-Fard (Rajab the single one) because the month is a standalone compared to the other three consecutive months of Zulkaedah, Zulhijjah, and Muharram.

    And finally, it is known as Rajab Mudhar (Rajab of the tribe Mudhar) because historically, there’s a tribe called Mudhar (Bani Mudhar) in the Arabian peninsula, and the tribesmen would often perform their pilgrimage in the month of Rajab as they view the month as sacred and holy.

    During the pre-Islam period, it was a practice of the Arabs to rearrange the months in the calendar wherever they saw fit. However, the tribe Mudhar would not rearrange the month of Rajab and would consistently appoint it accordingly every year, which they became known for.

    Read: 4 Intriguing Things You May Not Know About the Islamic Hijri Calendar

    Islam takes great emphasis on calculating time and not changing it on a whim, which has been the case of many past civilisations. Allah s.w.t. says in the Quran:

    إِنَّمَا ٱلنَّسِىٓءُ زِيَادَةٌ فِى ٱلْكُفْرِ ۖ يُضَلُّ بِهِ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ يُحِلُّونَهُۥ عَامًا وَيُحَرِّمُونَهُۥ عَامًا لِّيُوَاطِـُٔوا۟ عِدَّةَ مَا حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ فَيُحِلُّوا۟ مَا حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ ۚ زُيِّنَ لَهُمْ سُوٓءُ أَعْمَـٰلِهِمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِى ٱلْقَوْمَ ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ

    Reallocating the sanctity of (these) months is an increase in disbelief, by which the disbelievers are led (far) astray. They adjust the sanctity one year and uphold it in another, only to maintain the number of months sanctified by Allah, violating the very months Allah has made sacred. Their evil deeds have been made appealing to them. And Allah does not guide the disbelieving people.

    (Surah At-Tawbah, 9:37)

    Hence, when the Prophet s.a.w. declared Rajab as Rajab Mudhar, the companions knew the Prophet s.a.w. meant the seventh month of the Hijri lunar calendar.[1]

    One of the 4 sacred months

    Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month

    As it has been established that the month of Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam, let us look at why these months are sacred and how we should welcome them.

    Allah s.w.t specifically warns us on this matter:

    يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تُحِلُّوا۟ شَعَـٰٓئِرَ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا ٱلشَّهْرَ ٱلْحَرَامَ وَلَا ٱلْهَدْىَ وَلَا ٱلْقَلَـٰٓئِدَ وَلَآ ءَآمِّينَ ٱلْبَيْتَ ٱلْحَرَامَ يَبْتَغُونَ فَضْلاً مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَرِضْوَٰنًا

    “O believers! Do not violate Allah’s rituals (of pilgrimage), the sacred months, the sacrificial animals, the (offerings decorated with) garlands, nor those (pilgrims) on their way to the Sacred House seeking their Lord’s bounty and pleasure.”

    (Surah Al-Maidah, 5:2)

    These months are called sacred for two reasons:

    1. Prohibition of fighting

    Ibn Kathir[2] explains that this warning comes as an instruction for Muslims to observe, respect and honour the sacred months and avoid bad deeds such as fighting. Allah s.w.t. says in the Quran:

    يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلشَّهْرِ ٱلْحَرَامِ قِتَالٍ فِيهِ ۖ قُلْ قِتَالٌ فِيهِ كَبِيرٌ

    “They ask you (O Prophet) about fighting in the sacred months. Say, “Fighting during these months is a great sin”

    (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:217)

    Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab

    Historically, even before the advent of Islam, fighting was prohibited within the four sacred months. The sequence of the sacred months appears to be intentionally arranged to provide a safe journey for pilgrims travelling to and from Makkah.

    The month of Zulkaedah is when the pilgrims begin their preparation for the hajj, Zulhijjah is when they perform the hajj rituals, and Muharram is when they return from the hajj pilgrimage.

    On the other hand, Rajab was made sacred to ensure safety for pilgrims performing the minor pilgrimage (umrah).

    Hence, in this spirit, let us strive our best to leave conflict, disputes and animosity as we benefit the best from the sacred month of Rajab.

    2. Prohibition of wronging oneself

    Allah s.w.t. instructed us to observe the sanctity of the sacred months by the prohibition wronging oneself. The Quran states:

    إِنَّ عِدَّةَ ٱلشُّهُورِ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِى كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ مِنْهَآ أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ ٱلدِّينُ ٱلْقَيِّمُ ۚ فَلَا تَظْلِمُوا۟ فِيهِنَّ أَنفُسَكُمْ

    “Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve—in Allah’s Record since the day He created the heavens and the earth—of which four are sacred. That is the Right Way. So do not wrong one another during these months…”

    (Surah At-Tawbah 9:36)

    According to Ibn Kathir, sins are worse in general in the sacred months, where their degree is almost akin to sinning within the confines of the Holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. Ibn Abbas states:

    "In all (twelve) months. Allah then chose four out of these months and made them sacred, emphasising their sanctity, making sinning in them greater, in addition to multiplying rewards of righteous deeds during them."

    Important Events That Happened In Rajab

    First hijrah (migration) to Abyssinia

    From the late fourth and into the middle of the fifth year of Muhammad s.a.w’s prophethood, Quraysh slowly but steadily accelerated the persecution and torture of Muslims. It was evident that practising Islam in Makkah was no longer tolerable.

    The Prophet s.a.w. then instructed some Muslims to migrate and seek asylum in the land of Habshah (Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia), as the Negus (King) Ashama, was a fair ruler.

    Read: Muslim SG | What Does Islam Really Say About Muslim-Christian Relations?

    Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month

    The first migration consisted of twelve men and four women. Among them was the son-in-law of the Prophet s.a.w, Uthman Ibn Affan r.a. and his wife, Ruqayyah r.a. (the daughter of the Prophet s.a.w.)

    While the news of the migration was made known to Quraysh, the dispatch came too late to stop the migration.[3] Several futile attempts by Quraysh to dissuade the Negus to expel the companions of the Prophet s.a.w. back to Makkah were made but failed. The Negus lived up to his reputation of being a just ruler, and the Muslims lived peacefully and securely from the threats of the Quraysh.

    Read: Muslim SG | Can Muslims Live in a Non-Muslim Country?

    Isra' Mi'raj

    Isra’ and Mi’raj are events referring to the miraculous night journey of the Prophet s.a.w. from Makkah to Jerusalem and then the ascension to heaven.

    Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month

    The journey impacted Muslims as after the ascension to heaven, the Prophet s.a.w. was commanded to teach Muslims to establish the prayers five times a day. The daily prayers became a Pillar of Islam.

    Anas Ibn Malik r.a. reports:

    فُرِضَتْ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم لَيْلَةَ أُسْرِيَ بِهِ الصَّلَوَاتُ خَمْسِينَ ثُمَّ نُقِصَتْ حَتَّى جُعِلَتْ خَمْسًا ثُمَّ نُودِيَ يَا مُحَمَّدُ إِنَّهُ لاَ يُبَدَّلُ الْقَوْلُ لَدَىَّ وَإِنَّ لَكَ بِهَذِهِ الْخَمْسِ خَمْسِينَ

    "On the Night of Isra, fifty prayers were made obligatory upon the Prophet. Then it was decreased until it was made five. Then it was called out: 'O Muhammad! Indeed My Word does not change; these five prayers will be recorded for you as fifty.'"

    (Sunan At-Tirmizi)

    The journey occurred on the 27th of Rajab and happened a year before the hijrah of the Prophet s.a.w. to Madinah.

    Read: Muslim SG | Isra’ & Mi’raj: The Miraculous Night Journey of the Chosen One

    4 practices you can do in the month of Rajab

    1. Istighfar

    Istighfar, or seeking forgiveness from Allah s.w.t, is considered one of the most important acts of worship for Muslims as it is a means of purifying oneself from sins and seeking protection from Allah s.w.t.

    Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab

    Read: 8 Ways To Get Closer To Allah

    One should regularly make istighfar as a means to purify oneself from his sins and to also seek protection from the wrath and punishment from Allah s.w.t, as often emphasised by the Prophet s.a.w. In a narration by Ibn ‘Abbas r.a, the Prophet s.a.w. said:

    مَن لَزِمَ الِاسْتِغْفَارَ، جَعَلَ اللهُ لَهُ مِنْ كُلِّ ضِيقٍ مَخْرَجاً وَمِن كُلِّ هَمٍّ فَرَجاً، وَرَزَقَهُ مِن حَيثُ لَا يَحْتَسِبُ

    "If anyone constantly seeks pardon (from Allah), Allah will appoint for him a way out of every distress and a relief from every anxiety, and will provide sustenance for him from where he expects not." ‏

    (Sunan Abi Daud)

    Even if the month of Ramadan is only a few months away, that doesn’t mean we have to wait till then to seek forgiveness because, ideally, as Muslims, we should regularly seek forgiveness.

    Read: Muslim SG | Powerful Duas for Forgiveness From Allah

    2. Reconcile

    Islam teaches us to quickly reconcile with our Muslim brethren if there are any disputes between them. It’s emphasised in the Quran:

    إِنَّمَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ فَأَصْلِحُواْ بَيْنَ أَخَوَيْكُمْ ۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ

    “The believers are but one brotherhood, so make peace between your brothers. And be mindful of Allah so you may be shown mercy.”

    (Surah Al-Hujurat, 49:10)

    Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab

    The Prophet s.a.w. has also mentioned in a hadith:

    لاَ يَحِلُّ لِرَجُلٍ أَنْ يَهْجُرَ أَخَاهُ فَوْقَ ثَلاَثِ لَيَالٍ، يَلْتَقِيَانِ فَيُعْرِضُ هَذَا وَيُعْرِضُ هَذَا، وَخَيْرُهُمَا الَّذِي يَبْدَأُ بِالسَّلاَمِ

    “It is not lawful for a man to desert his brother Muslim for more than three nights. (It is unlawful for them that) when they meet, one of them turns his face away from the other, and the other turns his face from the former, and the better of the two will be the one who greets the other first”

    (Sahih Al-Bukhari)

    Historically, the month of Rajab was known to be a peaceful period as wars and fighting were prohibited. Therefore, we should take this opportunity to reconcile with those whom we have disputes with and make peace with them as it brings not only harmony but also may be a source of help on the Day of Judgement, as mentioned by the Prophet s.a.w. in a hadith narrated by Ibn Umar r.a:

    أنا زعيمٌ ببيتِ في رَبَضِ الجنةِ لمَن تَرَكَ المِراءَ وإن كان مُحِقًّا ، وببيتِ في وسطِ الجنةِ لمَن تركَ الكذبَ وإن كان مازحًا ، وببيتٍ في أعلى الجنةِ لمَن حَسُنَ خُلُقُه

    “I guarantee a house in Jannah for one who gives up arguing, even if he is in the right; and I guarantee a home in the middle of Jannah for one who abandons lying even for the sake of fun; and I guarantee a house in the highest part of Jannah for one who has good manners.”

    (Sunan Abi Daud)

    3. Fast

    In preparation for the upcoming fasting month, why not start voluntarily fasting on Monday and Thursday? or perhaps the ayyamul bidh (the white days of fasting), which falls on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of every hijri month? In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. said:

    صَوْمُ ثَلاَثَةِ أَيَّامٍ صَوْمُ الدَّهْرِ كُلِّهِ

    “Observing fasting on three days of every month is equivalent to fasting the whole year”

    (Sahih Al-Bukhari)

    Do note, if you have missed prior Ramadan fasts, it is important to prioritise making up the missed fasts as they are wajib (obligatory) while the fasting of white days is sunnah (non-obligatory/non-mandatory).

    Read: Muslim SG | Fasting On The White Days

    We can then follow up with fasting in the next month, Sha’ban. Narrated by Usamah bin Zaid r.a:

    قُلْتُ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ لَمْ أَرَكَ تَصُومُ شَهْرًا مِنَ الشُّهُورِ مَا تَصُومُ مِنْ شَعْبَانَ‏.‏ قَالَ "‏ذَلِكَ شَهْرٌ يَغْفُلُ النَّاسُ عَنْهُ بَيْنَ رَجَبٍ وَرَمَضَانَ وَهُوَ شَهْرٌ تُرْفَعُ فِيهِ الأَعْمَالُ إِلَى رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ فَأُحِبُّ أَنْ يُرْفَعَ عَمَلِي وَأَنَا صَائِمٌ‏"‏

    "I said: 'O Messenger of Allah, I do not see you fasting any month as much as Sha’ban.' He said: 'That is a month to which people do not pay much attention, between Rajab and Ramadan. It is a month in which the deeds are taken up to the Lord of the worlds, and I like that my deeds be taken up when I am fasting."'

    (Sunan An-Nasai)

    Read: Muslim SG | The Virtues and Benefits of The Month of Sha'ban

    4. Prepare for Ramadan

    As the holy month of Ramadan approaches, we can ready ourselves by making a bunch of preparations. We could make a timetable or a daily schedule of what to do in Ramadan, plan meal preps, and many others to set us in the mood of welcoming the month of Ramadan!

    Read: Muslim SG | 8 Tips To Prepare For Ramadan in Rajab

    Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab

    5. Read the dua for Rajab

    Ibn Rajab Al-Hanbali related in his book, Lataif al-Ma'arif, that the companions would supplicate for a safe journey to Ramadan for six months. After Ramadan, they would continue to pray for another six months, asking Allah to accept the acts of worship that they performed throughout the holy month. We can recite the following dua:

    اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ لَنَا فِي رَجَب، وَشَعْبَانَ، وَبَلِّغْنَا رَمَضَانَ

    Allahumma barik lana fi Rajab wa Sha’ban wa ballighna Ramadan

    “O Allah make the months of Rajab and Sha’ban blessed for us and let us reach the month of Ramadan.”

    (Musnad Ahmad)

    And the dua:

    اللَّهُمَّ سَلِّمْنِي مِنْ رَمَضَانَ، وَسَلِّمْ رَمَضَانَ لِي، وَتَسَلَّمْهُ مِنِّي مُتَقَبَّلًا

    Allahumma Sallimni min Ramadhan. Wa sallim Ramadhana li. Wa tasallamhu minni mutaqabbala

    “O Allah preserve me for Ramadan, safeguard Ramadan for me and accept it for me.”

    (narrated by Imam At-Tabrani)

    So let's turn to Him, the Most Generous, as we get ready for Ramadan. May Allah s.w.t. accept all of our deeds and make it easier for us to prepare for the holy month this year.

    And Allah knows best.

