tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23789554743173052702024-03-18T18:36:14.283-07:00Habib SiddiquiFor all important news around the globeHabib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.comBlogger11116125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-49883584818762024922024-03-18T18:35:00.000-07:002024-03-18T18:35:19.262-07:00India’s Muslims See Discrimination in New Religion-Based Citizenship Law<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="img-wrap" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="thumb thumb16_9" style="background-color: #f6f7f8; background-image: url("../img/image-placeholder.svg"); background-position: center center; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: inherit; contain: content; font-size: 0px; height: 0px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px 0px 575.552px; text-align: center;"><img alt="FILE - Students in Kolkata protest against the CAA and NRC, Dec. 27, 2019. Violence erupted during weekslong protests against the controversial citizenship law across the country in 2019-2020, with more than 100 people killed. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)" class=" enhanced" src="https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-aa19-08dc46ab3731_w1023_r1_s.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out 0s; width: 1023.22px;" /></div><span class="ico ico-fullscreen ico--media-expand ico--rounded" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-pack: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; align-items: center; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7); border-radius: 50%; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; cursor: pointer; display: flex; font-family: icons-font-1708519736347; height: 2.4em; justify-content: center; left: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; position: absolute; right: 10px; speak: none; text-align: center; text-decoration: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2.4em;"></span></div><figcaption style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;"><span class="caption" data-cms-inline-text="" data-cms-inline-wrap="caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #768492; display: block; font-size: 14px; padding-top: 8px;">FILE - Students in Kolkata protest against the CAA and NRC, Dec. 27, 2019. Violence erupted during weekslong protests against the controversial citizenship law across the country in 2019-2020, with more than 100 people killed. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)</span></figcaption></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px;">The Indian government’s recent announcement of rules to implement a 2019 citizenship law has sparked protests in India, with many accusing it of polarizing the society ahead of general elections scheduled for next month.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Under the Citizenship Amendment Act or, CAA, “persecuted” religious minorities from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan, who entered India before December 2014, will be allowed to claim Indian citizenship on a fast-track basis.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Since the law applies only to non-Muslims, critics — including rights groups, opposition political parties and Muslim community leaders — say it discriminates against Muslims.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">After last week’s announcement, Amnesty International described the CAA as “a discriminatory law that goes against the constitutional values of equality and international human rights law.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">A spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights was quoted by the Reuters news agency on Tuesday as saying the law is “fundamentally discriminatory in nature and in breach of India's international human rights obligations.”</p><div class="wsw__embed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 32px; padding: 0px;"><figure class="media-image js-media-expand js-media-expand--ready" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="img-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="thumb" style="box-sizing: inherit; contain: content; font-size: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="FILE - Paramilitary police patrol a Muslim-majority area of Delhi, March 1, 2020, days after Hindu rioters set fire to Muslim properties during the communal violence that broke out following weekslong anti-CAA protests. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)" class=" enhanced" src="https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-51fa-08dc46abc301_w650_r1_s.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; width: 650.146px;" /></div><span class="ico ico-fullscreen ico--media-expand ico--rounded" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-pack: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; align-items: center; background: none 33.0578% 0px no-repeat rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); border-radius: 50%; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; cursor: pointer; display: flex; font-family: icons-font-1708519736347; height: 2.4em; justify-content: center; left: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; position: absolute; right: 10px; speak: none; text-align: center; text-decoration: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2.4em;"></span></div><figcaption style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #768492; display: block; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">FILE - Paramilitary police patrol a Muslim-majority area of Delhi, March 1, 2020, days after Hindu rioters set fire to Muslim properties during the communal violence that broke out following weekslong anti-CAA protests. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)</span></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Home Minister Amit Shah has defended the CAA, calling it a “special act” designed to protect persecuted minorities from three countries and saying it has nothing to do with Indian Muslims.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">“Indian Muslims need not be afraid because of the CAA. It has no provision to take away the citizenship rights of any Indian,” Shah said.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians will be allowed onto a fast track to Indian citizenship under the law. Jews and Bahais are not included among the specified minorities.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Although the measure was approved in 2019, the Modi government put implementation on hold after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets protesting what they called a discriminatory anti-Muslim law.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">The protests led to the outbreak of communal violence in Delhi and other places, during which thousands of protesters were arrested and more than 100 were killed. The legislation was further delayed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">According to the Indian Citizenship Act, all foreign nationals are required to stay in India for 11 years before being eligible to apply for a passport. That law did not make religion a determinant of one’s eligibility for citizenship.</p><div class="wsw__embed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 32px; padding: 0px;"><figure class="media-image js-media-expand js-media-expand--ready" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="img-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="thumb" style="box-sizing: inherit; contain: content; font-size: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="FILE - A mosque that was burnt down by Hindu rioters is seen in Delhi in Feb. 2020, during communal violence that was sparked by anti-CAA protests. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)" class=" enhanced" src="https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-9abc-08dc46ad07e2_w650_r1_s.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; width: 650.146px;" /></div><span class="ico ico-fullscreen ico--media-expand ico--rounded" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-pack: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; align-items: center; background: none 33.0578% 0px no-repeat rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); border-radius: 50%; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; cursor: pointer; display: flex; font-family: icons-font-1708519736347; height: 2.4em; justify-content: center; left: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; position: absolute; right: 10px; speak: none; text-align: center; text-decoration: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2.4em;"></span></div><figcaption style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #768492; display: block; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">FILE - A mosque that was burnt down by Hindu rioters is seen in Delhi in Feb. 2020, during communal violence that was sparked by anti-CAA protests. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)</span></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Practitioners of the designated religions will now be eligible to apply for citizenship after having stayed in India for five years. It is the first time that religion has been explicitly made a basis on which people will be eligible for citizenship.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Despite the home minister’s assurances, the implementation of the law has reignited fear among India’s 200 million Muslims, especially those in certain border states, of having their citizenship revoked should they be unable to produce specific documents.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Those fears could be realized if the government moves ahead with implementation of another law providing for an updated National Register of Citizens, or NRC, under which “all Indian citizens” are to be identified and listed.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">People left out of the NRC will face the threat of losing their citizenship through the power vested in quasi-judicial bodies known as foreigner tribunals, which are responsible for determining if a person is staying in the country illegally.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">Individuals determined to be “foreigners” will be sent to detention centers, Amnesty International <a class="wsw__a" href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/03/india-citizenship-amendment-act-is-a-blow-to-indian-constitutional-values-and-international-standards/" style="border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(232, 234, 236); box-sizing: inherit; color: #3a79b7; padding-bottom: 0.05em; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">noted in a report</a>.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">A provision in the CAA ensures that non-Muslims not included in the NRC are protected from the threats of deportation and internment but grants no such security to Muslims.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">The sudden implementation of the CAA, after years of delay and weeks before April 19 general elections, suggests the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is using it to polarize the Hindu-majority society and reap electoral benefits, alleged Zafarul-Islam Khan, former chairman of the Delhi Minorities Commission.</p><div class="wsw__embed" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 32px; padding: 0px;"><figure class="media-image js-media-expand js-media-expand--ready" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="img-wrap" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="thumb" style="box-sizing: inherit; contain: content; font-size: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="FILE - Muslims pray in Kolkata during the biggest annual Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr, Apr. 22, 2023. Muslims in India are anxious as the government implements CAA across the country. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)" class=" enhanced" src="https://gdb.voanews.com/01000000-0aff-0242-a194-08dc46ad4fe0_cx0_cy8_cw100_w650_r1_s.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; width: 650.146px;" /></div><span class="ico ico-fullscreen ico--media-expand ico--rounded" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-pack: center; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; align-items: center; background: none 33.0578% 0px no-repeat rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); border-radius: 50%; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; cursor: pointer; display: flex; font-family: icons-font-1708519736347; height: 2.4em; justify-content: center; left: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 1px; position: absolute; right: 10px; speak: none; text-align: center; text-decoration: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; top: 10px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2.4em;"></span></div><figcaption style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #768492; display: block; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 8px;">FILE - Muslims pray in Kolkata during the biggest annual Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr, Apr. 22, 2023. Muslims in India are anxious as the government implements CAA across the country. (Shaikh Azizur Rahman for VOA)</span></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">“Minority Uyghur and Rohingya Muslims have for decades been facing persecution in neighboring China and Myanmar, and are seeking refuge in other countries,” Khan told VOA. “If the CAA is aimed to protect all persecuted minorities around India’s neighborhood, it should have included those Muslims, too. This is undoubtedly an anti-Muslim law.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">The government maintains that the CAA is neither anti-Muslim nor unconstitutional. “This law is to help those who during the partition of the subcontinent had stayed back in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh, faced religious persecution there and later came over to India,” Home Minister Shah said on Thursday.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">The United States has said it is “concerned” about the notification of the CAA.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">“We are closely monitoring how this act will be implemented. Respect for religious freedom and equal treatment under the law for all communities are fundamental democratic principles,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a daily briefing on Thursday.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 24px; padding: 0px;">On Friday, India said that the statement of the State Department on the issue was “misplaced, misinformed and unwarranted.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #222f3a; font-family: Merriweather-Light, Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">"The CAA is about giving citizenship, not about taking away citizenship. It addresses the issue of statelessness, provides human dignity and supports human rights,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, while asserting that the issue is an “internal matter.”</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-26520714554489598432024-03-18T18:31:00.000-07:002024-03-18T18:31:40.796-07:00Halabja massacre survivors seek compensation from Iraqi gov<div style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://www.newarab.com/video/172-victims-anfal-genocide-laid-rest-iraqi-kurdistan" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-color: rgb(88, 122, 188) !important; text-underline-position: under;">Kurds</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px;">in the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/erdogan-visit-iraq-next-month-anti-pkk-military-plans" style="border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-color: rgb(88, 122, 188) !important; text-underline-position: under;">Iraqi </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px;">Kurdistan region have commemorated the 36th anniversary of the Halabja gas attack on Saturday calling on authorities to compensate the massacre's survivors.</span></div><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), the former Iraqi regime of <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/saddam-hussein-statue-iraqi-kurdistan-sparks-controversy" style="background-color: transparent; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; text-decoration-color: rgb(88, 122, 188) !important; text-underline-position: under;">Saddam Hussien</a> attacked the people of Halabja with chemical weapons on 16 March 1988, killing more than 5,000 people, and wounding tens of thousands. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">The event stood as one of the most horrific instances of chemical warfare targeting civilians.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Thirty-six years since the attack, relatives of the victims and survivors held the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) responsible for failing to gain any compensation.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">"After 36 years from the massacre, I still have health issues in my lungs, unfortunately, I am yet to be registered by the KRG as a victim of attacking Halabja with chemical weapons," Omed Hama Ali Rashid told <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New Arab</em>, a survivor and now an employee at Halabja Monument.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">He recalled how he miraculously survived the attack in 1988, regaining consciousness while inside a coffin after medics at an Iranian hospital thought he was killed along seven members of his family.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Currently, there are more than 400 survivors, and most of them suffering from chronic diseases, especially in their lungs due to inhaling the poisonous gases. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">"As the legal successor of Iraq’s former regime, the Iraqi federal government has a legal and moral duty to compensate the people of Halabja," Rashid said.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Iraq's prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, was expected to visit Halabja on Saturday but neither he nor any senior official from the KRG attended the commemoration. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">"I wished PM Sudani to come here and see with his own eyes, what the former Iraqi officials had done to this city," Rashid said.