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palestine

Australian Female Senator Speaks for Palestine

by Narges Mohammadi October 21, 2023

Lidia Thorpe has compared the Australian government to Israel as the ‘illegal occupier of these lands’ in an impassioned speech pledging support to Palestine.

The firebrand Greens-turned-Independent senator arrived in the chamber for the first day of sitting in a month wearing a Palastinian keffiyeh scarf.

In response to the tragic war between Israel and terrorist group Hamas which is taking place, Ms Thorpe said she sympathised with victims on both sides of the conflict.

She said Palestinians ‘live with generational trauma of dispossession, they continue to fight for sovereignty, liberation, and land back, as do First peoples of this country.

‘You have the responsibility to support Palestinians standing against it, just as you have the responsibility to support First Nations people here standing against it.’

Ms Thorpe said she ‘is not surprised’ that the Australian government has offered resounding support to Israel after Hamas launched a missile attack at a music festival last Saturday morning.

The conflict prompted swift retaliation from Israel, and some 2,600 Palestinians in Gaza have been reported dead since October 7.

‘I’m not surprised the Australian government, which is itself the illegal occupier of these lands, condones illegal occupation of other lands, and sides with an oppresive regime,’ she said.

‘Governments across the world, in an attempt to address anti-Semitism and somehow address the horrors of the Holocaust, are allowing Israel to get away with apartheid, ethnic cleansing.

Ms Thorpe condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel, but said she was also condemning ‘the violence Israel is and has been inflicting on the Palestinian people’.

She criticised the government’s decision to light up the Sydney Opera House in the colours of blue and white in solidarity with Israel, and said the debate on the international stage had been ‘extremely one sided’.

‘Israel’s indiscriminate bombings on Gaza are killing thousands of innocent people, people who already had to suffer for so many decades in what is often called the world’s biggest prison.

‘These people didn’t attack Israel, and yet they are the human collateral of Israel fighting back against Hamas with unprecedented force.

‘They will be the ones suffering the long term consequences which will more than likely be the continued and possibly reinforced oppression of the Palestinan people through Israel.

‘How can the world let this happen? All the talk of government supporting a two-state solution seem all but forgotten – worth nothing but a side note.

‘The current war has set the solution back decades. Most Palestinians want nothing but to live peacefully in a free Palestine. For 75 years now Palestine has been under brutal occupation.

‘The state of Israel was founded on Palestinian land in 1948, when tens of thousands of Palestinans sought refuge in Gaza as their towns and villages were ethnically cleansed.

‘Palestinian voices have all but been silenced over what happened.’

Senator Thorpe’s criticism of the government comes after the Coalition complained the government had not gone far enough in condemning the attacks against Israel.

October 21, 2023 0 comment

Asia Politics

Massacre of Women & Children for a Fake Regime to Survive ©

by Narges Mohammadi October 10, 2023

PALESTINE/The heads of the occupation regime of Jerusalem, after the thumbs they received from the Palestinians in the Al-Aqsa storm operation, once again resumed their attacks on the Palestinian cities and started killing the defenseless people. Until the publication of this report, the Gaza Ministry of Health has announced that 687 people, including 140 children and 105 women, have been martyred and 3,726 people have been injured due to the attacks of the Zionist regime.

The number of Palestinian dead and wounded is increasing, and the Zionists are brutally killing Palestinians, especially women and children, in order to create a deterrent for their fake regime and to dissuade the Palestinian Resistance Front from continuing the Al-Aqsa storm operation.

The Ministry of Health of Palestine strongly condemned the targeting of medical and relief workers by the Zionist regime and announced that as a result of these attacks, three aid workers have been martyred and three others have been injured.

The Ministry of Health of Palestine has also announced that the fighters of the occupying Quds regime have targeted “Al-Donisi” hospital and “Nasser al-Tabi” clinic, as well as five ambulances.

Rabbi Haim Markowitz has stated in a note on the information base of the Zionist TV Channel 7 that there is no mercy and grace to defeat the enemies in a ruling against human rights. Everything is permissible, everything is free and every action is moral.