    References:

    [1] Safa Faruqui, The Benefits and Virtues of Rajab, the Month of Allah. Muslim Hands, 2021. https://muslimhands.org.uk/latest/2021/02/history-importance-and-benefits-of-rajab-in-quran-and-hadith

    [2] Abu Al-Fida’ ‘Imad Ad-Din Ismail Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 1

    [3] Saifur Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, The Sealed Nectar. 1976. pg.64

    https://muslim.sg/articles/rajab-the-forgotten-sacred-month
    Rajab: The Forgotten Sacred Month We may be well aware of the significance of Ramadan, Syawal, and Zulhijjah, to name a few. However, what about Rajab? In fact, Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam. We may be well aware of the significance of Ramadan, Syawal, and Zulhijjah, to name a few. However, what about Rajab? In fact, Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam. The month of Rajab is the seventh month of the Islamic calendar and a prelude to the ninth month, Ramadan. The classical Muslim scholar Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali quoted another scholar, Abu Bakr Al-Warraq, in his book Lataif al-Ma’arif: “Rajab is a month of cultivation, Sha'ban is the month of irrigating the fields, and Ramadan is the month of reaping and harvesting.” Preparing before the arrival of Ramadan is crucial. Rajab could be the starting point for these preparations. Our deeds can (hope to) be compared to a tree, where the seeds are planted in Rajab, the tree begins to take shape in Sha’ban, and the fruits are harvested in Ramadan. Therefore, it is recommended that we take advantage of Rajab so that they may hope to perform well in Ramadan. This article will delve into the origin of "Rajab", significant events that happened in Rajab, and four acts you can perform during this period. Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month Etymology of Rajab (the origin of Rajab and the historical development of its meaning) The word “Rajab” (رجب) comes from the word 'at-tarjeeb' (الترجيب), which means revered/reverence. The month also goes by Rajab Al-Haram, Rajab Al-Fard, and Rajab Mudhar, just to name a few. The reason it is named Rajab Al-Haram (Rajab the sacred one) is because it is one of the four sacred months in Islam, as mentioned in Surah At-Tawbah, verse 36. The Quran states: إِنَّ عِدَّةَ ٱلشُّهُورِ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِى كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ مِنْهَآ أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ “Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve—in Allah’s Record since the day He created the heavens and the earth—of which four are sacred…” (Surah At-Tawbah, 9:36) Many classical scholars have interpreted this verse with the accompanying hadith whereby the Prophet s.a.w. mentioned in a hadith: إنَّ الزَّمانَ قد استدار كهيئتِه يومَ خَلَق اللهُ السَّمواتِ والأرضَ، السَّنةُ اثنا عَشَرَ شَهرًا، منها أربعةٌ حُرُمٌ، ثلاثٌ متوالياتٌ: ذو القَعْدةِ، وذو الحِجَّةِ، والمحَرَّمُ، ورَجَبُ مُضَرَ الذي بين جُمادى وشَعبانَ “Time has completed its cycle and has come to the state of the day when Allah created the heavens and the earth. The year consists of twelve months of which four are inviolable; three of them consecutive - Dhul-Qa'dah, Dhul-Hijjah and Muharram and Rajab, the month of Mudar (tribe), which comes between Jumada and Sha'ban.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari) Read: Muslim SG | 4 Sacred Months in Islam Rajab is also called Rajab Al-Fard (Rajab the single one) because the month is a standalone compared to the other three consecutive months of Zulkaedah, Zulhijjah, and Muharram. And finally, it is known as Rajab Mudhar (Rajab of the tribe Mudhar) because historically, there’s a tribe called Mudhar (Bani Mudhar) in the Arabian peninsula, and the tribesmen would often perform their pilgrimage in the month of Rajab as they view the month as sacred and holy. During the pre-Islam period, it was a practice of the Arabs to rearrange the months in the calendar wherever they saw fit. However, the tribe Mudhar would not rearrange the month of Rajab and would consistently appoint it accordingly every year, which they became known for. Read: 4 Intriguing Things You May Not Know About the Islamic Hijri Calendar Islam takes great emphasis on calculating time and not changing it on a whim, which has been the case of many past civilisations. Allah s.w.t. says in the Quran: إِنَّمَا ٱلنَّسِىٓءُ زِيَادَةٌ فِى ٱلْكُفْرِ ۖ يُضَلُّ بِهِ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ يُحِلُّونَهُۥ عَامًا وَيُحَرِّمُونَهُۥ عَامًا لِّيُوَاطِـُٔوا۟ عِدَّةَ مَا حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ فَيُحِلُّوا۟ مَا حَرَّمَ ٱللَّهُ ۚ زُيِّنَ لَهُمْ سُوٓءُ أَعْمَـٰلِهِمْ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يَهْدِى ٱلْقَوْمَ ٱلْكَـٰفِرِينَ Reallocating the sanctity of (these) months is an increase in disbelief, by which the disbelievers are led (far) astray. They adjust the sanctity one year and uphold it in another, only to maintain the number of months sanctified by Allah, violating the very months Allah has made sacred. Their evil deeds have been made appealing to them. And Allah does not guide the disbelieving people. (Surah At-Tawbah, 9:37) Hence, when the Prophet s.a.w. declared Rajab as Rajab Mudhar, the companions knew the Prophet s.a.w. meant the seventh month of the Hijri lunar calendar.[1] One of the 4 sacred months Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month As it has been established that the month of Rajab is one of the four sacred months in Islam, let us look at why these months are sacred and how we should welcome them. Allah s.w.t specifically warns us on this matter: يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تُحِلُّوا۟ شَعَـٰٓئِرَ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا ٱلشَّهْرَ ٱلْحَرَامَ وَلَا ٱلْهَدْىَ وَلَا ٱلْقَلَـٰٓئِدَ وَلَآ ءَآمِّينَ ٱلْبَيْتَ ٱلْحَرَامَ يَبْتَغُونَ فَضْلاً مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَرِضْوَٰنًا “O believers! Do not violate Allah’s rituals (of pilgrimage), the sacred months, the sacrificial animals, the (offerings decorated with) garlands, nor those (pilgrims) on their way to the Sacred House seeking their Lord’s bounty and pleasure.” (Surah Al-Maidah, 5:2) These months are called sacred for two reasons: 1. Prohibition of fighting Ibn Kathir[2] explains that this warning comes as an instruction for Muslims to observe, respect and honour the sacred months and avoid bad deeds such as fighting. Allah s.w.t. says in the Quran: يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلشَّهْرِ ٱلْحَرَامِ قِتَالٍ فِيهِ ۖ قُلْ قِتَالٌ فِيهِ كَبِيرٌ “They ask you (O Prophet) about fighting in the sacred months. Say, “Fighting during these months is a great sin” (Surah Al-Baqarah, 2:217) Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab Historically, even before the advent of Islam, fighting was prohibited within the four sacred months. The sequence of the sacred months appears to be intentionally arranged to provide a safe journey for pilgrims travelling to and from Makkah. The month of Zulkaedah is when the pilgrims begin their preparation for the hajj, Zulhijjah is when they perform the hajj rituals, and Muharram is when they return from the hajj pilgrimage. On the other hand, Rajab was made sacred to ensure safety for pilgrims performing the minor pilgrimage (umrah). Hence, in this spirit, let us strive our best to leave conflict, disputes and animosity as we benefit the best from the sacred month of Rajab. 2. Prohibition of wronging oneself Allah s.w.t. instructed us to observe the sanctity of the sacred months by the prohibition wronging oneself. The Quran states: إِنَّ عِدَّةَ ٱلشُّهُورِ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱثْنَا عَشَرَ شَهْرًا فِى كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ يَوْمَ خَلَقَ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضَ مِنْهَآ أَرْبَعَةٌ حُرُمٌ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ ٱلدِّينُ ٱلْقَيِّمُ ۚ فَلَا تَظْلِمُوا۟ فِيهِنَّ أَنفُسَكُمْ “Indeed, the number of months ordained by Allah is twelve—in Allah’s Record since the day He created the heavens and the earth—of which four are sacred. That is the Right Way. So do not wrong one another during these months…” (Surah At-Tawbah 9:36) According to Ibn Kathir, sins are worse in general in the sacred months, where their degree is almost akin to sinning within the confines of the Holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. Ibn Abbas states: "In all (twelve) months. Allah then chose four out of these months and made them sacred, emphasising their sanctity, making sinning in them greater, in addition to multiplying rewards of righteous deeds during them." Important Events That Happened In Rajab First hijrah (migration) to Abyssinia From the late fourth and into the middle of the fifth year of Muhammad s.a.w’s prophethood, Quraysh slowly but steadily accelerated the persecution and torture of Muslims. It was evident that practising Islam in Makkah was no longer tolerable. The Prophet s.a.w. then instructed some Muslims to migrate and seek asylum in the land of Habshah (Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia), as the Negus (King) Ashama, was a fair ruler. Read: Muslim SG | What Does Islam Really Say About Muslim-Christian Relations? Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month The first migration consisted of twelve men and four women. Among them was the son-in-law of the Prophet s.a.w, Uthman Ibn Affan r.a. and his wife, Ruqayyah r.a. (the daughter of the Prophet s.a.w.) While the news of the migration was made known to Quraysh, the dispatch came too late to stop the migration.[3] Several futile attempts by Quraysh to dissuade the Negus to expel the companions of the Prophet s.a.w. back to Makkah were made but failed. The Negus lived up to his reputation of being a just ruler, and the Muslims lived peacefully and securely from the threats of the Quraysh. Read: Muslim SG | Can Muslims Live in a Non-Muslim Country? Isra' Mi'raj Isra’ and Mi’raj are events referring to the miraculous night journey of the Prophet s.a.w. from Makkah to Jerusalem and then the ascension to heaven. Rejab, Hijri month, why is rajab a sacred month The journey impacted Muslims as after the ascension to heaven, the Prophet s.a.w. was commanded to teach Muslims to establish the prayers five times a day. The daily prayers became a Pillar of Islam. Anas Ibn Malik r.a. reports: فُرِضَتْ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم لَيْلَةَ أُسْرِيَ بِهِ الصَّلَوَاتُ خَمْسِينَ ثُمَّ نُقِصَتْ حَتَّى جُعِلَتْ خَمْسًا ثُمَّ نُودِيَ يَا مُحَمَّدُ إِنَّهُ لاَ يُبَدَّلُ الْقَوْلُ لَدَىَّ وَإِنَّ لَكَ بِهَذِهِ الْخَمْسِ خَمْسِينَ "On the Night of Isra, fifty prayers were made obligatory upon the Prophet. Then it was decreased until it was made five. Then it was called out: 'O Muhammad! Indeed My Word does not change; these five prayers will be recorded for you as fifty.'" (Sunan At-Tirmizi) The journey occurred on the 27th of Rajab and happened a year before the hijrah of the Prophet s.a.w. to Madinah. Read: Muslim SG | Isra’ & Mi’raj: The Miraculous Night Journey of the Chosen One 4 practices you can do in the month of Rajab 1. Istighfar Istighfar, or seeking forgiveness from Allah s.w.t, is considered one of the most important acts of worship for Muslims as it is a means of purifying oneself from sins and seeking protection from Allah s.w.t. Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab Read: 8 Ways To Get Closer To Allah One should regularly make istighfar as a means to purify oneself from his sins and to also seek protection from the wrath and punishment from Allah s.w.t, as often emphasised by the Prophet s.a.w. In a narration by Ibn ‘Abbas r.a, the Prophet s.a.w. said: مَن لَزِمَ الِاسْتِغْفَارَ، جَعَلَ اللهُ لَهُ مِنْ كُلِّ ضِيقٍ مَخْرَجاً وَمِن كُلِّ هَمٍّ فَرَجاً، وَرَزَقَهُ مِن حَيثُ لَا يَحْتَسِبُ "If anyone constantly seeks pardon (from Allah), Allah will appoint for him a way out of every distress and a relief from every anxiety, and will provide sustenance for him from where he expects not." ‏ (Sunan Abi Daud) Even if the month of Ramadan is only a few months away, that doesn’t mean we have to wait till then to seek forgiveness because, ideally, as Muslims, we should regularly seek forgiveness. Read: Muslim SG | Powerful Duas for Forgiveness From Allah 2. Reconcile Islam teaches us to quickly reconcile with our Muslim brethren if there are any disputes between them. It’s emphasised in the Quran: إِنَّمَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ فَأَصْلِحُواْ بَيْنَ أَخَوَيْكُمْ ۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ “The believers are but one brotherhood, so make peace between your brothers. And be mindful of Allah so you may be shown mercy.” (Surah Al-Hujurat, 49:10) Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab The Prophet s.a.w. has also mentioned in a hadith: لاَ يَحِلُّ لِرَجُلٍ أَنْ يَهْجُرَ أَخَاهُ فَوْقَ ثَلاَثِ لَيَالٍ، يَلْتَقِيَانِ فَيُعْرِضُ هَذَا وَيُعْرِضُ هَذَا، وَخَيْرُهُمَا الَّذِي يَبْدَأُ بِالسَّلاَمِ “It is not lawful for a man to desert his brother Muslim for more than three nights. (It is unlawful for them that) when they meet, one of them turns his face away from the other, and the other turns his face from the former, and the better of the two will be the one who greets the other first” (Sahih Al-Bukhari) Historically, the month of Rajab was known to be a peaceful period as wars and fighting were prohibited. Therefore, we should take this opportunity to reconcile with those whom we have disputes with and make peace with them as it brings not only harmony but also may be a source of help on the Day of Judgement, as mentioned by the Prophet s.a.w. in a hadith narrated by Ibn Umar r.a: أنا زعيمٌ ببيتِ في رَبَضِ الجنةِ لمَن تَرَكَ المِراءَ وإن كان مُحِقًّا ، وببيتِ في وسطِ الجنةِ لمَن تركَ الكذبَ وإن كان مازحًا ، وببيتٍ في أعلى الجنةِ لمَن حَسُنَ خُلُقُه “I guarantee a house in Jannah for one who gives up arguing, even if he is in the right; and I guarantee a home in the middle of Jannah for one who abandons lying even for the sake of fun; and I guarantee a house in the highest part of Jannah for one who has good manners.” (Sunan Abi Daud) 3. Fast In preparation for the upcoming fasting month, why not start voluntarily fasting on Monday and Thursday? or perhaps the ayyamul bidh (the white days of fasting), which falls on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of every hijri month? In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. said: صَوْمُ ثَلاَثَةِ أَيَّامٍ صَوْمُ الدَّهْرِ كُلِّهِ “Observing fasting on three days of every month is equivalent to fasting the whole year” (Sahih Al-Bukhari) Do note, if you have missed prior Ramadan fasts, it is important to prioritise making up the missed fasts as they are wajib (obligatory) while the fasting of white days is sunnah (non-obligatory/non-mandatory). Read: Muslim SG | Fasting On The White Days We can then follow up with fasting in the next month, Sha’ban. Narrated by Usamah bin Zaid r.a: قُلْتُ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ لَمْ أَرَكَ تَصُومُ شَهْرًا مِنَ الشُّهُورِ مَا تَصُومُ مِنْ شَعْبَانَ‏.‏ قَالَ "‏ذَلِكَ شَهْرٌ يَغْفُلُ النَّاسُ عَنْهُ بَيْنَ رَجَبٍ وَرَمَضَانَ وَهُوَ شَهْرٌ تُرْفَعُ فِيهِ الأَعْمَالُ إِلَى رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ فَأُحِبُّ أَنْ يُرْفَعَ عَمَلِي وَأَنَا صَائِمٌ‏"‏ "I said: 'O Messenger of Allah, I do not see you fasting any month as much as Sha’ban.' He said: 'That is a month to which people do not pay much attention, between Rajab and Ramadan. It is a month in which the deeds are taken up to the Lord of the worlds, and I like that my deeds be taken up when I am fasting."' (Sunan An-Nasai) Read: Muslim SG | The Virtues and Benefits of The Month of Sha'ban 4. Prepare for Ramadan As the holy month of Ramadan approaches, we can ready ourselves by making a bunch of preparations. We could make a timetable or a daily schedule of what to do in Ramadan, plan meal preps, and many others to set us in the mood of welcoming the month of Ramadan! Read: Muslim SG | 8 Tips To Prepare For Ramadan in Rajab Rajab, Hijri month, sacred months, rejab 5. Read the dua for Rajab Ibn Rajab Al-Hanbali related in his book, Lataif al-Ma'arif, that the companions would supplicate for a safe journey to Ramadan for six months. After Ramadan, they would continue to pray for another six months, asking Allah to accept the acts of worship that they performed throughout the holy month. We can recite the following dua: اللَّهُمَّ بَارِكْ لَنَا فِي رَجَب، وَشَعْبَانَ، وَبَلِّغْنَا رَمَضَانَ Allahumma barik lana fi Rajab wa Sha’ban wa ballighna Ramadan “O Allah make the months of Rajab and Sha’ban blessed for us and let us reach the month of Ramadan.” (Musnad Ahmad) And the dua: اللَّهُمَّ سَلِّمْنِي مِنْ رَمَضَانَ، وَسَلِّمْ رَمَضَانَ لِي، وَتَسَلَّمْهُ مِنِّي مُتَقَبَّلًا Allahumma Sallimni min Ramadhan. Wa sallim Ramadhana li. Wa tasallamhu minni mutaqabbala “O Allah preserve me for Ramadan, safeguard Ramadan for me and accept it for me.” (narrated by Imam At-Tabrani) So let's turn to Him, the Most Generous, as we get ready for Ramadan. May Allah s.w.t. accept all of our deeds and make it easier for us to prepare for the holy month this year. And Allah knows best. References: [1] Safa Faruqui, The Benefits and Virtues of Rajab, the Month of Allah. Muslim Hands, 2021. https://muslimhands.org.uk/latest/2021/02/history-importance-and-benefits-of-rajab-in-quran-and-hadith [2] Abu Al-Fida’ ‘Imad Ad-Din Ismail Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 1 [3] Saifur Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, The Sealed Nectar. 1976. pg.64 https://muslim.sg/articles/rajab-the-forgotten-sacred-month
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  • Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims
    Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine

    Richard Luscombe
    Protesters unfurl the Palestinian flag in front of a sign with the Meta name, symbol and address.
    Meta has engaged in a “systemic and global” censorship of pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW).

    In a scathing 51-page report, the organization documented and reviewed more than a thousand reported instances of Meta removing content and suspending or permanently banning accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The company exhibited “six key patterns of undue censorship” of content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, including the taking down of posts, stories and comments; disabling accounts; restricting users’ ability to interact with others’ posts; and “shadow banning”, where the visibility and reach of a person’s material is significantly reduced, according to HRW.

    Examples it cites include content originating from more than 60 countries, mostly in English, and all in “peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways”. Even HRW’s own posts seeking examples of online censorship were flagged as spam, the report said.

    “Censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global [and] Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine,” the group said in the report, citing “erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals” as the roots of the problem.

    In a statement to the Guardian, Meta acknowledged it makes errors that are “frustrating” for people, but said that “the implication that we deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice is false. Claiming that 1,000 examples, out of the enormous amount of content posted about the conflict, are proof of ‘systemic censorship’ may make for a good headline, but that doesn’t make the claim any less misleading.

    Meta said it was the only company in the world to have publicly released human rights due diligence on issues related to Israel and Palestine .

    “This report ignores the realities of enforcing our policies globally during a fast-moving, highly polarized and intense conflict, which has led to an increase in content being reported to us. Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while at the same time keeping our platforms safe,” the company’s statement reads.

    It is the second time this month that Meta has been challenged over accusations that it routinely silences pro-Palestinian content and voices.

    Last week Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator for Massachusetts, wrote to Meta’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, demanding information following hundreds of reports from Instagram users dating back to October that their content was demoted or removed, and their accounts subjected to shadow banning.

    Alex Hern's weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives
    Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
    On Tuesday, Meta’s oversight board said the company had been wrong to remove two videos of the conflict in particular from Instagram and Facebook. The board said the videos were valuable for “informing the world about human suffering on both sides”. One showed the aftermath of an airstrike near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza via Instagram, the other a woman being taken hostage during the 7 October attack via Facebook. The clips were reinstated.

    Users of Meta’s products have documented what they say is technological bias in favor of pro-Israel content and against pro-Palestinian posts. Instagram’s translation software replaced “Palestinian” followed by the Arabic phrase “Praise be to Allah” to “Palestinian terrorists” in English. WhatsApp’s AI, when asked to generate images of Palestinian boys and girls, created cartoon children with guns, whereas its images Israeli children did not include firearms.

    Meta (Facebook and Instagram) censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, according to Human Rights Watch
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-facebook-instagram-pro-palestine-censorship-human-rights-watch-report
    Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine Richard Luscombe Protesters unfurl the Palestinian flag in front of a sign with the Meta name, symbol and address. Meta has engaged in a “systemic and global” censorship of pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW). In a scathing 51-page report, the organization documented and reviewed more than a thousand reported instances of Meta removing content and suspending or permanently banning accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The company exhibited “six key patterns of undue censorship” of content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, including the taking down of posts, stories and comments; disabling accounts; restricting users’ ability to interact with others’ posts; and “shadow banning”, where the visibility and reach of a person’s material is significantly reduced, according to HRW. Examples it cites include content originating from more than 60 countries, mostly in English, and all in “peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways”. Even HRW’s own posts seeking examples of online censorship were flagged as spam, the report said. “Censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global [and] Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine,” the group said in the report, citing “erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals” as the roots of the problem. In a statement to the Guardian, Meta acknowledged it makes errors that are “frustrating” for people, but said that “the implication that we deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice is false. Claiming that 1,000 examples, out of the enormous amount of content posted about the conflict, are proof of ‘systemic censorship’ may make for a good headline, but that doesn’t make the claim any less misleading. Meta said it was the only company in the world to have publicly released human rights due diligence on issues related to Israel and Palestine . “This report ignores the realities of enforcing our policies globally during a fast-moving, highly polarized and intense conflict, which has led to an increase in content being reported to us. Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while at the same time keeping our platforms safe,” the company’s statement reads. It is the second time this month that Meta has been challenged over accusations that it routinely silences pro-Palestinian content and voices. Last week Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator for Massachusetts, wrote to Meta’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, demanding information following hundreds of reports from Instagram users dating back to October that their content was demoted or removed, and their accounts subjected to shadow banning. Alex Hern's weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. On Tuesday, Meta’s oversight board said the company had been wrong to remove two videos of the conflict in particular from Instagram and Facebook. The board said the videos were valuable for “informing the world about human suffering on both sides”. One showed the aftermath of an airstrike near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza via Instagram, the other a woman being taken hostage during the 7 October attack via Facebook. The clips were reinstated. Users of Meta’s products have documented what they say is technological bias in favor of pro-Israel content and against pro-Palestinian posts. Instagram’s translation software replaced “Palestinian” followed by the Arabic phrase “Praise be to Allah” to “Palestinian terrorists” in English. WhatsApp’s AI, when asked to generate images of Palestinian boys and girls, created cartoon children with guns, whereas its images Israeli children did not include firearms. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, according to Human Rights Watch https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-facebook-instagram-pro-palestine-censorship-human-rights-watch-report
    WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM
    Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims
    Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine
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  • Relaxing Music & Soft Rain: Sleep Music, Calm Piano Music, Healing Music, Peaceful Music ★ https://www.videoss.xyz/search/label/cjkFG6bHGNc?m=1
    Relaxing Music & Soft Rain: Sleep Music, Calm Piano Music, Healing Music, Peaceful Music ★ https://www.videoss.xyz/search/label/cjkFG6bHGNc?m=1
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  • Slovakia will not be entering into any international pandemic agreements with WHO, Prime Minister says
    Rhoda WilsonNovember 25, 2023
    During a SMER party conference, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his government will not sign the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Treaty and SMER Members of Parliament will not ratify in parliament the Pandemic Treaty with the WHO because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies.

    Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…

    Robert Fico was appointed as Slovakia’s Prime Minister for the fourth time on 25 October 2023 after his SMER – Slovenská Sociálna Demokracia (“SMER”) party won the election on 30 September and formed a coalition with the centre-left HLAS – Sociálna Demokracia (“HLAS”) and nationalist Slovenská Národná Strana (“SNS”) parties.

    A week ago, during an hour-long speech at the SMER party conference, of which he is chairman, Prime Minister Fico stated that he will not support strengthening the powers of the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) at the expense of sovereign states in the fight against pandemics. “Only insane pharmaceutical companies could come up with such nonsense,” he told the more than 400 guests, ambassadors, delegates and party members present.

    His speech is on YouTube in Slovak. There is no autogenerated translation available so we turn to alternative sources for translations into English. Door to Freedom has published the clip below from Fico’s speech with English subtitles.

    Door to Freedom: Slovakia – Will not sign the WHO amendments,
    23 November 2023 (3 mins)
    Writing about his speech alternative media outlet InfoVojna wrote (Czech to English translation using Google Translate):

    [The Pandemic Treaty] would transfer health powers in times of a pandemic from the national ministries of health of the signatory countries to the World Health Organisation. The WHO would then acquire draconian decision-making powers, which the signatory countries would have to follow, not only in the area of ​​the obligation to purchase vaccines and medicines ordered by the WHO, but it could also happen with compulsory vaccinations ordered by this multinational organisation. And it was Robert Fico who unequivocally rejected this and declared that SMER MPs would not raise their hands for such a proposal.

    Fico called the entire agreement with the WHO a plan of greedy pharmaceutical companies, which began to worry about their business, when it now appears that many countries of the world are ceasing to purchase vaccines, cancelling vaccination mandates and the entire business of the pharmaceutical companies is going down the drain. The Pandemic Treaty is supposed to change this and ensure that, through the WHO, the collection of vaccines will be mandated and authoritatively prescribed to all member countries that sign the Pandemic Treaty and then ratify in the parliaments.

    Robert Fico declared at the ceremonial assembly at Bratislava Castle that Slovakia under his government will not sign the Pandemic Agreement with the WHO, because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies, InfoVojna, 20 November 2023none
    Martin Demirov who describes himself as someone who likes to “post translations of censored press articles and search for various interesting facts” has written about Fico’s speech in a post on Twitter. His post is in Polish, which we’ve reproduced below in English using the translation generated by Twitter.

    Fico Delivered a Speech at the Party Congress “The Previous Government Killed 20,000 People During Covid!”

    By Martin Demirov

    Fico outlined his priorities: If they arrested me, change would not be possible.

    One of the longest-existing parties, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, held its annual congress.

    SMER won the elections in September, and party chairman Robert Fico immediately reminded more than 400 guests, ambassadors, delegates and party members not to be so serious. “For God’s sake, we won.” In his introductory speech, he presented a vision of change for the coming year. Remembering the “covid madness” and the need to change the law protecting criminal groups associated with the previous government, he did not hide his joy at reuniting with the HLAS party.

    In the first half of his speech, Fico criticised the former government and its leadership (for covid madness, for warmongering), in the second half he talked about the party’s goals, and less than two hours later he ended the speech with the words: “we are here, we move on, they did not break us.”

    According to party vice president Juraj Blanar, Fico’s leadership is important for SMER. Long live the Slovak Republic,” he concluded his speech. What was the direction of change?

    The guests included representatives of Bulgaria, ambassadors of Great Britain, China, the United States of America, as well as Cuba, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

    The Polish ambassador also confirmed his presence. The guests also included the president of the Pensioners’ Union, MichaÅ‚ Kocjan, the president of the Association of Slovak Towns and Villages, Józef Bożek, and the president of the Association of Anti-fascist Fighters, Viliam Longauer. Representatives of employers were also present.

    Among the Ministers present were Defence Minister Robert Kalinak, Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicki and Agriculture Minister Ryszard Takacz. Zuzana Plewikova, deputy chairman of the party and member of the youth organisation, also attended the meeting.

    Thanks to over 20 years of experience, Fico knows how to energise his people and focus on proven electoral topics, thanks to which, although he won electoral votes, he was among politicians leaning towards the alternative scene. “It’s a party convention, it’s not a cabinet meeting, so stop being so serious, we won the election, for God’s sake.”

    Blanard welcomed Fico, the national anthem was played and a minute of silence honoured the memory of the dead

    In his speech, he wanted to present a vision for the next year, but he didn’t get there until the second half of the speech. “We won the parliamentary elections for the fifth time,” he said.

    “We are absolutely the best, and I emphasise this a thousand times, political party in the history of modern Slovakia and we want to remain that way,” he said.

    We naturally reconnected with HLAS.

    At the beginning of his speech, he also touched on the illegal actions of the former government during the Covid-19 pandemic, praised the media alternative to the mainstream and attacked the previous government for repression and compulsory vaccinations. Four Media – Denník N, denník Sme, Markízu and Aktuality – did not receive accreditation. Since last week, they have also been unwanted guests in the government building.

    “Slovakia is talking more and more openly about the 20,000 victims of mismanagement in the country and the government’s senseless decisions,” continued the four-time Prime Minister. He wants to support the efforts of politicians who want to hold the previous government to account and has no plans to support the work of the World Health Organisation to the detriment of sovereign states when it comes to managing the fight against the pandemic. “Such nonsense could only have been invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies,” he said.

    He called SMER a “write-off” party after the 2020 elections, whose opponents were delighted that social democracy split into two groups when Peter Pellegrini left the party to gain the right to vote. “But it is natural that we met again to co-operate in the government. It is no coincidence that we kept emphasising before the early elections that the basis for forming a new government should be the merger of SMER and HLAS,” he said.

    “The shock of our opponents after SMER’s election victory and subsequent decisive steps to quickly form a government was so great that they created an atmosphere as if we had stolen the electoral victory and had to hand it over to the opposition liberal “progressive Slovakia,” he said. In addition to PS, he again criticised President Zuzana Caputova.

    In response to the suspension of membership in the European Socialist Party, Fico said he did not know why they intervened, because it was the same party as in the past. “SMER is not a pennant that turns wherever the wind blows,” he said, adding that Portugal was behind the suspension. Party membership has never served them well, and Fico only remembers a lot of criticism. “When did the party of European Socialists help us over the last 20 years? When? I don’t remember,” he added.

    Andrei Danko’s party, coalition partner SNS, was criticised abroad mainly for choosing a more radical path. Before the elections, SNS merged with three smaller far-right organisations, and several of its members were candidates for the Our Slovakia People’s Party, whose leader, Marian Kotleba, was convicted of extremism and also lost his seat.

    Robert Fico blamed the politicians who led Slovakia in the last parliamentary term for the state of the country it is in. “We were not destroyed because we had a different opinion about covid, we were not destroyed because we had a different opinion about Ukraine and we were not destroyed because of an attempt to arrest us for political activities,” he said.

    “I don’t know if there is an opposition politician in the EU who has been accused four times in three years for his political views. Not because of corruption, but because of his political views,” he told foreign guests. Fico, along with Tibor Gashpar and Robert Kalinak, were accused by the previous authorities of many “crimes.”