</p><div class="embedded-entity" data-embed-button="node" data-entity-embed-display="view_mode:node.inline_entity_embed" data-entity-type="node" data-entity-uuid="aab83064-5262-478f-be2f-d2c8b5da7e00" data-langcode="en" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 21px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><div class="node node--type-features node--view-mode-inline-entity-embed horizontal-media-teaser-view-mode xsmall anchor-all clearfix" data-history-node-id="1480635" data-template="template-6" style="box-shadow: rgb(241, 241, 243) 0px -2px 0px 0px inset, rgb(241, 241, 243) 0px 2px 0px 0px inset; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 40px 0px; padding: 19px 32px 20px; position: relative;"><div class="left col-6 col-sm-6" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 100%; float: left; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; padding: 0px; position: static; width: 462.5px;"><div class="inline-embed-entity" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-direction: normal; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; align-items: center; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: wrap; height: auto !important;"><div class="embed-entity-title" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 100%; height: auto !important; max-width: 100%;"><div class="field field--name-node-title field--type-ds field--label-above" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; flex: 0 0 100%; height: auto !important; max-width: 100%; position: static;"><div class="field__label" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6d778b; font-size: 12px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 9px; text-transform: uppercase;">RELATED</div><div class="field__item" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important; margin-bottom: 15px;"><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.25; margin: 0px; position: static;"><a href="https://www.newarab.com/features/search-lost-children-halabja-three-decades" hreflang="en" style="background-color: transparent; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; line-height: 1.25; position: static; text-decoration-color: rgb(152, 27, 110) !important; text-decoration-line: none; z-index: 2;" title="In search for the lost children of Halabja three decades on">In search for the lost children of Halabja three decades on</a></h2></div></div></div><div class="embed-entity-wrappers" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex: 0 0 100%; height: auto !important; max-width: 100%;"><div class="embed-entity-subsection-live-tag" style="-webkit-box-flex: 0; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-flex; flex: 0 0 auto; height: auto !important;"><div class="field field--name-field-sub-section field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item" style="background-color: rgb(152, 27, 110) !important; border-radius: 4px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; display: inline-block; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 8px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 8px; position: relative; z-index: 5;">Society</div></div><div class="embed-entity-author-date" style="-webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; height: auto !important;"><div class="field field--name-field-auth-loc field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; height: auto !important; margin: 0px;"><div class="field__item" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: auto !important;"><div class="author-location author-location--type-author-location author-location--view-mode-author-name-text text-teaser-view-mode small anchor-all clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 16.8px; height: auto !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="main-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; float: left; height: auto !important; margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; width: 112.583px;"><div class="field field--name-field-author field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__item" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #6d778b; display: inline-flex; font-size: 14px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px; padding-top: 1px;">Dana Taib Menmy</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Jamil Farhad, another survivor from Khurmal sub-district of Halabja province told <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">TNA</em> that he lost two brothers and a sister in the attack.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">"I lost one eye and hardly see with the other as a result of the chemical attack. The KRG only did little for the relatives of Halabja victims," Farhad said. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">He said although the Kurdish and Iraqi officials often say they will compensate the people of Halabja, their words have failed to translate into action.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Currently, the KRG authorities in Halabja are struggling to provide basic services to residents and the city has witnessed an increase in unemployment rates and environmental issues. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">Saddam's regime was toppled following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and the former dictator was captured in December 2003.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">He was hung three years later following his conviction for crimes against humanity, including the Halabja massacre. </p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">In March 2018, a Chicago-based American human rights law firm lodged a lawsuit representing 4,811 Kurds.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">The lawsuit pointed fingers at numerous European companies, alleging their involvement in providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime. The firms were accused of being fully aware that these arms were intended for the eradication of the Kurdish population.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">According to The <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2022/10/20/halabja-attack-trial-underway-has-kurds-in-iraq-nashville-hopeful/69569013007/" style="background-color: transparent; border: none; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; text-decoration-color: rgb(88, 122, 188) !important; text-underline-position: under;">Tennessean</a>, the Chicago-based law firm MM-Law has initiated legal action against multiple companies, alleging their complicity in the Halabja massacre.</p><p class="selectionShareable" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #151f34; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji"; font-size: 18px; height: auto !important; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; overflow: hidden;">The lawsuits target several European entities, including German companies TUI A.G., Water Engineering Trading GmbH, and Karl Kolb; French companies Groupe Protec and De Dietrich Process Systems; Dutch company Melspring International; and Luxembourg-based General Mediterranean Holding.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-5739570696864135842024-03-18T18:29:00.000-07:002024-03-18T18:29:10.735-07:00Israel blocks thousands of Palestinians from visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">Israeli authorities have blocked thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem for prayer during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, adding to mounting tensions.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Despite tight Israeli restrictions on access to Al Aqsa Mosque, 80,000 worshippers made it to the holy site for the first Friday prayers of Ramadan, the Quds News Network reported, citing the Islamic Waqf that manages the mosque compound.</p><div class="more-on" style="background-color: white; border-color: rgb(190, 190, 190); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 20px; margin: 30px 0px; padding: 30px 0px; width: 770px;"><h2 class="more-on__heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">KEEP READING</h2><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list of 4 items</span><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 1 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/12/prayers-at-al-aqsa-mosque-after-first-day-of-ramadan?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque after first day of Ramadan</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 2 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/11/palestinians-blocked-from-praying-at-al-aqsa-on-eve-of-ramadan?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Israeli forces beat worshippers outside Al-Aqsa on Ramadan eve</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 3 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/19/israel-to-restrict-access-to-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque-during-ramadan?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Israel to restrict access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 4 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/4/israeli-settlers-storm-al-aqsa-mosque-complex-on-fifth-day-of-sukkot?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex on fifth day of Sukkot</a></h3></article><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">end of list</span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">But thousands more Palestinians from the occupied West Bank were denied entry to occupied East Jerusalem, where a heavy Israeli security presence surrounds the mosque.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Only men over the age of 55 or women over the age of 50 are allowed to enter the mosque, and all must have a valid permit, making the site, which is the third holiest site in Islam, inaccessible to the vast majority of Palestinians.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">More than 95 percent of all Palestinians are prohibited from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque, according to Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The portion of the community that is allowed is very small – people who are above the age of 55,” he told Al Jazeera from Ramallah, adding that even they had to go through a hard process to enter the holy site.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“First of all, they have to get a special magnetic security card from the Israelis, which takes a lot of time to acquire. Not everybody can get it and many people are deprived from it,” the Palestinian official said. “They also have to get a special permit from the Israelis directly. These complications prevent many people.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">He said the situation was creating more tension “because many people are angry”.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="ads__slot" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="freestar-ads" id="div-gpt-ad-122373338529" name="aljazeera_incontent_1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div></div></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The tension inside the mosque is very high because of the Israeli restrictions, beating of the people and provocations. I expect that there will be trouble, because of all these provocations,” Barghouti concluded.</p><h2 id="deceiving-the-world" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 2rem; line-height: 2.4375rem; margin: 60px 0px 0.6rem;">‘Deceiving the world’</h2><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One Palestinian Muslim, who did not wish to be identified, told Al Jazeera that when he attempted to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque, he was turned away by the Israeli army.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The number of soldiers is greater than the number of worshippers,” he said. “I’m 62, and I presented my ID, but my access was denied … although [the Israeli army] said that those who are over 55 can enter the mosque without a permit.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim reporting from the Qalandiya checkpoint outside East Jerusalem said previously, there were no age restrictions on women, and the age restriction for men was 45.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“All worshippers must also have valid entry permits, a document many Palestinians say they did not know they needed. We’ve seen people being turned away at the checkpoint for this reason, and Israeli soldiers are surrounding the nearby area,” she said.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="ads__slot" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="freestar-ads" id="div-gpt-ad-116081216405" name="aljazeera_incontent_2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div></div></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“There are additional restrictions on Palestinians leaving Al-Aqsa. They must submit their papers at a checkpoint while leaving Jerusalem or even take a selfie and submit it on an application managed by the Israeli government.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On Friday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “deceiving the world” when he said no additional measures would be imposed to limit access to Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan compared with previous years.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; max-width: 770px; min-width: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="video-player-facade-container" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="aj-video-player in-article-bc-video-player aj-parsed-component" style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0); 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clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">Video Duration 02 minutes 10 seconds</span><span aria-hidden="true" class="video-duration__duration" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 2.25; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 1.5px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">02:10</span></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The ministry said in a statement posted on X that the Israel prime minister had given far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir the freedom to implement restrictions, including erecting barricades, to prevent the entry of Palestinian worshippers.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The ministry called on the international community and the United States to intervene to end these “racist” policies and ensure that the right to worship is upheld.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">According to a 1967 status quo agreement with Israel, Jordan is responsible for overseeing the Al-Aqsa compound via the Waqf Council.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="ads__slot" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="freestar-ads" id="div-gpt-ad-365530454545" name="aljazeera_incontent_3" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></div></div></div></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Al-Aqsa Mosque preacher Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri said there is “no room for compromise on Al-Aqsa” after Israel implemented restrictions on Palestinian access.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Al-Aqsa “will remain open no matter what happens,” the preacher said, adding that the fact that worshippers were travelling to the compound despite the circumstances was “a message to those who want to harm Al-Aqsa”.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-16528414865819277392024-03-18T18:26:00.000-07:002024-03-18T18:26:47.596-07:00Australia to unfreeze UNRWA funding as Israel attacks Gaza aid seekers<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">Australia says it will restore funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees weeks after it lost millions of dollars in international support following allegations by Israel that some of its staff in the Gaza Strip were involved in the October 7 Hamas-led attacks.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday that the country was “unpausing” funding to the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/what-is-unrwa-and-why-it-is-important-for-palestinians" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees</a> (UNRWA), refuting Israel’s accusations that 450 members of the agency’s staff had participated in the attacks in southern Israel that sparked the current war.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The best available current advice from agencies and the Australian government lawyers is that UNRWA is not a terrorist organisation,” Wong told reporters in Adelaide while she announced a new aid package.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">As well as reinstating $6m in stalled funding for UNRWA, Australia has pledged an additional $2.6m to UNICEF, the UN’s agency for children, to provide urgent services in Gaza.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It will also deploy a C-17 Globemaster plane to deliver defence force parachutes to help with the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/aid-airdrop-kills-five-gaza-israel-war-hunger-famine" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">airdropping</a> of humanitarian supplies to the enclave’s starving population. The deliveries have been criticised as inefficient and costly, and humanitarian groups have called on Israel to stop blocking aid deliveries by land.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Friday’s decision to reinstate funding follows similar moves by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/8/canada-lifting-freeze-on-unrwa-funding-after-weeks-of-protests-criticism" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Canada</a>, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/9/sweden-resumes-aid-to-un-agency-for-palestinians" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Sweden</a> and the European Union to resume support for the agency, which had seen about 15 countries freeze funding while the Israeli allegations were investigated. The freeze slashed UNRWA’s funds by an estimated $450m and left it on the brink of collapse.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini thanked Australia for becoming the latest country to restore funding to the agency, which employs roughly 13,000 people in Gaza and is the main supplier of food, water and shelter there.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“Your support is testament to your commitment to humanitarian principles & the plight of #PalestineRefugees during unprecedented crisis,” he wrote in a post on X.