The Zionist army announced in a statement that it has attacked 800 targets in the Gaza Strip, while according to hospital sources in Gaza, most of the 436 martyrs of these attacks in Gaza are women and children.

What is certain is that, as usual, the Zionists do not refrain from any kind of crime, because this regime has martyred or injured more than 6,700 Palestinian children from 2015 to 2020, but the important point is the silence of the human rights leaders who are always silent against the killing of Palestinians. they do.

Shahriar Heydari, Vice Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Islamic Council, in an interview with the reporter of the Young Journalists Club about the killing of the Palestinian people by the Zionist regime, said: The foundation of the Zionist regime is based on terror with the aim of deterrence.

For years, the oppressed people of Palestine have been targeted by rockets and other advanced weapons that the Westerners have provided to the Zionist regime. The Zionist regime has used unconventional weapons against the Palestinian people, to whom this holy land belongs.

The representative of the people of Qasr Shirin, Sarpol Zahab and Gilangharb stated in the parliament: Palestinians inflicted very heavy and historic casualties on the Zionist regime during the Al-Aqsa storm operation, for this reason the fear in the cabinet of this regime is clear and because of a psychological pressure on the Zionists caused by Since the defeat of the Palestinian resistance front, the innocent people of Palestine are being targeted, which is a very ugly thing that is condemned in terms of human rights.

He continued: “We are concerned about the human rights community, why do they only claim to defend human rights, because the killing of Palestinian women and children is a clear example of cruelty to humanity and the violation of human rights by the occupation regime of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian people are a clear example of oppression.” are. Iran’s diplomatic system should actively try and condemn the actions of the Zionist regime all over the world, because the Palestinian resistance front defends the people and the land that is adjacent to the Islamic world.

The Vice-Chairman of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Parliament stated: Palestine, on behalf of the Islamic world, is facing the Zionist regime, and those who are free men, Muslims and believe in supporting the oppressed should show their support to the oppressed Palestinian nation against the ugly phenomenon and Show the blessed Zionist regime that has polluted the earth.

The Israelis, who are now living in their underground shelters like mice, so far a thousand of them died in the Al-Aqsa storm operation, and it seems that the underground shelters are no longer safe for them.

The Al-Aqsa Storm operation is being carried out in the context of the anniversary of the Banu Nazir campaign during the time of the Prophet of Islam (PBUH) who broke the treaty with the Jews and drove them out of Madinah.

October 10, 2023 0 comment

Asia Politics

Palestinian resistance factions call for revolution over Israeli assault on women

by Narges Mohammadi September 10, 2023

A coalition of Palestinian resistance factions has strongly condemned the use of attack dogs by female Israeli soldiers to force Palestinian women to strip naked, calling for a revolution in response to the regime’s degrading behavior towards Palestinians.

The Palestinian National and Islamic Forces also denounced the “brutal attack” by Israeli forces on a Palestinian woman in the Bab Hutta neighborhood, near the Lion’s Gate entrance to the occupied Old City of al-Quds, over an alleged stabbing attempt against the soldiers.

“The occupying regime has crossed all red lines by doing such actions, and has desecrated all sanctities. It has undermined the dignity of humankind by targeting the honor of free Palestinian women,” the group said in a statement.

The coalition went on to call on all freedom-loving people of the world, human rights institutions as well as international bodies to take measures to protect Palestinians against the “fascist” Israeli aggression.

It emphasized that “Israeli war criminals should be prosecuted for their crimes before international courts.”

Salmi called on all Palestinians across the occupied territories to ramp up their retaliatory operations against Israeli forces in response to the Tel Aviv regime’s criminal activities and defend the honor and sanctities of the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian resistance group Lions’ Den also pledged revenge.

“Whoever sits idly in the face of insulting Palestinian mothers, sisters, daughters, and freedom-loving women does not deserve to have the Palestinian nationality, and live in our blessed land. There is no place to respect those who disrespect their religion and homeland,” the group said.

Lions’ Den also reiterated that the struggle against the Israeli apartheid regime will continue, emphasizing that resistance fighters will fight off occupation by all available means.