    “I was lucky that I didn’t go to prison, because if they had put me in jail for my political views after two press conferences where we told the truth, neither you nor I would be sitting here today because the party would have been destroyed,” he said.

    Fico also touched on the presidential and European elections. “The party’s vice-chairman Lubosz Blaha also expressed interest in the elections, the European Parliament is certainly waiting for you, Lubosz,” Fico said. Recently, the opposition wanted to fire him for hanging a portrait of revolutionary Che Guevara instead of a portrait of President Zuzana Caputova after taking over as deputy speaker of Parliament, but the coalition blocked the session. A few days ago, he also published his book “CHE”

    In addition, he also talked about the need for changes in the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the need for changes in the special prosecutor’s office. He called, among other things, for an urgent change to the whistle-blower law, which currently protects investigators around Jan Churilla and Lubomir Danek.

    The party’s goal is to stabilise the country and finances and win again. Later, Fico also reached the main political goals of the SMER party. In particular, the most important of them is a successful government that will end in 2027 with victory in the parliamentary elections. In his speech, he outlined what the government should focus on in the coming months. “I don’t see a successful government as a set of numbers, indicators or charts. We will only be successful in 2027 when people realise that it is better, more peaceful and safer,” he said.

    Fico stressed the need for political stability and efforts to minimise conflicts within the coalition. He also called for quick policy solutions to show interest in “stabilising disrupted public finances at a reasonable and sustainable pace.” Sufficient financial reserves must also be created to compensate for high energy prices, especially for households.

    He also wants to reduce the impact of high interest rates on mortgages and subsequent refinancing in 2023, while announcing direct mortgage assistance in 2024. He also confirmed the aim of creating the financial conditions for the payment of the full 13th pension. He also stressed the need to have all the necessary regulatory tools and resources to intervene in the event of significant fluctuations in food prices.

    According to Fico, the government should also immediately decide how to transfer as many European Funds as possible to regions, cities and municipalities and simplify the administrative burden of obtaining them as much as possible. He also called for changes to regulations governing licensing procedures and procurement conditions to be approved “in record time.” According to the Prime Minister, the best proposal for the Education System for practical purposes should also be agreed upon so that the changes come into force at the beginning of the 2024/2025 school year.

    He also confirmed that the government had started negotiations on new foreign investments. “We have something to consider, we are currently reviewing projects. It is always a question of the scale of state aid,” he said. He also considers it his duty to support every Slovak company that wants to operate in foreign markets.

    Within two to three months, the coalition will have to develop a mechanism and regulations to shorten the period during which legal migrants with the qualifications necessary to run a business in Slovakia will be able to obtain all permits. He said the proposed measures are the minimum the government must take. He emphasised that all actions should be undertaken within the framework of broad social dialogue. He also confirmed that talks on the government’s withdrawal will take place in Trenčín in December and in Prešov at the end of January. In addition to Fico, the party’s vice presidents, Lubosz Blaha, Ladislav Kamienicki and Ryszard Takacz, also appeared.


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    James Rickards: When the next financial crisis hits the elites are planning to freeze the financial system, worldwide
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    The latest trends in healthcare and other observations
    DEADLY SECRETS: Unvaccinated account for just 5% of COVID-19 Deaths since beginning of 2023 but 3 & 4x Vaccinated account for Shocking 95%