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“I hope that other donors who have temporarily paused their contribution will make similar announcement & support the Agency to reverse the widespread hunger in #Gaza & to remain a life line for Palestine Refugees across the region.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Israeli forces have attacked thousands of Palestinians waiting for food and other humanitarian supplies in Gaza. At least <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/massacre-israel-forces-attack-crowds-waiting-for-aid-in-gaza-killing-21" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">21 people were killed</a> in the latest attack on Thursday at Gaza City’s Kuwait Roundabout, a central hub for the arrival of aid trucks.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">At least five people were killed on Wednesday in an Israeli air strike on an UNRWA-run aid distribution centre and warehouse in Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than half of the enclave’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-20746899860237200312024-03-18T18:24:00.000-07:002024-03-18T18:24:31.717-07:00In Gaza, there are no more 'normal-sized babies': UN official<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px;">The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a "nightmare" for mothers and babies, with doctors reporting small and sickly newborns, stillbirths and women forced to undergo C-sections without adequate anesthesia, a UN official said Friday.</span></div><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">"I'm personally leaving Gaza this week terrified for the one million women and girls of Gaza... and most especially for the 180 women who are giving birth every single day," Dominic Allen, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) representative for the state of Palestine, said in a video news conference from Jerusalem.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">"Doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies," Allen said after visiting hospitals still providing maternity services in the north of Gaza, where need is especially great.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.16px;">"What they do see though, tragically, is more stillborn births... and more neonatal deaths, caused in part by malnutrition, dehydration and complications."</span></p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">The numbers of complicated deliveries are roughly twice what they were before the war with Israel began -- with mothers stressed, fearful, underfed and exhausted -- and caregivers often lacking necessary supplies.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">"We have had reports of insufficient anesthetic being available" for Caesarean sections, "which again is unthinkable."</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">"Those mothers should be wrapping their arms around their children," he said. "Those children should not be wrapped in a body bag."</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">Israel has defended its policies as it pursues its stated goal of destroying Hamas, saying the UN should send more aid to the war-ravaged territory, pushing back on reports by the UN and NGOs that cumbersome Israeli inspections are blocking food and other essentials.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">Allen said Israeli authorities had refused to allow in some UNFPA supply shipments, such as kits for midwives, or had removed supplies like flashlights and solar panels.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">"It's a nightmare which is much more than a humanitarian crisis," he said. "It is a crisis of humanity... beyond catastrophic."</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">What he saw while driving through Gaza, he said, "really broke my heart."</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">Everyone he passed or spoke to, Allen said, "was gaunt, emaciated, hungry" and exhausted from the daily struggle to survive.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">At one military checkpoint, he said, he saw a boy who appeared to be about five years old walking with his hands held high, clearly frightened, as his slightly older sister followed behind, holding a white flag.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">The war began October 7 when a surprise attack by Hamas militants resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.</p><p class="mol-para-with-font" style="background-color: white; font-family: graphik, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.16px; margin: 0px 0px 16px; min-height: 0px; padding: 0px;">Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-79388454298216137092024-03-18T17:41:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:41:59.504-07:00‘We Lost the War with Hamas’ – Israeli Major General Yitzhak Barik<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel cannot lie to its people for a long time and has already lost the war with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas, according to an </span><a href="https://www.maariv.co.il/journalists/opinions/Article-1084336" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #e64946; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 400; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">analysis</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> by retired Major General Yizkhak Barik and published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Sunday.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“What is happening in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon will blow up in our faces sooner or later, and then the truth will be revealed in all its hiddenness,” Barik wrote, accusing the Israeli leadership of living “in an illusion”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Barik warned that Israel is not ready for a regional war, which would be “thousands of times more difficult and serious than the war in the Gaza Strip”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Every day our soldiers are killed and seriously injured (in Gaza -PC) by booby traps and explosives when they enter (…) houses without any inspection, and without using appropriate measures,” he wrote.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Barik accused the Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi of being “detached and silent” and of “appointing colonels and lieutenant colonels” after losing “control of the territory a long time ago”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Having in mind that Israel’s two objectives are the dismantlement of Hamas and the return of the captives, Barik said that the Israeli “Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff conducted the war with a tactical vision and not a strategic vision,” noting that “a war cannot be won only in tactical battles.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are also losing our allies in the world,” Barik admitted, stating that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and Halevi “are leading us nowhere!”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“If a regional war breaks out that destroys the country, there is no doubt that in the history of the people of Israel, they will be remembered forever,” the Major General concluded.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the Israeli Army official toll, nearly 600 soldiers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, including nearly 250 since the beginning of the ground attack on the Gaza Strip on October 27.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Palestinian Resistance, however, has repeatedly stated that the estimates provided by the Israeli army are “unreal,” and that the numbers of casualties are much higher.</p><h4 style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1.125rem; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.3; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Regional War</strong></h4><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A recent study conducted by Over 100 Israeli senior military and government officials for the Reichman University Institute for Counterterrorism also reached similar conclusions regarding what could happen in the case of an all-out war between Israel and the Lebanese Resistance group Hezbollah.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to the study:</p><ul style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 20px 40px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">An Israel-Lebanon war in the north would start with a “massive and destructive barrage of Hezbollah rockets”, which are likely to reach all parts of the country.</li><li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The number of Hezbollah rockets to hit Israel is estimated to be anywhere between 2,500 and 3,000 per day.</li><li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Hezbollah rockets will involve a mix between precision long-range missiles and less accurate rockets.</li><li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hezbollah is likely to concentrate its attacks on a single area at a time, for example, a major Israeli army base or a specific city in the center of the country.</li><li style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The rockets will continue on a daily basis and are likely to last for up to six weeks.</li></ul><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Moreover, the bleak scenario is likely to worsen leading to total ‘chaos’ when Hezbollah sends hundreds of Radwan commandos to seize towns and villages inside Israel in addition to taking control of Israeli military bases, the study warned.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gaza Genocide</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7. </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 31,645 Palestinians have been killed, and 73,676 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(The Palestine Chronicle)</em></p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-15883643626227032492024-03-18T17:40:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:40:09.972-07:0092 Palestinians Killed in 24 Hours – Israeli Strikes Continue<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">In the early morning hours of Sunday, Israeli warplanes and artillery targeted several areas in the south and northeast of Khan Yunis, as well as in the north of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israeli airstrikes in Khan Yunis coincided with artillery shelling and gunfire in the northeast of the city, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israeli warplanes also carried out an airstrike in the northeast of the city of Rafah, in the south of the besieged enclave.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="Bw38yfAFln" frameborder="0" height="308" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-scripts" scrolling="no" security="restricted" src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/gaza-live-blog-smotrich-attacks-biden-yaalon-rafah-invasion-is-hoax-nine-massacres-in-24-hours-resistance-continues-day-163/embed/#?secret=OkxggIqKEz#?secret=Bw38yfAFln" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="“GAZA LIVE BLOG: Smotrich Attacks Biden | Yaalon: Rafah Invasion is Hoax | Nine Massacres in 24 Hours – Day 163” — Palestine Chronicle" width="600"></iframe></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israeli warplanes also bombed a house on Mansoura Street in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, as well as areas west of Gaza City.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Late Saturday night, twelve civilians, mostly children and women, were killed, and scores were injured as a result of an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house belonging to the Thabet family in the Bushara neighborhood, in Deir al-Balah city, in central Gaza.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ambulance and rescue teams are still unable to reach many casualties and dead bodies trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads across the war-torn enclave, as Israeli occupation forces continue to obstruct the arrival of civil defense teams.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Therefore, many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescue teams are unable to reach them, according to the sources.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="hlVX43cnqT" frameborder="0" height="286" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-scripts" scrolling="no" security="restricted" src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/world-not-doing-enough-protesters-across-the-world-decry-gaza-genocide/embed/#?secret=GngTPcNLYo#?secret=hlVX43cnqT" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="“‘World Not Doing Enough’ – Protesters across the World Decry Gaza Genocide” — Palestine Chronicle" width="600"></iframe></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Genocide Continues</strong></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 31,645 Palestinians have been killed, and 73,676 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip. </span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="paNqknpHew" frameborder="0" height="286" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-scripts" scrolling="no" security="restricted" src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/in-spite-of-israeli-dismissals-gazas-death-toll-confirmed-as-accurate-by-science/embed/#?secret=FxRgxiNcxy#?secret=paNqknpHew" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="“Gaza’s Death Toll Confirmed as Accurate by Science – Time Magazine” — Palestine Chronicle" width="600"></iframe></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire.’</span></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(WAFA, PC)</em></p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-9289157713704405292024-03-18T17:38:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:38:43.278-07:00 Torture, Executions, Babies Left To Die, Sexual Abuse… These Are Israel’s Crimes<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><footer class="entry-footer" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; font-family: Montserrat, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 0.8125rem; line-height: 1.61538; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><p class="pagesub" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #444444; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 1.14em; font-weight: 700;">Why is the same western media obsessively reheating five-month-old allegations against Hamas so reluctant to focus on Israel’s current, horrifying atrocities?</p><span class="byline" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute !important; width: 1px;"></span>by <a class="author url fn" href="https://original.antiwar.com/author/cook/" rel="author" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; text-decoration-line: none;" title="Posts by Jonathan Cook">Jonathan Cook</a></span> <span class="posted-on" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute !important; width: 1px;">Posted on</span><a href="https://original.antiwar.com/cook/2024/03/17/torture-executions-babies-left-to-die-sexual-abuse-these-are-israels-crimes/" rel="bookmark" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; text-decoration-line: none;"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2024-03-17T21:00:56-07:00" style="box-sizing: inherit;">March 18, 2024</time></a></span></footer><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border-color: rgb(209, 209, 209); box-sizing: inherit; color: #1a1a1a; counter-reset: footnotes 0; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-07/ty-article/.premium/27-gaza-detainees-died-in-custody-at-israeli-army-facilities-since-the-start-of-the-war/0000018e-1322-d950-a18e-f3bbaa370000" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Haaretz disclosed</a> that some 27 Palestinians seized off Gaza’s streets over the past five months are known to have died during interrogations inside Israel.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely to have been tortured to death.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Three months ago, a <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-12-08/ty-article-opinion/israeli-jails-must-not-become-execution-facilities-for-palestinians/0000018c-45ed-db23-ad9f-6dfd35930000" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Haaretz editorial warned</a> that Israeli jails “must not become execution facilities for Palestinians”.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/we-are-the-masters-of-the-house-israeli-channels-air-snuff-videos-featuring-systematic-torture-of-palestinians/" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">psychological and physical abuse</a> they are subjected to.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in which Palestinians are held “<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-03/ty-article/.premium/israel-police-are-holding-palestinian-prisoners-in-makeshift-cage-like-cells/0000018e-00ea-da4e-adbf-82fb03180000" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">unsuitable for humans</a>”.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Remember, a large proportion of the 4,000 or so Palestinians taken hostage by Israel since 7 October – probably the vast majority – are civilians, like the men and boys paraded through Gaza’s streets or <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-hamas-war-video-appears-153300556.html" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">held in a stadium</a> stripped of clothing before being dragged off to a dark cell in Israel.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-11182" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" height="293" sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px" src="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/gaza-palestinians-stripped-israeli-soldiers-december-2023-x-copy.jpg" srcset="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/gaza-palestinians-stripped-israeli-soldiers-december-2023-x-copy.jpg 520w, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/gaza-palestinians-stripped-israeli-soldiers-december-2023-x-copy-300x169.jpg 300w" style="border: none; box-sizing: inherit; float: left; height: auto; margin-right: 25px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="520" /></p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Women abused</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">According to Israeli media, many <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/israel-detained-153-gazan-women-some-with-babies-says-palestinian-prisoners-club-head/0000018c-5d37-d03f-af9f-7d772cdf0000" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">dozens of Palestinian women</a> – including pregnant women – have been seized too, but in their case off camera.