The incident occurred during a military aggression against a Palestinian family’s building on July 10 of this year, following intelligence alleging the presence of weapons. The building housed 26 individuals from the same family, including 15 children and teenagers aged between 4 and 17, according to the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper.

The factions also underscored that “field executions, incursions and the destruction that Israeli troops leave behind in all our cities and camps will not terrorize our people, and will not dissuade them from treading the path of resistance against the Israeli occupation until final victory.”

Earlier, the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement had stated that the humiliating assault against five Palestinian women in the southern West Bank city of al-Khalil “confirms once again that the rogue Israeli regime does not respect any international law or convention.”

“Israel shows no interest in international law that protects people living under occupation, while the international community continues to ignore Israeli crimes which continue unabated,” it said in a statement.

“Hamas emphasizes that these crimes are a serious escalation that will not pass without reprisals from Palestinian people. All Israeli crimes are aimed at terrorizing Palestinian people and stopping their resistance and struggle for freedom. Such schemes are doomed to failure in the face of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people,” the movement said.

The incident occurred during a military aggression against a Palestinian family’s building on July 10, following intelligence alleging the presence of weapons. The building housed 26 individuals from the same family, including 15 children and teenagers aged between 4 and 17, according to the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper.

The Palestinian women were then made to walk naked in front of the soldiers and some family members after a meeting between the women and members of the Palestinian family.

According to the women, the soldiers threatened to release the attack dogs on them if they did not comply with their demands. Male Palestinians were subjected to body searches but were not forced to undress.

September 10, 2023 0 comment

Asia Politics

Young Muslim Women at the Forefront of Fighting for Palestine

by Narges Mohammadi May 27, 2023

WALES/ Muslim youth, and particularly women, are at the heart of a buoyant new movement in Wales and elsewhere against the Israeli oppression of the people of Palestine.

“We got to free Palestine!” shouts Sana, a Muslim high school student from Cwmbran. “They’re dragging people out of their houses, they’re bombing all the families and kids, kicking women out of their homes.” She was screaming the words loud and clear, to be heard over the throng of people marching down St Mary St, Cardiff, on a sunny Saturday at the end of May.

It was the second protest in as many weeks in the Welsh capital with over 1,000 people in attendance, held in response to the sudden escalation in the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

“They [Israel] have been doing it for 73 years,” she continues, referring to the Nakba, or Catastrophe, the violent programme of ethnic cleansing that killed 15,000 Palestinians, drove 750,000 from the land and created the modern state of Israel through destruction of around 530 Palestinian villages and cities.

“It’s finally time for them to be free!” shouts Sana, who is standing alongside three of her friends. In her hand was a batch of leaflets from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign that she was rapidly handing out to passers-by. I ask if she is part of the group and she replies no; she has just taken them off a stall moments earlier and wanted to distribute them.

“It’s been amazing,” she says, referring to the huge protest behind her. “So many people have come together. Not just Muslims; all humans have come together to support Palestine. It’s honestly amazing.”

“Our school friends are non-Muslim,” she says, pointing to the young woman next to her. “My friend here is non-Muslim, and she’s come to support us as well.”

Sana’s Views on Politicians & the Media

Asked about First Minister Mark Drakeford’s near total silence on Gaza, Sana in damming: “He should show Muslims he cares. Wales is full of different cultures and, amazingly, different cultures have come to support us, but the government needs to wake up.”

She hits out at the BBC too, whose offices she has just picketed with hundreds of others: “Shame on you BBC, they are not doing anything about it.”

The presence of Sana and her friends is indicative of a wider trend of young people taking centre stage in the recent wave of huge Palestine protests, often with Muslim women, alongside men, at the forefront.

Their actions confound the Islamophobic narrative, fostered by the liberal establishment over two decades and picked up by the far right, that Islamic culture is uniquely sexist and that Muslim women have very little agency of their own.

Yasmin had travelled from Swansea with her friend to be at the protest.