    Slovakia will not be entering into any international pandemic agreements with WHO, Prime Minister says
    During a SMER party conference, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his government will not sign the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Treaty and SMER Members of Parliament will not ratify in parliament the Pandemic Treaty with the WHO because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies...
    https://expose-news.com/2023/11/25/slovakia-will-not-be-entering-into/
    Slovakia will not be entering into any international pandemic agreements with WHO, Prime Minister says Rhoda WilsonNovember 25, 2023 During a SMER party conference, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his government will not sign the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Treaty and SMER Members of Parliament will not ratify in parliament the Pandemic Treaty with the WHO because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies. Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox… Robert Fico was appointed as Slovakia’s Prime Minister for the fourth time on 25 October 2023 after his SMER – Slovenská Sociálna Demokracia (“SMER”) party won the election on 30 September and formed a coalition with the centre-left HLAS – Sociálna Demokracia (“HLAS”) and nationalist Slovenská Národná Strana (“SNS”) parties. A week ago, during an hour-long speech at the SMER party conference, of which he is chairman, Prime Minister Fico stated that he will not support strengthening the powers of the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) at the expense of sovereign states in the fight against pandemics. “Only insane pharmaceutical companies could come up with such nonsense,” he told the more than 400 guests, ambassadors, delegates and party members present. His speech is on YouTube in Slovak. There is no autogenerated translation available so we turn to alternative sources for translations into English. Door to Freedom has published the clip below from Fico’s speech with English subtitles. Door to Freedom: Slovakia – Will not sign the WHO amendments, 23 November 2023 (3 mins) Writing about his speech alternative media outlet InfoVojna wrote (Czech to English translation using Google Translate): [The Pandemic Treaty] would transfer health powers in times of a pandemic from the national ministries of health of the signatory countries to the World Health Organisation. The WHO would then acquire draconian decision-making powers, which the signatory countries would have to follow, not only in the area of ​​the obligation to purchase vaccines and medicines ordered by the WHO, but it could also happen with compulsory vaccinations ordered by this multinational organisation. And it was Robert Fico who unequivocally rejected this and declared that SMER MPs would not raise their hands for such a proposal. Fico called the entire agreement with the WHO a plan of greedy pharmaceutical companies, which began to worry about their business, when it now appears that many countries of the world are ceasing to purchase vaccines, cancelling vaccination mandates and the entire business of the pharmaceutical companies is going down the drain. The Pandemic Treaty is supposed to change this and ensure that, through the WHO, the collection of vaccines will be mandated and authoritatively prescribed to all member countries that sign the Pandemic Treaty and then ratify in the parliaments. Robert Fico declared at the ceremonial assembly at Bratislava Castle that Slovakia under his government will not sign the Pandemic Agreement with the WHO, because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies, InfoVojna, 20 November 2023none Martin Demirov who describes himself as someone who likes to “post translations of censored press articles and search for various interesting facts” has written about Fico’s speech in a post on Twitter. His post is in Polish, which we’ve reproduced below in English using the translation generated by Twitter. Fico Delivered a Speech at the Party Congress “The Previous Government Killed 20,000 People During Covid!” By Martin Demirov Fico outlined his priorities: If they arrested me, change would not be possible. One of the longest-existing parties, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year, held its annual congress. SMER won the elections in September, and party chairman Robert Fico immediately reminded more than 400 guests, ambassadors, delegates and party members not to be so serious. “For God’s sake, we won.” In his introductory speech, he presented a vision of change for the coming year. Remembering the “covid madness” and the need to change the law protecting criminal groups associated with the previous government, he did not hide his joy at reuniting with the HLAS party. In the first half of his speech, Fico criticised the former government and its leadership (for covid madness, for warmongering), in the second half he talked about the party’s goals, and less than two hours later he ended the speech with the words: “we are here, we move on, they did not break us.” According to party vice president Juraj Blanar, Fico’s leadership is important for SMER. Long live the Slovak Republic,” he concluded his speech. What was the direction of change? The guests included representatives of Bulgaria, ambassadors of Great Britain, China, the United States of America, as well as Cuba, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The Polish ambassador also confirmed his presence. The guests also included the president of the Pensioners’ Union, MichaÅ‚ Kocjan, the president of the Association of Slovak Towns and Villages, Józef Bożek, and the president of the Association of Anti-fascist Fighters, Viliam Longauer. Representatives of employers were also present. Among the Ministers present were Defence Minister Robert Kalinak, Finance Minister Ladislav Kamenicki and Agriculture Minister Ryszard Takacz. Zuzana Plewikova, deputy chairman of the party and member of the youth organisation, also attended the meeting. Thanks to over 20 years of experience, Fico knows how to energise his people and focus on proven electoral topics, thanks to which, although he won electoral votes, he was among politicians leaning towards the alternative scene. “It’s a party convention, it’s not a cabinet meeting, so stop being so serious, we won the election, for God’s sake.” Blanard welcomed Fico, the national anthem was played and a minute of silence honoured the memory of the dead In his speech, he wanted to present a vision for the next year, but he didn’t get there until the second half of the speech. “We won the parliamentary elections for the fifth time,” he said. “We are absolutely the best, and I emphasise this a thousand times, political party in the history of modern Slovakia and we want to remain that way,” he said. We naturally reconnected with HLAS. At the beginning of his speech, he also touched on the illegal actions of the former government during the Covid-19 pandemic, praised the media alternative to the mainstream and attacked the previous government for repression and compulsory vaccinations. Four Media – Denník N, denník Sme, Markízu and Aktuality – did not receive accreditation. Since last week, they have also been unwanted guests in the government building. “Slovakia is talking more and more openly about the 20,000 victims of mismanagement in the country and the government’s senseless decisions,” continued the four-time Prime Minister. He wants to support the efforts of politicians who want to hold the previous government to account and has no plans to support the work of the World Health Organisation to the detriment of sovereign states when it comes to managing the fight against the pandemic. “Such nonsense could only have been invented by greedy pharmaceutical companies,” he said. He called SMER a “write-off” party after the 2020 elections, whose opponents were delighted that social democracy split into two groups when Peter Pellegrini left the party to gain the right to vote. “But it is natural that we met again to co-operate in the government. It is no coincidence that we kept emphasising before the early elections that the basis for forming a new government should be the merger of SMER and HLAS,” he said. “The shock of our opponents after SMER’s election victory and subsequent decisive steps to quickly form a government was so great that they created an atmosphere as if we had stolen the electoral victory and had to hand it over to the opposition liberal “progressive Slovakia,” he said. In addition to PS, he again criticised President Zuzana Caputova. In response to the suspension of membership in the European Socialist Party, Fico said he did not know why they intervened, because it was the same party as in the past. “SMER is not a pennant that turns wherever the wind blows,” he said, adding that Portugal was behind the suspension. Party membership has never served them well, and Fico only remembers a lot of criticism. “When did the party of European Socialists help us over the last 20 years? When? I don’t remember,” he added. Andrei Danko’s party, coalition partner SNS, was criticised abroad mainly for choosing a more radical path. Before the elections, SNS merged with three smaller far-right organisations, and several of its members were candidates for the Our Slovakia People’s Party, whose leader, Marian Kotleba, was convicted of extremism and also lost his seat. Robert Fico blamed the politicians who led Slovakia in the last parliamentary term for the state of the country it is in. “We were not destroyed because we had a different opinion about covid, we were not destroyed because we had a different opinion about Ukraine and we were not destroyed because of an attempt to arrest us for political activities,” he said. “I don’t know if there is an opposition politician in the EU who has been accused four times in three years for his political views. Not because of corruption, but because of his political views,” he told foreign guests. Fico, along with Tibor Gashpar and Robert Kalinak, were accused by the previous authorities of many “crimes.” “I was lucky that I didn’t go to prison, because if they had put me in jail for my political views after two press conferences where we told the truth, neither you nor I would be sitting here today because the party would have been destroyed,” he said. Fico also touched on the presidential and European elections. “The party’s vice-chairman Lubosz Blaha also expressed interest in the elections, the European Parliament is certainly waiting for you, Lubosz,” Fico said. Recently, the opposition wanted to fire him for hanging a portrait of revolutionary Che Guevara instead of a portrait of President Zuzana Caputova after taking over as deputy speaker of Parliament, but the coalition blocked the session. A few days ago, he also published his book “CHE” In addition, he also talked about the need for changes in the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the need for changes in the special prosecutor’s office. He called, among other things, for an urgent change to the whistle-blower law, which currently protects investigators around Jan Churilla and Lubomir Danek. The party’s goal is to stabilise the country and finances and win again. Later, Fico also reached the main political goals of the SMER party. In particular, the most important of them is a successful government that will end in 2027 with victory in the parliamentary elections. In his speech, he outlined what the government should focus on in the coming months. “I don’t see a successful government as a set of numbers, indicators or charts. We will only be successful in 2027 when people realise that it is better, more peaceful and safer,” he said. Fico stressed the need for political stability and efforts to minimise conflicts within the coalition. He also called for quick policy solutions to show interest in “stabilising disrupted public finances at a reasonable and sustainable pace.” Sufficient financial reserves must also be created to compensate for high energy prices, especially for households. He also wants to reduce the impact of high interest rates on mortgages and subsequent refinancing in 2023, while announcing direct mortgage assistance in 2024. He also confirmed the aim of creating the financial conditions for the payment of the full 13th pension. He also stressed the need to have all the necessary regulatory tools and resources to intervene in the event of significant fluctuations in food prices. According to Fico, the government should also immediately decide how to transfer as many European Funds as possible to regions, cities and municipalities and simplify the administrative burden of obtaining them as much as possible. He also called for changes to regulations governing licensing procedures and procurement conditions to be approved “in record time.” According to the Prime Minister, the best proposal for the Education System for practical purposes should also be agreed upon so that the changes come into force at the beginning of the 2024/2025 school year. He also confirmed that the government had started negotiations on new foreign investments. “We have something to consider, we are currently reviewing projects. It is always a question of the scale of state aid,” he said. He also considers it his duty to support every Slovak company that wants to operate in foreign markets. Within two to three months, the coalition will have to develop a mechanism and regulations to shorten the period during which legal migrants with the qualifications necessary to run a business in Slovakia will be able to obtain all permits. He said the proposed measures are the minimum the government must take. He emphasised that all actions should be undertaken within the framework of broad social dialogue. He also confirmed that talks on the government’s withdrawal will take place in Trenčín in December and in Prešov at the end of January. In addition to Fico, the party’s vice presidents, Lubosz Blaha, Ladislav Kamienicki and Ryszard Takacz, also appeared. The Expose Urgently Needs Your Help.. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox… . Can you please help power The Expose’s honest, reliable, powerful journalism for the years to come… Your Government & Big Tech organisations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter & PayPal are trying to silence & shut down The Expose. So we need your help to ensure we can continue to bring you the facts the mainstream refuse to… We’re not funded by the Government to publish lies & propaganda on their behalf like the mainstream media. Instead, we rely solely on our support. So please support us in our efforts to bring you honest, reliable, investigative journalism today. It’s secure, quick and easy… Just choose your preferred method to show your support belowV support James Rickards: When the next financial crisis hits the elites are planning to freeze the financial system, worldwide US, China, Israel and others are developing AI killer drones; this poses significant risks The latest trends in healthcare and other observations DEADLY SECRETS: Unvaccinated account for just 5% of COVID-19 Deaths since beginning of 2023 but 3 & 4x Vaccinated account for Shocking 95% Slovakia will not be entering into any international pandemic agreements with WHO, Prime Minister says During a SMER party conference, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his government will not sign the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Treaty and SMER Members of Parliament will not ratify in parliament the Pandemic Treaty with the WHO because it is a project of greedy pharmaceutical companies... https://expose-news.com/2023/11/25/slovakia-will-not-be-entering-into/
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    Slovakia will not be entering into any international pandemic agreements with WHO, Prime Minister says
    During a SMER party conference, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico declared that his government will not sign the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Treaty and SMER Members of Parliament will n…
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