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Presumably, Israel has wished to avoid undermining its careful messaging that only Hamas weaponises violence against women.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">But according to United Nations legal experts, Palestinian women are suffering the most degrading forms of abuse at the hands of the Israeli military.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">experts observed</a> that Palestinian women and girls in detention were reportedly being subjected to “multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">“At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Soldiers are also believed to have taken photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances and then uploaded them online.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Palestinian women and girls in Gaza are also reported by their families to have gone missing after contact with the Israeli army.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">“There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.</p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;">Beatings, waterboarding</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">A separate report by the UN last week revealed that 21 of its staff – humanitarian aid workers – had been snatched by Israel. They were then <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/09/world/politics/unrwa-report-israel-hamas/" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">tortured to extract confessions</a>, most likely false, of involvement in Hamas’ 7 October attack. Their torture included beatings, waterboarding and threats to family members.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Those confessions were cited by western allies as the grounds – in fact, the only known grounds – for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVtw8PKl-CE" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">cutting off funding</a> to the UN relief agency UNRWA, the last lifeline for Gaza’s starving population. It was these claims, extracted through torture, that helped Israel rationalise its imposing of a famine on Gaza.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/05/gazan-detainees-beaten-and-sexually-assaulted-at-israeli-detention-centres-un-report-claims" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">1,000 detainees</a> subsequently released, 29 were children, one as young as six, and 80 women. Some were reported to have cancer and chronic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">According to the UN investigation, Palestinians reported severe punishment beatings, being caged with attack dogs, and suffering sexual assault. Physical evidence – such as broken ribs, dislocated shoulders, bite marks, and burns – was still visible many weeks later.</p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Executions, human shields</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">These horrors, of course, are not just taking place in cells and interrogation rooms inside Israel. Gaza is being subjected to astonishing levels of brutality and sadism from Israeli troops – quite aside from the carpet bombing and enforced starvation of civilians.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Israeli <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/9/israeli-snipers-kill-21-civilians-outside-gazas-besieged-nasser-hospital" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">snipers have fired</a> into Gaza’s hospitals, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israeli-sniper-kills-everyone-who-moves-gaza-hospital" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">killing medical staff</a> and patients there.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Israeli military has used Palestinians as human shields, including one man sent into a hospital, his hands bound, to announce an Israeli order to evacuate the premises. Israeli forces <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/14/gaza-nasser-hospital-evacuation-israel-prisoner/" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">executed him</a> on his return.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Those trying to follow such evacuation orders, waving white flags, have <a href="https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1722936274351161628" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">been shot at</a>.</p><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; max-width: 550px; width: 550px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" class="" data-tweet-id="1722936274351161628" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-1" scrolling="no" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=Antiwarcom&dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1722936274351161628&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012351777&sessionId=db0470e162a581bee9cca1d240f30c7a4a6a875e&siteScreenName=Antiwarcom&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; flex-grow: 1; height: 849px; margin-bottom: 1.75em; max-width: 100%; position: static; vertical-align: middle; visibility: visible; width: 550px;" title="X Post"></iframe></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit;"></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Medical facilities have been repeatedly invaded by the Israeli military in stark violation of international law. Those who could not be evacuated, such <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6jndMLmGJA" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">as premature babies</a>, have been left to die unattended, even while Israeli soldiers were occupying the building.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">This week, the BBC interviewed medical staff who reported being tortured, savagely beaten and having attack dogs set on them inside the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis after Israeli soldiers stormed it.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">One, Dr Ahmed Abu Sabha, had his hands broken. He <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68513408" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">told the BBC</a>: “They put me on a chair and it was like a gallows. I heard sounds of ropes, so I thought I was going to be executed.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">At another stage, he and other detainees were beaten in the back of a truck, while only in their underwear. They were taken to a gravel pit, where they were made to kneel blindfolded. They believed they were about to be executed.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">During his eight days as hostage, Sabha was never questioned.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Dozens more medics are believed missing, presumed to still be in Israeli detention.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Photographs published by the BBC also show patients in the grounds of Nasser hospital in beds with their hands bound tightly above their heads.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Those who died were left to decompose by Israeli soldiers. A doctor there, Dr Hatim Rabaa, told the BBC: “Patients were screaming, ‘Please remove them [the corpses] from here’. I was telling them, ‘It isn’t in my hands’.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Other examples of murderous cruelty are documented daily. Unarmed Palestinians, including those <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">waving white flags</a>, have been <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2024-02-02/gaza-two-young-brothers-shot-dead-while-carrying-white-flag#" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">shot dead</a> by Israeli soldiers. Palestinian <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-war-israel-palestine-forces-executed-family-home" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">parents have been executed</a> in cold blood in front of their children. There have been <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dozens-killed-new-israeli-massacre-palestinians-waiting-aid%C2%A0" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">repeated episodes </a>of Israeli forces gunning down en masse desperate Palestinians trying to reach aid, as happened yet again this week.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Even Israeli hostages trying to escape their captors <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67745092" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">have been killed</a> by the very Israeli soldiers they were trying to surrender to.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">These are just some of the cases of Israeli sadism and barbarity that have surfaced briefly in western media coverage, soon to be forgotten.</p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Wiping Gaza off the map</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The stomach-turning double standards are impossible to ignore.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence. Claims that Hamas beheaded babies or put them in ovens – emblazoned on front pages – were later <a href="https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-reported-israels-fake-news-as-fact/" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">found to be nonsense</a>.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Accusations against Hamas have been endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalizing the carpet bombing and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organization.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at the acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now?</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">This is part of a pattern of behavior by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-11183" decoding="async" height="340" sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px" src="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-16-at-10.09.12.jpg" srcset="https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-16-at-10.09.12.jpg 520w, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-16-at-10.09.12-300x196.jpg 300w" style="border: none; box-sizing: inherit; float: left; height: auto; margin-right: 25px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="520" /></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">If Russian President Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-invasion-madman-script-same" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">was a madman</a> and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians?</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid?</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Worrying about the optics, the president <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-hot-mic-gaza-885b97a75d15d15ae7f7a47d0125c918" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">expresses his discomfort</a>, but he carries on helping Israel regardless.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.</p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Hamas ‘started it’</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">There have been two, largely implicit defences for this glaring imbalance in western priorities. Neither stands up to even the most cursory scrutiny.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">One is the argument that Hamas “started it” – insinuated in the endless claim that, in destroying Gaza, Israel has been “responding” or “retaliating” to the violence of 7 October.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">This is a justification for killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and starving two million more that should never have been let out of the playground. But worse, it is patent nonsense. Hamas did not initiate anything on 7 October, except for handing Israel a pretext to wreck Gaza.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The enclave has been under a crushing siege for 17 years, in which its land, sea and air were patrolled constantly by Israel. Its population was denied the essentials of life. They had no freedom of movement apart from inside their cage.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Long before the current Israeli-induced famine, Israel’s trade restrictions had ensured high levels of malnutrition <a href="https://www.map.org.uk/news/archive/post/1449-recovering-from-malnutrition-in-gaza-three-year-old-ayaas-story" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">among Gaza’s children</a>. Most exhibited too the scars of <a href="https://www.savethechildren.net/news/after-15-years-blockade-four-out-five-children-gaza-say-they-are-living-depression-grief-and" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">deep psychological trauma</a> from constant and massive attacks by Israel on Gaza.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Biden crows about building a “temporary pier” – <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/us-bidens-port-for-gaza-strip-aid-pier-building-could-take-60-days/" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">weeks or months</a> down the road – to bring aid into Gaza that is desperately needed now. But there is a reason the enclave lacks a seaport and airport. <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-11-21/ty-article-magazine/gaza-war-25-years-intl-airport-opened-second-intifada-israel/0000018b-e6fd-dffa-adef-e6fd35a10000" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Israel bombed</a> the only airport back in 2001, long before Hamas took charge of Gaza. It has been attacking and killing fishermen trawling just off Gaza’s coast for years.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Israel has refused to allow Gaza to connect to the world – and break free of Israeli control – ever since.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hamas started nothing on 7 October. It was simply a new, and particularly gruesome phase in what has been decades of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s belligerent occupation of Gaza.</p><p class="header-with-anchor-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Bogus narrative</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The other implicit defense of western establishments constantly stressing Hamas’ barbarism over Israel’s is that the nature of those atrocities is said to be categorically different – in the apples and pears sense.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Hamas supposedly demonstrated a degree of sadism in its killing spree on 7 October inside Israel that marks it out from Israel’s far larger killing spree in Gaza.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">That has been the basis for every media interview that requires guests to <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/palestinian-ambassador-refuses-to-condemn-hamas-attacks-on-israel-12980247" rel="" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">“condemn” Hamas</a> before they are allowed to express concern about the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. No one is asked to condemn Israel.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">It is the basis too for permitting Israeli spokespeople to claim unchallenged that Israel targets only Hamas, not civilians, even while some three-quarters of Gaza’s dead are women and children.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">On the BBC’s evening news last weekend, presenter Clive Myrie made precisely this preposterous assertion as he intoned that since 7 October, “Israel launched a relentless bombing campaign targeting members of Hamas.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">But the latest revelations of the 27 reported deaths in Israeli torture centres and the testimonies of beaten medics from Nasser Hospital confirm how bogus this entire narrative framing by the western media is – one intended to mislead and misinform audiences.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, but its actions tell an entirely different story. Famine will kill off the sick and vulnerable long before it does Hamas fighters.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The truth is, Israel is not primarily eradicating Hamas. It is eradicating Gaza. Its crimes are at least as cruel and savage as anything Hamas did on 7 October – and its atrocities have been carried out on a far larger scale and for far longer.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Western establishments and their media have been waging a giant campaign of misdirection for the past five months, as they have against Palestinians over previous years and decades. Western publics have been encouraged to look in the wrong direction</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Until that changes, the men, women and children of Gaza will continue to pay the heaviest of prices at the hands of a vengeful, sadistic Israeli military.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;"><i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Jonathan Cook </i><i style="box-sizing: inherit;">is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at <a href="http://www.jonathan-cook.net/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">www.jonathan-cook.net</a>. This originally appeared in the </i><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Middle East Eye</a><i style="box-sizing: inherit;">.</i></p></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-51792554839086459802024-03-18T17:37:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:37:41.940-07:00TIKTOK THREAT IS PURELY HYPOTHETICAL, U.S. INTELLIGENCE ADMITS<div style="text-align: left;"> <span class="has-underline" style="--shadow-color: #111; --tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-shadow: 0 1px 0 #fff,0 4px 0 var(--shadow-color); box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(17 17 17/var(--tw-text-opacity)); font-family: TIActuBeta, TIActuBetaFallback, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.1em; text-transform: uppercase;">THE PURPORTED THREAT</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;">of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span><a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/02/07/china-balloon-soviet-union/" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;">Chinese spy balloon proportions</a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em;">, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.