“You don’t have to be Muslim to be at this protest, it’s not a religion thing, this is ethnic cleansing,” she says. “This has been going on for so many years. It’s their land and Israel has no right to remove them from their land. Innocent people are dying, children are dying.”

Like Sana, Yasmin is furious with the BBC. “The BBC are calling it a clash. It’s not a clash, there’s no clash. In Gaza, they have nothing to fight back with. Innocent people are dying because of what Israel is doing.”

“What if Israel came to the UK and started taking us out of our homes,” she exclaims. “We wouldn’t like it, we would fight back.”

School, College & University students; key to the movement

The protests that have swept Wales in recent weeks have been made up of young and old people, and those of different ethnicities and genders. Activity among the whole Muslim youth and the community, in general, has been key and has been helped by the easing of lockdown and the ability to join Friday prayer at Mosques.

One man, who was helping to carry the large Palestine banner at the front of the protest, said he was a Cardiff University student from Oman.

He attends a Mosque in the City center near the university, and says that everyone there was talking about Palestine and the protests: “They are all raising their voices for Palestine,” he tells me. “Before they didn’t know,” he says. “And now social media starts to show what’s happening there.”

Elsewhere, near the front of the protest, was a group of young Muslim women from St Teilo’s high school in Cardiff. They moved along with the crowd, loudly chanting ‘Free Palestine” and “End the Occupation.”

“We need to make a move and do something for Palestine,” one said, adding that they had a lot of friends from the school who had come to the protest. Asked if they would organize a walkout in the school, they said they wanted to but were unsure whether or not it would be possible.

Clampdown on youth protests

It is students like these, often motivated after attending protests or politicized through the BLM movement, who have also been leading the way when it comes to school walkouts. This activism has taken place against the backdrop of a hostile British state which has targeted young Muslims through the Prevent programme in schools.

One parent, whose daughter goes to Fitzalan High School in Cardiff, told the voice. wales that students there had been put off engaging in Palestine solidarity activity by the head of the school, who told students not to take sides against Israel and that activity couldn’t happen on school property.

Much of the attacks on pro-Palestine activism come on the back of the UK Government’s Prevent programme in schools, which overwhelmingly targets Muslim students.

Ilyas Nagdee, who campaigns against the Prevent strategy, told Middle East Eye recently that since putting a call out on Twitter, he had received a hundred requests for help from children and their parents worried about schools clamping down on Palestine solidarity actions.

May 27, 2023 0 comment

Asia Politics

NEW; Religious War by Israel=Unity in the Islamic World for Palestine

by Narges Mohammadi April 14, 2023

PALESTINE/ By ordering a brutal attack against Palestinian worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque on the 14th day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knew very well that the Palestinian men and women would retaliate. Netanyahu’s motive should be obvious. He wanted to divert attention from the mass protests that have rocked Israel since January. These protests had divided Israeli society along ideological and political lines in ways never witnessed before.

History has proven that Israeli attacks on Palestinian holy places are guaranteed to provoke a Palestinian response. For Netanyahu the price of Palestinian retaliation was worth the political gains from uniting Israelis of all political backgrounds behind them. Ben-Gvir, in particular, knew that an attack on Al-Aqsa would reassure his far-right religious constituency about his commitment to imposing full Israeli Jewish sovereignty over Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy places in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

What Netanyahu and his allies may have not anticipated, however, is the intensity of the Palestinian response. Hundreds of rockets were fired toward the north and south of Israel. These came not only from the besieged Gaza Strip but, even more strategically important, also from South Lebanon.

Although some damage was reported, the rocket response was a political game-changer. This was the first time in years that fighters in two Arab countries coordinated their retaliatory action against Israel and hit back simultaneously.

Details on the Recent Attack in Palestine

Bakr Owais, a 24-year-old student at Birzeit University, was also at the mosque that night for a Ramadan i’tikaf and, along with the other worshippers there, was surprised when the doors were sealed with everyone inside.

The security forces stood on the roof of the mosque and used a loudspeaker to tell the worshippers that they had to leave the mosque or else they would be removed by force.