</span></div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users. (TikTok <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-house-vote-china-national-security-8fa7258fae1a4902d344c9d978d58a37" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">says</a> it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked. This week, TikTok CEO Shou Chew <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/tiktok-ceo-refuses-answer-chinese-government-influence-over-platform-congress-mulls-ban" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">said</a> that “there’s no CCP ownership” of ByteDance, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.)</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">Though top national security officials seem happy to echo these allegations of Chinese control of TikTok, they stop short of saying that China has ever actually coordinated with the company.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">Typical is an <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/es/date/2022-12-30/segment/02" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">interview</a> CIA Director William Burns gave to CNN in 2022, where he said it was “troubling to see what the Chinese government could do to manipulate TikTok.” Not what the Chinese government has done, but what it could do.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">What China could do turns out to be a recurring theme in the statements of the top national security officials.</p><div class="most-read most-read--fixed most-read--fixed-end" data-module-uid="8432fd50-a040-4f64-bee5-f82a4a148204" data-module="MostRead" data-scroll-init="true" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="most-read__content" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; left: 649.5px; margin: 0px 0px 0px 55px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 1000px; width: 220px;"><h2 class="most-read__header" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: TIActuBeta, TIActuBetaFallback, sans-serif; font-feature-settings: "kern"; font-kerning: normal; font-size: 1.25rem; letter-spacing: 0.05em; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; text-transform: uppercase;">MOST READ</h2><div class="most-read__promos" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><div class="most-read__container" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; gap: 40px;"><div class="most-read__item" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; flex-shrink: 0; width: 187px;"><a class="most-read__link image-hover-parent" href="http://theintercept.com/2024/03/16/safe-deposit-boxes-fbi-warrantless-raid-fourth-amendment/" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;"><div class="image-hover-wrapper" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; height: 60px; margin-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 60px;"><img alt="" class="most-read__image" data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/AP23279648080982-fbi.jpg?w=1200" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 60px; inset: 0px; max-width: 100%; object-fit: cover; position: absolute; transition-duration: 0.15s; transition-property: opacity; transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1); vertical-align: middle; width: 60px;" /></div><div class="most-read__title" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: TIActuBeta, TIActuBetaFallback, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 18px; width: 158.948px;">Lawsuits About FBI Warrantless Search of Safe Deposit Boxes Allowed to Proceed<div class="most-read__author" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--c-accent-dynamic); font-family: TIActuBetaMono, TIActuBetaMonoFallback, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 300; margin-top: 0.25rem;">Shawn Musgrave</div></div></a></div><div class="most-read__item" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; flex-shrink: 0; width: 187px;"><a class="most-read__link image-hover-parent" href="http://theintercept.com/2024/03/16/tiktok-china-security-threat/" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;"><div class="image-hover-wrapper" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; height: 60px; margin-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 60px;"><img alt="" class="most-read__image" data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GettyImages-1249958689-tiktok.jpg?w=1200" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 60px; inset: 0px; max-width: 100%; object-fit: cover; position: absolute; transition-duration: 0.15s; transition-property: opacity; transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1); vertical-align: middle; width: 60px;" /></div><div class="most-read__title" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: TIActuBeta, TIActuBetaFallback, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 18px; width: 158.948px;">TikTok Threat Is Purely Hypothetical, U.S. Intelligence Admits<div class="most-read__author" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--c-accent-dynamic); font-family: TIActuBetaMono, TIActuBetaMonoFallback, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 300; margin-top: 0.25rem;">Ken Klippenstein</div></div></a></div><div class="most-read__item" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; flex-shrink: 0; width: 187px;"><a class="most-read__link image-hover-parent" href="http://theintercept.com/2024/03/15/chuck-schumer-speech-netanyahu-israel/" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;"><div class="image-hover-wrapper" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; height: 60px; margin-bottom: 10px; position: relative; width: 60px;"><img alt="" class="most-read__image" data-recalc-dims="1" decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GettyImages-2076704562-schumer-ft.jpg?w=1200" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 60px; inset: 0px; max-width: 100%; object-fit: cover; position: absolute; transition-duration: 0.15s; transition-property: opacity; transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.4, 0, 0.2, 1); vertical-align: middle; width: 60px;" /></div><div class="most-read__title" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: TIActuBeta, TIActuBetaFallback, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 18px; width: 158.948px;">Outrage at Chuck Schumer’s Speech: The Pro-Israel Right Wants to Eat Its Cake Too<div class="most-read__author" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--c-accent-dynamic); font-family: TIActuBetaMono, TIActuBetaMonoFallback, monospace; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 300; margin-top: 0.25rem;">Murtaza Hussain</div></div></a></div></div></div></div><div class="most-read__end" data-domodule-name-processed="true" data-domodule-owner="8432fd50-a040-4f64-bee5-f82a4a148204" data-name="end" data-scroll-init="true" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; position: absolute; top: 1000px;"></div></div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a 2022 <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://fordschool.umich.edu/video/2022/christopher-wray-2022-josh-rosenthal-memorial-talk" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">talk</a> at the University of Michigan that TikTok’s “parent company is controlled by the Chinese government, and it gives them the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">potential</em> [emphasis added] to leverage the app in ways that I think should concern us.” Wray went on to cite TikTok’s ability to control its recommendation algorithm, which he said “allows them to manipulate content and <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box;">if they want to</em> [emphasis added], to use it for influence operations.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">In the same talk, Wray three times referred to the Chinese government’s “ability” to spy on TikTok users but once again stopped short of saying that they do so.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">“They also have the ability to collect data through it on users which can be used for traditional espionage operations, for example,” Wray said. “They also have the ability on it to get access, they have essential access to software devices. So you’re talking about millions of devices and that gives them the ability to engage in different kinds of malicious cyber activity through that.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">Wray is referring to the potential ability, according to U.S. intelligence, to commandeer phones and computers connecting to TikTok through apps and the website.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">In <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-117hhrg50981/html/CHRG-117hhrg50981.htm" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">testimony</a> before the House Homeland Security Committee in November 2022, Wray was even more circumspect, stressing that the Chinese government could use TikTok for foreign influence operations but only “if they so chose.” When asked by Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., if the Chinese government has used TikTok to collect information about Americans for purposes other than targeted ads and content, Wray only could acknowledge that it was a “possibility.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">“I would say we do have national security concerns, at least from the FBI’s end, about TikTok,” Wray said. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm which could be used for foreign influence operations if they so chose.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The lack of evidence is not for lack of trying, as Wray alluded to during the same hearing. When asked by Harshbarger what is being done to investigate the Chinese government’s involvement in TikTok, Wray replied that he would see whether “any specific investigative work … could be incorporated into the classified briefing I referred to.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The FBI, when asked by The Intercept if it has any evidence that TikTok has coordinated with the Chinese government, referred to Wray’s prior statements — many of which are quoted in this article. “We have nothing to add to the Director’s comments,” an FBI spokesperson said.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The fiscal year 2025 FBI budget <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-03/fbi_fy_2025_presidents_budget_narrative_3-5-24_final_1.pdf" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">request</a> to Congress, which outlines its resource priorities in the coming year, was unveiled this week but makes no mention of TikTok in its 94 pages. In fact, it makes no mention of China whatsoever.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">Since at least 2020, the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has investigated the implications of ByteDance’s acquisition of TikTok. The investigation followed an executive order by former President Donald Trump that sought to force TikTok to divest from its parent company. When that investigation failed to force a sale, a frustrated Congress <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.axios.com/2024/03/12/congress-tiktok-cfius-bytedance-ban" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">decided</a> to get involved, with the House passing legislation on Wednesday that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok. </p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">In <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnc/date/2024-03-13/segment/03" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">testimony</a> to the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the highest-ranking intelligence official in the U.S. government, was asked about the possibility that China might use TikTok to influence the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. Haines said only that it could not be discounted.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">“We cannot rule out that the CCP could use it,” Haines said.</p><div class="newsletter-embed" id="third-party--article-mid" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; display: flex; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; justify-content: center; margin: 0px -1.25rem 1.25rem; max-width: none; width: auto;"><div class="tp-container-inner" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; height: 260px; width: 689.5px;"><iframe allow="payment" allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" id="offer_d95877cf7d9b23ea09ec-0" name="offer_d95877cf7d9b23ea09ec-0" scrolling="no" src="https://o.prod.theintercept.com/checkout/template/cacheableShow?aid=hsZyoAWmIE&templateId=OTEXERHVRCE9&templateVariantId=OTVEIU52VT7IF&offerId=fakeOfferId&experienceId=EX3LBE28N473&iframeId=offer_d95877cf7d9b23ea09ec-0&displayMode=inline&pianoIdUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fid.tinypass.com%2Fid%2F&widget=template&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: 260px; overflow: hidden; vertical-align: middle; width: 689.5px;" title="offer_d95877cf7d9b23ea09ec-0"></iframe></div></div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The relatively measured tone adopted by top intelligence officials contrasts sharply with the alarmism emanating from Congress. In 2022, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., deemed TikTok “digital fentanyl,” going on to co-author a <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/10/marco-rubio-ban-tiktok-america-china-mike-gallagher/" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">column</a> in the Washington Post with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calling for TikTok to be banned. Gallagher and Rubio later introduced <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.rubio.senate.gov/rubio-gallagher-introduce-bipartisan-legislation-to-ban-tiktok/" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">legislation</a> to do so, and 39 states have, as of this writing, banned the use of TikTok on government devices.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">None of this is to say that China hasn’t used TikTok to influence public opinion and even, it turns out, to try to interfere in American elections. “TikTok accounts run by a [People’s Republic of China] propaganda arm reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022,” <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2024-Unclassified-Report.pdf" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">says</a> the annual Intelligence Community threat assessment released on Monday. But the assessment provides no evidence that TikTok coordinated with the Chinese government. In fact, governments — including the United States — are known to use social media to influence public opinion abroad.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">“The problem with TikTok isn’t related to their ownership; it’s a problem of surveillance capitalism and it’s true of all social media companies,” computer security expert Bruce Schneier told The Intercept. “In 2016 Russia did this with Facebook and they didn’t have to own Facebook — they just bought ads like everybody else.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">This week, Reuters <a aria-describedby="targetBlankDescription" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-launched-cia-covert-influence-operation-against-china-2024-03-14/" rel="noreferrer" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-text-opacity: 1; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; outline-width: 0px; text-decoration-color: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-style: inherit; text-decoration-thickness: inherit;" target="_blank">reported</a> that as president, Trump signed a covert action order authorizing the CIA to use social media to influence and manipulate domestic Chinese public opinion and views on China. Other covert American cyber influence programs are known to exist with regard to Russia, Iran, terrorist groups, and other foreign actors. </p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: #3b82f680; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --wp--preset--font-size--medium: 1.15em; --wp--preset--font-size--normal: 1em; border: 0px solid; box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: SwiftNeue; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;">In other words, everybody’s doing it.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-17366102968094301652024-03-18T17:35:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:35:49.573-07:00War on Gaza: Israeli forces launch another raid on al-Shifa hospital<div style="text-align: left;"> <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0076af; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Israeli</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;">forces launched a new raid on Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital on Monday, just as</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0076af; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Palestinians</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;">were preparing to have their pre-fast Ramadan meal before dawn. </span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The attack started shortly after 2 am local time (12 am GMT) with tanks advancing towards the medical complex under the cover of heavy aerial bombardment. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Tanks surrounded the hospital before shelling some of its buildings, including the surgery department, according to the Palestinian health ministry. </p><div style="align-items: center; border-radius: 20px; border: 4px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; display: flex; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; 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font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 50px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 10px; width: 151.25px;" type="submit" value="Subscribe" /> </form></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Initial reports say several people were killed and wounded but medical teams have not been able to reach them due to heavy Israeli fire in the hospital's courtyards. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">"The occupation army invaded al-Shifa Hospital for the fourth time since the beginning of the aggression against Gaza, directly shooting the specialised surgery building with bullets and targeting it with missiles," the ministry said.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The entrance of the hospital also caught fire due to the heavy shelling, it added, warning that patients and families sheltering at the site were besieged. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">At least 30,000 people were inside the hospital at the time of the attack, including displaced families, patients and medical staff. </p><div class="url-embed-wrapper" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; display: flex; flex-direction: row; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; justify-content: space-around; width: 613px;"><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; max-width: 550px; width: 550px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" class="" data-tweet-id="1769617156310712341" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=middleeasteye&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1769617156310712341&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.middleeasteye.net%2Fnews%2Fwar-gaza-israel-new-raid-shifa-hospital&sessionId=1e9569910a10de5eb3c7f26ba57537966f3c5850&theme=light&widgetsVersion=2615f7e52b7e0%3A1702314776716&width=550px" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; flex-grow: 1; height: 765px; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; position: static; text-align: center; visibility: visible; width: 550px;" title="X Post"></iframe></div></div><div class="views-field views-field-field-text-1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px;"><div class="field-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Mohammed Eliwa, a journalist reporting from al-Shifa hospital, told Al Jazeera Arabic that Israeli forces were shooting anyone moving in the courtyards. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Hamadah Abdel Hadi, an activist also inside the hospital, said Israeli forces broke into the hospital and immediately targeted Al Jazeera staff. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ismail_gh2?lang=en" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0076af; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Ismail Alghoul</a>, the network's correspondent, was beaten and dragged before getting arrested. Broadcast vehicles in the hospital were also destroyed, Al Jazeera said. </p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The Gaza-based government media office condemned the raid as a "war crime" and part of a "deliberate" Israeli policy to "eliminate the health sector and destroy hospitals". </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">It said the Israeli army stormed al-Shifa with tanks, heavily armed soldiers and drones, "and began shooting inside the complex, which sparked fear and panic among the wounded, sick, and displaced".</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">"This threatens the lives of thousands of people inside," it added. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The Israeli military said the operation in al-Shifa was launched based on information that Hamas officials were in the area and repeated claims that the hospital was recently being used as a "command centre".</p><div class="mee-readmore mee-readmore-article-story mee-readmore-type-image align-right" style="background-color: #f9f7f5; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; float: right; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 26px; margin-left: 14px; padding: 0px; width: 328px;"><a class="mee-readmore-img-link" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-how-did-hospitals-gaza-become-primary-targets" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0076af; height: 205px; text-decoration-line: none; width: 328px;" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="mee-readmore-image" height="250" loading="lazy" src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/shifa-babies-incubators-november-2023.jpg.webp?itok=24h858lb" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="400" /></a><div class="mee-readmore-description" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 25px; margin: 18px 10px 0px;">How and why did Gaza hospitals become primary targets?</div><a class="mee-readmore-link" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-how-did-hospitals-gaza-become-primary-targets" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #51336f; display: inline-block; font-family: OpenSans, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin: 12px 0px 12px 10px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Read More »</a></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">It later said 80 people were detained from the hospital and that troops had "established control" over the facility. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Middle East Eye could not independently verify any of the military's claims, which were not backed by evidence. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Hamas said the raid on al-Shifa hospital was an expression of "confusion, chaos and hopelessness" by the Israeli army amid its inability to achieve the stated military goals. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Al-Shifa hospital, the biggest in the Gaza Strip before the war, was brought to its knees last year following a weeks-long Israeli raid in which doctors were detained and key medical equipment was destroyed. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The hospital has been providing basic first aid services since Israeli forces withdrew from its vicinity earlier this year. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The Monday raid comes as the Israeli government prepares to send a delegation to Qatar to participate in renewed indirect negotiations with Hamas. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">The Palestinian group put forth a new proposal for a deal to end the war in stages and swap prisoners. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Since the war started in October, Israeli forces have killed 31,600 Palestinians, including at least 13,000 children.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Over 73,000 have been wounded and an estimated 8,000 are missing and believed to be buried dead under rubble.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: Calluna, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 26px; margin: 26px 0px;">Palestinian attacks have killed more than 1,400 Israelis in the same period.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-72081357205720452672024-03-18T17:34:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:34:44.902-07:00Over 13,000 children killed in Gaza, others severely malnourished: UNICEF<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Israel has killed more than 13,000 <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2Fliveblog%2F2024%2F3%2F17%2Fisraels-war-on-gaza-live-13-aid-trucks-reach-north-malnutrition-doubles&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404733074%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=LpqjfaLYyGIw448MuJiA6UpA8Xwu%2FHmqQ8QxzUmKkpk%3D&reserved=0" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0059a5;">children
in Gaza</span></a> since October 7 while others are suffering from severe
malnutrition and do not “even have the energy to cry”, says the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“Thousands more have been injured or we can’t even determine where
they are. They may be stuck under rubble … We haven’t seen that rate of death
among children in almost any other conflict in the world,” UNICEF Executive
Director Catherine Russell told the CBS News network on Sunday.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; font-weight: normal; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-transform: uppercase;">KEEP READING<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span></b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Ffeatures%2F2024%2F3%2F17%2Fhow-yazan-starved-to-death-amid-israels-war-on-gaza%3Ftraffic_source%3DKeepReading&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404742729%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=oaO6iYu5tQ%2FsRHTXk1R8SvYAlGe2twLttf0T2%2FEHn8E%3D&reserved=0" style="text-align: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">How Yazan
starved to death amid Israel’s war on Gaza</span></a></span><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
</span></b><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span></b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2024%2F3%2F16%2Fun-acute-malnutrition-children-gaza-hamas-israel-truce-talks%3Ftraffic_source%3DKeepReading&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404750332%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Kug8AjhlPZavrc2xuoryD12NQ4SGyJwddsaoegLXMkw%3D&reserved=0" style="text-align: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">UN says
acute malnutrition spreading fast among children in Gaza</span></a></span><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
.</span></b><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fgallery%2F2024%2F3%2F13%2Fphotos-israel-strikes-un-warehouse-in-rafah-as-famine-looms-in-gaza%3Ftraffic_source%3DKeepReading&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404757667%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=lbg8pnaBtA13BOqJwY381ts85JPUEyLUF9q9Gqql50A%3D&reserved=0" style="text-align: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">Photos:
Israel strikes UN warehouse in Rafah as famine looms in Gaza</span></a></span><b><span style="color: #cd232c; font-family: "Verdana",sans-serif; font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
. </span></b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fprogram%2Fthe-bottom-line%2F2024%2F3%2F17%2Fprofessor-jeffrey-sachs-us-is-complicit-in-israeli-genocide%3Ftraffic_source%3DKeepReading&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404764894%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=jjZke13D7p35wqLrXCkzoTb78UqdhY1eCxBt4TOpNlc%3D&reserved=0" style="text-align: initial;" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Professor Jeffrey Sachs: ‘US is complicit in Israeli genocide’</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I have been in wards of children who are suffering from severe
anaemia malnutrition, the whole ward is absolutely quiet. Because the children,
the babies … don’t even have the energy to cry.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Russell said there were “very great bureaucratic challenges” moving
trucks into Gaza for aid and assistance as famine stalks more than two million
Palestinians since Israel’s “genocidal” war began.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fz09SkFT7kFA%3Ft%3D5&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404772178%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=9%2BLXChRnhLRrmzSyGldXQkO%2BZKJAymyUyetTeKckAZ8%3D&reserved=0" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #338fe9;">Children
are dying of malnutrition in Gaza | Al Jazeera Newsfeed</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fz09SkFT7kFA%3Ft%3D5&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404778993%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ycol2G4CcKQ%2Fad02utSbIstuJKZYjRWHzm6FWTgCFTw%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><img border="0" class="yiv7651066640ydp7d37fc63card-object-1 yiv7651066640ydp7d37fc63yahoo-ignore-inline-image yiv7651066640ydp7d37fc63ymail-preserve-class" height="36" id="_x0000_i1025" src="https://s.yimg.com/nq/storm/assets/enhancrV2/23/logos/youtube.png" style="margin-top: 3px; min-width: 36px;" /></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 style="line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #1d2228; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fz09SkFT7kFA%3Ft%3D5&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404785754%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=nU4zc2i7DpM5FyvHy5RejmKsh48Dmwcu0cA%2FmZKBAyI%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank"><span style="color: black;">Children are dying of malnutrition
in Gaza | Al Jazeera Newsfeed</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></h2>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Moreover, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), one in three children under the age of two in
northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished. The agency also warned that famine
is looming in the besieged enclave facing relentless Israeli bombing for more
than five months.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">International criticism has mounted on Israel due to the death
toll of the war, the starvation crisis in Gaza, and allegations of blocking aid
deliveries into the enclave.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2024%2F3%2F17%2Fnetanyahu-repeats-rafah-assault-threat-says-civilians-wont-be-locked-in&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404792875%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=EdU4KfGPIrIzG0v1cXS4rpasZ%2BUe7hAdxYXZBu6kMCQ%3D&reserved=0" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0059a5;">threat
of a ground assault</span></a> on Rafah, the town bordering Egypt where
more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge.“No amount of international
pressure will stop us from realising all the goals of the war: eliminating
Hamas, releasing all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a
threat against Israel,” Netanyahu said in a video released by his office.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“To do this, we will also operate in Rafah,” he said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FJLwBlCH8_nM%3Ft%3D6&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C64732fced6e440dba79208dc479b7f66%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463980404800111%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=26BT9S4xJjvGeXVqx45eplG73nuwDOsuPQEYNY049do%3D&reserved=0" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #338fe9;">Palestinians
queue for flour as aid convoy reaches northern Gaza</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><img border="0" class="yiv7651066640ydp9ecb77eacard-object-1 yiv7651066640ydp9ecb77eayahoo-ignore-inline-image yiv7651066640ydp9ecb77eaymail-preserve-class" height="36" id="_x0000_i1026" src="https://s.yimg.com/nq/storm/assets/enhancrV2/23/logos/youtube.png" style="margin-top: 3px; min-width: 36px;" /><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 style="line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #1d2228; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Palestinians
queue for flour as aid convoy reaches northern Gaza<o:p></o:p></span></h2>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Since October 7,
Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 31,645 Palestinians in Gaza,
mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced
nearly two million of its residents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Israeli operation has also led to accusations of genocide,
being probed at the UN’s International Court of Justice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Israel has repeatedly denied the genocide charges and stressed
that it is acting in self-defence after the October 7 attack by Hamas that it
says killed more than 1,130 people and took more than 200 as captives.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #595959; font-family: Roboto; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-transform: uppercase;">SOURCE: NEWS
AGENCIES<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-50307046171400900562024-03-18T17:33:00.000-07:002024-03-18T17:33:16.559-07:00 BJP rule and threats to Indian Democracy: Constitution<div style="text-align: left;"> <b style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">BJP rule and threats to Indian Democracy: Constitution</span></b></div>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;">Ram Puniyani</span></i><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;">The leaders of BJP, the ruling dispensation have been claiming
to be winning more that 400 (370BJP +30 Allies) seats in the forthcoming
parliamentary elections (<i>Char sau paar</i>) of 2024. This is not based
on any psephological analysis but purely propagated for political reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;">Justifying this ‘<i>char sau par</i>’ the Karnataka BJP MP of
long standing Anantkumar Hegde explained the need for such a figure. As per him
BJP intends to change the Constitution for which 2/3<sup>rd</sup> majority
is needed. In a public meeting he stated, <span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">that the party needs 400 seats to change the Constitution, “If the
Constitution has to be amended -- the Congress fundamentally distorted the
Constitution by forcefully filling unnecessary things in it (added, secularism,
socialism), especially by bringing in laws that were aimed at <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ndtv.com%2Findia-news%2Fanantkumar-hegde-bjp-mps-constitution-change-remark-may-cost-him-poll-pass-say-sources-5216283&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979496932778%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=dLbejCXAfL0FtFYhnDpGnNQIheK1HfoSTd3cGUGWCQk%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">suppressing the</a> Hindu society -- if all of this has to
be changed, it is not possible with this (current) majority,"</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="yiv3992151149msonormal" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 10.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "Helvetica",sans-serif;">BJP distanced itself
from this statement of the sitting MP, as if they do not really approve of such
a statement. There are some news items saying that due to this statement he may
be denied the ticket. Whether he is denied a ticket on <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOzopdMHpBTc&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497060853%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=UXPbTWCXmsmzyT9PR4D3pDPuta8B0A71KX1SyNZxuNo%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;">this</span></a> ground
or not; one thing is sure that BJP has no aversion to such statements. This MP
had said the same thing in 2017, <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOzopdMHpBTc&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497069699%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=O5NHIVqHTw6AndV3iZLZEObbmgvkrTDYWqXEUXyPVro%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">when he</a> was a Central minister in the BJP government.