At that point, the youth present in the mosque decided to resist as they did not want their i’tikaf interrupted for the sake of clearing the compound for settler visits the next morning. The security forces decided to move in.

“They broke the windows of the mosque and started throwing stun grenades at us. There were young children, elderly men, and women stuck inside,” Owais said.

“Another group came through a door and started firing tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber-coated bullets at the people.

“They attacked the people, beating them on the head with sticks … people fainted, people suffocated, people were bleeding. Then they started arresting us. Huge numbers of people were taken. They kept swearing at us the whole time, pushing us onto buses that took us to the police station in Atarot where we were made to lie on the floor with our hands cuffed behind us.

“There must have been 400, 500 detainees. They took our names, then put a sticker on us with our name and number and called us in by the number, like we were worthless,” he said.

Owais, along with every other Palestinian arrested during the raid, has been banned from entering Al-Aqsa for a week.

Final Word

The crimes and oppression of the Israeli regime against innocent women and children has never decreased or stopped; but hopefully and end would be put to the life of this cancerous tumor for humanity.

Source; Al-Jazeera & Middle East Monitor

April 14, 2023 0 comment

Asia Women Pioneers

Women pioneer green projects in Gaza

by Narges Mohammadi October 9, 2022

Five women were selected to showcase their eco-friendly project at an exhibition in Gaza organized by the Women’s Affairs Center to raise awareness on climate change and the need to protect the environment.

A group of Palestinian women has recently showcased several products they manufactured through waste recycling that are safe for human health and the environment.

Plant nurseries, natural hair and skin care products, natural organic fertilizers, art pieces created from wood residues, and fruits and vegetables that were dried using renewable energy were among the many products presented by the women at the “Environmentally Friendly Women’s Initiatives” exhibition held in Gaza City Sept. 7.

Five women running green, environmentally friendly projects in the Gaza Strip showcased their projects in the exhibition organized by the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza, in cooperation with several Palestinian institutions, at the Shalehat tourist resort in Gaza City.

The exhibition aimed to bring about positive change to the environment and climate change, through projects that are the source of livelihood of many women in the Gaza Strip, which is reeling under difficult economic conditions.

According to data published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in March, the unemployment rate among women participating in the labor force (both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) reached 43% compared to 22% among men in 2021. Unemployment rates reached 53% among young people with an intermediate diploma or higher — 66% for women compared to 39% for men.

At the exhibition, Noor al-Huda Jaber, 31, who graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza in 2013 with a diploma in psychological and educational counseling, presented her project that she called the “Noor Initiative for Recycling.”

She told Al-Monitor, “The project is based on optimal use of the leftover wood from the furniture industry. Factories normally burn this wood, causing the emission of harmful gases that exacerbate global warming and climate change.”

Jaber said, “Unlike thousands of unemployed graduates in Gaza, I did not wait for a job opportunity that corresponds to my university major. I immediately started thinking about implementing my project that consists of using this leftover wood in a creative and distinctive way, and turn it into a product of real value by carving on it in a customized manner.”

She noted, “I use the leftovers of plywood, beech husks and melamine to make etchings electronically through the AutoCAD program; I use a CNC cutting machine to pierce them, and then carve on them. I made and sold many wooden pieces such as accessories, wedding and occasion gifts, medals and other products.”

Jaber added that she also embroiders leather and plastic to make use of them rather than destroy them in order to promote environmental protection. These projects also constitute her main source of income.

Haneen al-Buraim, 27, called her project “Green Power in the Face of Climate Change,” which consists of an agricultural nursery that she established in 2012 despite the challenges and difficulties she faced, which included the destruction of her nursery by the Israeli forces during the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014.

She told Al-Monitor, “My project is based on practicing environmentally friendly agricultural activities to mitigate the deterioration of the production, agricultural and environmental situation by planting different types of seedlings inside empty plastic bottles and old pots and using them as agricultural basins instead of throwing them away. I also recycle damaged fabric and old clothes and transform them into cement that I pour into molds to create agricultural pots.”