He was duly given the ticket from this party in 2019 General elections by BJP.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif;">Rahul Gandhi, Congress MP, and many others feel that
what Hegde is saying is precisely what explains the figure of 400. </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The statement
of the BJP MP that he needs 400 seats to change the Constitution is a public
declaration of the hidden agenda of <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hindustantimes.com%2Ftopic%2Fnarendra-modi&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497076511%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=gshuexY2n5Q9sJKrM3ewWfGbn5%2F6p0kSi37y9IaQghs%3D&reserved=0" style="outline: none;" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;">Narendra
Modi</span></a> and his 'Sangh Parivar'. The ultimate goal of Narendra
Modi and the BJP is to destroy Baba Saheb's Constitution. They hate justice,
equality, civil rights and democracy,”<a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hindustantimes.com%2Findia-news%2Fwatch-congress-launches-nyay-geet-featuring-rahul-gandhi-ahead-of-lok-sabha-elections-101710037070786.html&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497085386%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hzL%2Bz23HczqKa3Eor%2FZho%2Bi3aqWiNGOCH0MaPD3xcY8%3D&reserved=0" style="outline: none;" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;"> Rahul
Gandhi</span></a> wrote in Hindi on X (formally Twitter).</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif;"> </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin: 0in; outline: none;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif;">The former Congress
president <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hindustantimes.com%2Findia-news%2Frahul-gandhi-reacts-to-bjp-mps-constitution-400-seats-remarks-pm-modis-hidden-agenda-101710058422017-amp.html%3Futm_campaign%3Dfullarticle%26utm_medium%3Dreferral%26utm_source%3Dinshorts&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497093295%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=hNrU%2FZSDoKKKButYM2gqJ1sz1c7TGdYc78l1pzE%2BxD0%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">also alleged</a> that “by dividing society, guarding the
freedom of expression and crippling independent institutions, they want to turn
India's great democracy into a narrow dictatorship by conspiring to eliminate
the opposition”.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 23.85pt; margin-bottom: 4.55pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<h1 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 4.55pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The BJP has a twin track
strategy to undermine the democratic values, the values of equality of our
Constitution. Its parent organization RSS opposed the constitution right from
the beginning. After the Indian Constitution came into being RSS unofficial
mouthpiece Organiser wrote,</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“…In Our Constitution, There Is No Mention of That Unique
Constitutional Development in Ancient Bharat. To This Day His Laws As
Enunciated In The Manusmriti Excite The Admiration Of The World And Elicit Spontaneous
Obedience And Conformity. But To Our Constitutional Pundits That Means
Nothing.”</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<h1 style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 4.55pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 11.0pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When BJP came to power as
NDA in 1998 one of the first things it did was to appoint a commission to review
the Constitution. This Commission’s, (Venkatchaliah Commission), report could
not be undertaken for implementation as there was a severe opposition to any
tampering with our Constitution. From 2014, when BJP has been in power; times
and over again it has used the preamble of our Constitution by deleting the
words Secular and Socialist.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif;">Prior to this when K.Sudarshan
became the Chief of RSS in 2000, he frankly stated that the Indian Constitution
is based on Western values so should be replaced by one based on Indian holy
books. “</span><span style="font-family: New, serif;">Sudarshan said
the constitution was of no use for the people of the country as it was based on
the Government of India Act of 1935, …We need not fight shy of <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwocircles.net%2F2007jun08%2Fconstitution-root-cause-countrys-ills-rss-chief.html&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497100608%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=PYDERaQXImUjVpeHygVlMe48maeVlpJH9mpUYYI0Pg4%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">altering the</a> constitution completely,…" </span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">Not too long ago, Chief of PM’s
economic advisory council, Dr. Vivek Debroy <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Findianexpress.com%2Farticle%2Findia%2Fbibek-debroy-article-for-new-constitution-pm-panel-says-not-our-view-8897462%2F&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497107963%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=27eB18aUfYEgUyv3Lz1OYHLi5G%2BHM5q2PlvR4hwv%2Bis%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">had also</a> called for a change of constitution in a lead
article in Livemint on August 15, 2023. So voices of major stature from within
the BJP organization and state officials do keep raising such voices while officially
the BJP or BJP led Government makes the show of distancing itself from such
utterances.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">On another track; since BJP has
been in power for the last one decade, what has it done to the core value of
the Indian Constitution: Democracy and equality? As far as democracy is
concerned, all the pillars of democratic state, Constitutional institutions ED,
CBI, IT, EC all are being controlled by the executive and the executive itself
is restricted to one person. The Judiciary at various levels has been weakened
by various mechanisms. There are numerous examples of this; one such being the
detention of Umar Khaild and refusal to hear his bail plea from the last three
years.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">Freedom of expression is down in
the dumps. With the mainstream media under the belt of pro Government
Corporate, it is the Voice of Ruling Government which is broadcast through
major TV channels and newspapers. The independent voices have limited space
available to articulate their opinions. Freedom of Expression; the major pillar
of a democratic society has gone for a toss.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">Freedom of Religion has been
declining with many International indices. ‘India as a country of particular
concern,’ is the label for India as per US <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Findianexpress.com%2Farticle%2Findia%2Fdesignate-india-as-country-of-particular-concern-us-religious-freedom-watchdog-9071092%2F&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497115352%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=VR8KTqB87xTJ3hM%2Bp7jCTTIgxlKjXjq8KGAvMvlqg%2Bo%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">freedom of religion</a> watchdog. As per V-Dem India
ranked 104 <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fthewire.in%2Frights%2Findia-ranked-104-between-niger-and-ivory-coast-on-the-liberal-democracy-index-report&data=05%7C02%7Chabib.siddiqui%40basf.com%7C91ace0ba8e0349740dfc08dc479b4aad%7Cecaa386bc8df4ce0ad01740cbdb5ba55%7C0%7C0%7C638463979497123064%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=aHITPrZaiJNS%2F9BHO0S2bRNMadOcbAsdcDLoRSkvkEI%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank">on democracy</a> Index, between Niger and Ivory Coast!
This is what has happened during the last ten years, to practically denigrate
the democratic freedoms through executive actions leading to such a drastic
fall in democratic index.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">Not long ago it was Lal Krishna
Advani, who had said that India is living through an undeclared emergency. All
the components of freedom have been stifled through the foot soldiers of Hindu
nationalists apart from state officials, while the ruling Governments merrily
looks the other way around, a clear signal to these elements that this regime
grants full impunity to violations of democratic rights of minorities and
weaker sections of society.</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: 11.95pt; margin-bottom: 16.85pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: New, serif;">As such if we look around every
‘religious nationalist’ outfit is averse to democratic freedoms. They do resort
to tuning their constitutions in such a direction, also their ground level
workers resort to the actions promoting divisive and oppressive politics. India
is joining this club of ‘Democracy suppressors’ like Pakistan or Sri Lanka. BJP
is resorting to twin track politics, aiming for changing the Constitution on
one hand and practically undermining it, on the other!</span><span style="color: #26282a; font-family: "New",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"></span>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-56641021422942926262024-03-18T09:54:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:55:45.479-07:00LRB: The Shoah after Gaza by Pankaj Mishra<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n06/pankaj-mishra/the-shoah-after-gaza?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240313newissue-USAU&utm_content=20240313newissue-USAU+CID_b221188f8874ec022ef2b2f3bfc6fa1e&utm_source=LRB%20email&utm_term=Read%20more">Pankaj Mishra · The Shoah after Gaza (lrb.co.uk)</a> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fafaf7; color: #494746; font-family: inherit; font-size: 101px; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: -2px;">I</span><span class="smallcapslede smallcapslede-spaced lrb-t-cac" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">n</span><span style="background-color: #fafaf7; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-size: 20px;"> 1977, a year before he killed himself, the Austrian writer Jean Améry came across press reports of the systematic torture of Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons. Arrested in Belgium in 1943 while distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, Améry himself had been brutally tortured by the Gestapo, and then deported to Auschwitz. He managed to survive, but could never look at his torments as things of the past. He insisted that those who are tortured remain tortured, and that their trauma is irrevocable. Like many survivors of Nazi death camps, Améry came to feel an ‘existential connection’ to Israel in the 1960s. He obsessively attacked left-wing critics of the Jewish state as ‘thoughtless and unscrupulous’, and may have been one of the first to make the claim, habitually amplified now by Israel’s leaders and supporters, that virulent antisemites disguise themselves as virtuous anti-imperialists and anti-Zionists. Yet the ‘admittedly sketchy’ reports of torture in Israeli prisons prompted Améry to consider the limits of his solidarity with the Jewish state. In one of the last essays he published, he wrote: ‘I urgently call on all Jews who want to be human beings to join me in the radical condemnation of systematic torture. Where barbarism begins, even existential commitments must end.’</span></div><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Améry was particularly disturbed by the apotheosis in 1977 of Menachem Begin as Israel’s prime minister. Begin, who had organised the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in which 91 people were killed, was the first of the frank exponents of Jewish supremacism who continue to rule Israel. He was also the first routinely to invoke Hitler and the Holocaust and the Bible while assaulting Arabs and building settlements in the Occupied Territories. In its early years the state of Israel had an ambivalent relationship with the Shoah and its victims. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, initially saw Shoah survivors as ‘human debris’, claiming that they had survived only because they had been ‘bad, harsh, egotistic’. It was Ben-Gurion’s rival Begin, a demagogue from Poland, who turned the murder of six million Jews into an intense national preoccupation, and a new basis for Israel’s identity. The Israeli establishment began to produce and disseminate a very particular version of the Shoah that could be used to legitimise a militant and expansionist Zionism.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Améry noted the new rhetoric and was categorical about its destructive consequences for Jews living outside Israel. That Begin, ‘with the Torah in his arm and taking recourse to biblical promises’, speaks openly of stealing Palestinian land ‘alone would be reason enough’, he wrote, ‘for the Jews in the diaspora to review their relationship to Israel’. Améry pleaded with Israel’s leaders to ‘acknowledge that your freedom can be achieved only <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">with</em> your Palestinian cousin, not against him’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Five years later, insisting that Arabs were the new Nazis and Yasser Arafat the new Hitler, Begin assaulted Lebanon. By the time Ronald Reagan accused him of perpetrating a ‘holocaust’ and ordered him to end it, the Israel Defence Forces (<span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">IDF</span>) had killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese and obliterated large parts of Beirut. In his novel <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Kapo</em> (1993), the Serbian-Jewish author Aleksandar Tišma captures the revulsion many survivors of the Shoah felt at the images coming out of Lebanon: ‘Jews, his kinsmen, the sons and grandsons of his contemporaries, former inmates of the camps, stood in tank turrets and drove, flags waving, through undefended settlements, through human flesh, ripping it apart with machine-gun bullets, rounding up the survivors in camps fenced off with barbed wire.’</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Primo Levi, who had known the horrors of Auschwitz at the same time as Améry and also felt an emotional affinity to the new Jewish state, quickly organised an open letter of protest and gave an interview in which he said that ‘Israel is rapidly falling into total isolation<span class="ellipsis" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><nobr style="box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; outline: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important;"> <span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></nobr></span> We must choke off the impulses towards emotional solidarity with Israel to reason coldly on the mistakes of Israel’s current ruling class. Get rid of that ruling class.’ In several works of fiction and non-fiction, Levi had meditated not only on his time in the death camp and its anguished and insoluble legacy, but also on the ever present threats to human decency and dignity. He was especially incensed by Begin’s exploitation of the Shoah. Two years later, he argued that ‘the centre of gravity of the Jewish world must turn back, must move out of Israel and back into the diaspora.’