Buraim said she wants to increase the production capacity of her agricultural nursery during the coming period by planting genetically modified natural agricultural seedlings that are highly efficient and safe for human health and the environment and that resist climate change. She noted that this project employs the largest possible number of people in the Gaza Strip and that she would provide these products to the consumer at reasonable prices.

Engineer Hanadi Abu Harbid, 23, is the mind behind the “Solar Food” initiative, which she said is based “on drying fruits, vegetables and herbs using solar thermal technology through an energy-saving and eco-friendly hybrid solar dryer. It controls humidity, heat and the number of operating hours, and it is the first of its kind in Palestine.”

She told Al-Monitor, “The device [that I created] aims to preserve the quality of agricultural products when dried, which are free of chemical additives, dyes and flavors. It is characterized by fast performance compared to other electrical devices, which consume large amounts of energy. The dryer helps in giving up traditional methods that use fossil fuels, which increase the emission of harmful gases to human health and the environment.”

Abu Harbid said, “The dryer allows crops to grow outside their season, since some crops only grow under certain conditions of high heat or extreme cold. Drying them makes them available all year, and the dried products are efficient, high-quality and comply with all food security requirements.”

Coordinator of the exhibition Etimad Washah told Al-Monitor, “The exhibition includes environmentally friendly women’s initiatives to mitigate the phenomenon of climate change, reduce pollution rates and promote environmental awareness, amid the environmental pollution that has affected the soil and air in Gaza following the six Israeli wars.”

She explained, “The initiative featured more than 150 pioneering projects by women. Five of them were selected [for the exhibition] based on several considerations, including the extent to which these initiatives are able to mitigate climate change and how encouraging they are for society to raise awareness of the importance of eco-friendly projects that play a key role in protecting the community and the environment.”

Washah added, “Overpopulation in the Gaza Strip requires a serious quest for projects that save water and recycle waste to reduce carbon emissions.”

Source: Al-Monitor

October 9, 2022 0 comment

Culture North America

Female celebrities get attacked on social media

by Narges Mohammadi April 8, 2022

An american model decides to donate to war ridden nations; she then gets attacked by social media users

According to Jahanbanou, Gigi Hadid a dutch-palestinian model, has pledged to donate her earnings from the Fall 2022 fashion shows “to aid those suffering from the war in Ukraine, as well as continuing to support those experiencing the same in Palestine”. The 26-year-old model announced her decision on Sunday, March the 6th.

She wrote on social media : “Having a set Fashion Month schedule has meant that my colleagues and I often present new fashion collections during heartbreaking and traumatic times in history. We don’t have control over most of our work schedules, but we would like to walk ‘for’ something.”.

Vogue fashion magazine then dedicated an Instagram post on its official social media page to Hadid’s pledge quoting the model’s statement, including the reference to Palestine. Then some social media users started attacking Hadid saying that this is Anti-Semitism and vogue magazine shouldn’t fan the flames of anti-Semitism.

However, the following day other social media users noted that because of the attacking, the original photo caption on Vogue’s Instagram post had been edited to remove the reference to Palestine including the model’s declaration at the end of her statement, which read: “HANDS OFF UKRAINE. HANDS OFF PALESTINE. PEACE. PEACE. PEACE.”

Prominent figures and social media users condemned the move and its “involvement in the racism against and erasure of Palestinians from their home, culture, history, and heritage”. One of them wrote: “Not only is this totally spineless, it erases a woman’s identity and ALSO manages to be inaccurate reporting. Gigi is Palestinian!!! she donated her money to PALESTINE”.

Hadid’s sister Alana even commented on the edited Instagram post, writing: “WOW, you removed Palestine. She is supporting both the crisis in Ukraine and Palestine. It’s a sad time when you can be bullied out of factual reporting.”

Apart from Gigi Hadid, there have been a number of British actresses that have announced their support for Palestine and its nation’s resistance towards violation and oppression. About 2 months ago, Emma Watson, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter franchise, was accused of antisemitism after she posted an image on Instagram showing a photograph of a pro-Palestinian protest with the banner “solidarity is a verb” written across it.

April 8, 2022 1 comment

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