</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Misgivings of the kind expressed by Améry and Levi are condemned as grossly antisemitic today. It’s worth remembering that many such re-examinations of Zionism and anxieties about the perception of Jews in the world were incited among survivors and witnesses of the Shoah by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and its manipulative new mythology. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a theologian who won the Israel Prize in 1993, was already warning in 1969 against the ‘Nazification’ of Israel. In 1980, the Israeli columnist Boaz Evron carefully described the stages of this moral corrosion: the tactic of conflating Palestinians with Nazis and shouting that another Shoah is imminent was, he feared, liberating ordinary Israelis from ‘any moral restrictions, since one who is in danger of annihilation sees himself exempted from any moral considerations which might restrict his efforts to save himself’. Jews, Evron wrote, could end up treating ‘non-Jews as subhuman’ and replicating ‘racist Nazi attitudes’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Evron urged caution, too, against Israel’s (then new and ardent) supporters in the Jewish American population. For them, he argued, championing Israel had become ‘necessary because of the loss of any other focal point to their Jewish identity’ – indeed, so great was their existential lack, according to Evron, that they did not wish Israel to become free of its mounting dependence on Jewish American support.</p><blockquote style="background-color: #fafaf7; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: none; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.444em; margin: 24px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 24px; quotes: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">They need to feel needed. They also need the ‘Israeli hero’ as a social and emotional compensation in a society in which the Jew is not usually perceived as embodying the characteristics of the tough manly fighter. Thus, the Israeli provides the American Jew with a double, contradictory image – the virile superman, and the potential Holocaust victim – both of whose components are far from reality.</p></blockquote><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Zygmunt Bauman, the Polish-born Jewish philosopher and refugee from Nazism who spent three years in Israel in the 1970s before fleeing its mood of bellicose righteousness, despaired of what he saw as the ‘privatisation’ of the Shoah by Israel and its supporters. It has come to be remembered, he wrote in 1988, ‘as a private experience of the Jews, as a matter between the Jews and their haters’, even as the conditions that made it possible were appearing again around the world. Such survivors of the Shoah, who had been plunged from a serene belief in secular humanism into collective insanity, intuited that the violence they had survived – unprecedented in its magnitude – wasn’t an aberration in an essentially sound modern civilisation. Nor could it be blamed entirely on a hoary prejudice against Jews. Technology and the rational division of labour had enabled ordinary people to contribute to acts of mass extermination with a clear conscience, even with frissons of virtue, and preventive efforts against such impersonal and available modes of killing required more than vigilance against antisemitism.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">When I recently turned to my books to prepare this piece, I found I’d already underlined many of passages I quote here. In my diary there are lines copied from George Steiner (‘the nation-state bristling with arms is a bitter relic, an absurdity in the century of crowded men’) and Abba Eban (‘It is about time that we stand on our own feet and not on those of the six million dead’). Most of these annotations date back to my first visit to Israel and its Occupied Territories, when I was seeking to answer, in my innocence, two perplexing questions: how did Israel come to exercise such a terrible power of life and death over a population of refugees; and how can the Western political and journalistic mainstream ignore, even justify, its clearly systematic cruelties and injustices?</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">I had grown up imbibing some of the reverential Zionism of my family of upper-caste Hindu nationalists in India. Both Zionism and Hindu nationalism emerged in the late 19<span class="ord" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> century out of an experience of humiliation; many of their ideologists longed to overcome what they perceived as a shameful lack of manhood among Jews and Hindus. And for Hindu nationalists in the 1970s, impotent detractors of the then ruling pro-Palestinian Congress party, uncompromising Zionists such as Begin, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir seemed to have won the race to muscular nationhood. (The envy is now out of the closet: Hindu trolls constitute Benjamin Netanyahu’s largest fan club in the world.) I remember I had a picture on my wall of Moshe Dayan, the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">IDF</span> chief of staff and defence minister during the Six-Day War; and even long after my childish infatuation with crude strength faded, I did not cease to see Israel the way its leaders had from the 1960s begun to present the country, as redemption for the victims of the Shoah, and an unbreakable guarantee against its recurrence.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">I knew how little the plight of Jews scapegoated during Germany’s social and economic breakdown in the 1920s and 1930s had registered in the conscience of Western European and American leaders, that even Shoah survivors were met with a cold shoulder, and, in Eastern Europe, with fresh pogroms. Though convinced of the justice of the Palestinian cause, I found it hard to resist the Zionist logic: that Jews cannot survive in non-Jewish lands and must have a state of their own. I even thought it was unjust that Israel alone among all the countries in the world needed to justify its right to exist.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">I wasn’t naive enough to think that suffering ennobles or empowers the victims of a great atrocity to act in a morally superior way. That yesterday’s victims are very likely to become today’s victimisers is the lesson of organised violence in the former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Congo, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and too many other places. I was still shocked by the dark meaning the Israeli state had drawn from the Shoah, and then institutionalised in a machinery of repression. The targeted killings of Palestinians, checkpoints, home demolitions, land thefts, arbitrary and indefinite detentions, and widespread torture in prisons seemed to proclaim a pitiless national ethos: that humankind is divided into those who are strong and those who are weak, and so those who have been or expect to be victims should pre-emptively crush their perceived enemies.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Though I had read Edward Said, I was still shocked to discover for myself how insidiously Israel’s high-placed supporters in the West conceal the nihilistic survival-of-the-strongest ideology reproduced by all Israeli regimes since Begin’s. It is in their own interests to be concerned with the crimes of the occupiers, if not with the suffering of the dispossessed and dehumanised; but both have passed without much scrutiny in the respectable press of the Western world. Anyone calling attention to the spectacle of Washington’s blind commitment to Israel is accused of antisemitism and ignoring the lessons of the Shoah. And a distorted consciousness of the Shoah ensures that whenever the victims of Israel, unable to endure their misery any longer, rise up against their oppressors with predictable ferocity, they are denounced as Nazis, hellbent on perpetrating another Shoah.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp has-dropcap" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="dropcaps dropcap--i" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 101px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 60px; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 42px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 12px !important; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px 12px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 28px 8px 20px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">I</span><span class="smallcapslede smallcapslede-spaced lrb-t-cac" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">n reading</span> and annotating the writings of Améry, Levi and others I was trying somehow to mitigate the oppressive sense of wrongness I felt after being exposed to Israel’s bleak construal of the Shoah, and the certificates of high moral merit bestowed on the country by its Western allies. I was looking for reassurance from people who had known, in their own frail bodies, the monstrous terror visited on millions by a supposedly civilised European nation-state, and who had resolved to be on perpetual guard against the deformation of the Shoah’s meaning and the abuse of its memory.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite its increasing reservations about Israel, a political and media class in the West has ceaselessly euphemised the stark facts of military occupation and unchecked annexation by ethnonational demagogues: Israel, the chorus goes, has the right, as the Middle East’s only democracy, to defend itself, especially from genocidal brutes. As a result, the victims of Israeli barbarity in Gaza today cannot even secure straightforward recognition of their ordeal from Western elites, let alone relief. In recent months, billions of people around the world have witnessed an extraordinary onslaught whose victims, as Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, an Irish lawyer who is South Africa’s representative at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, put it, ‘are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain, hope that the world might do something’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">But the world, or more specifically the West, doesn’t do anything. Worse, the liquidation of Gaza, though outlined and broadcast by its perpetrators, is daily obfuscated, if not denied, by the instruments of the West’s military and cultural hegemony: from the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span> president claiming that Palestinians are liars and European politicians intoning that Israel has a right to defend itself to the prestigious news outlets deploying the passive voice while relating the massacres carried out in Gaza. We find ourselves in an unprecedented situation. Never before have so many witnessed an industrial-scale slaughter in real time. Yet the prevailing callousness, timidity and censorship disallows, even mocks, our shock and grief. Many of us who have seen some of the images and videos coming out of Gaza – those visions from hell of corpses twisted together and buried in mass graves, the smaller corpses held by grieving parents, or laid on the ground in neat rows – have been quietly going mad over the last few months. Every day is poisoned by the awareness that while we go about our lives hundreds of ordinary people like ourselves are being murdered, or being forced to witness the murder of their children.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Those driven to scan Joe Biden’s face for some sign of mercy, some sign of an end to bloodletting, find an eerily smooth hardness, broken only by a nervous little smirk when he blurts out Israeli lies about beheaded babies. Biden’s stubborn malice and cruelty to the Palestinians is just one of many gruesome riddles presented to us by Western politicians and journalists. The Shoah traumatised at least two Jewish generations, and the massacres and hostage-taking in Israel on 7 October by Hamas and other Palestinian groups rekindled a fear of collective extermination among many Jews. But it was clear from the start that the most fanatical Israeli leadership in history would not shrink from exploiting a widespread sense of violation, bereavement and horror. It would have been easy for Western leaders to choke off their impulse of unconditional solidarity with an extremist regime while also acknowledging the necessity of pursuing and bringing to justice those guilty of war crimes on 7 October. Why then did Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, assert that Israel has the right to ‘withhold power and water’ from Palestinians? Why did Germany feverishly start selling more arms to Israel (and with its mendacious media and ruthless official crackdown, especially on Jewish artists and thinkers, provide a fresh lesson to the world in murderous ethnonationalism’s quick ascent there)? What explains headlines on the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">BBC</span> and in the <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</em> like ‘Hind Rajab, six, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help’, ‘Tears of Gaza father who lost 103 relatives’ and ‘Man Dies after Setting Himself on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy in Washington, Police Say’? Why have Western politicians and journalists kept presenting tens of thousands of dead and maimed Palestinians as collateral damage, in a war of self-defence forced on the world’s most moral army, as the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">IDF</span> claims to be?</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The answers for many people around the world cannot but be tainted by a long-simmering racial bitterness. Palestine, as George Orwell pointed out in 1945, is a ‘colour issue’, and this is the way it was inevitably seen by Gandhi, who pleaded with Zionist leaders not to resort to terrorism against Arabs using Western arms, and the postcolonial nations, which almost all refused to recognise the state of Israel. What <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">W.E.B.</span> Du Bois called the central problem of international politics – the ‘colour line’ – motivated Nelson Mandela when he said that South Africa’s freedom from apartheid is ‘incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians’. James Baldwin sought to profane what he termed a ‘pious silence’ around Israel’s behaviour when he claimed that the Jewish state, which sold arms to the apartheid regime in South Africa, embodied white supremacy not democracy. Muhammad Ali saw Palestine as an instance of gross racial injustice. So, today, do the leaders of the United States’s oldest and most prominent Black Christian denominations, who have accused Israel of genocide and asked Biden to end all financial as well as military aid to the country.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">In 1967, Baldwin was tactless enough to say that the suffering of Jewish people ‘is recognised as part of the moral history of the world’ and ‘this is not true for the blacks.’ In 2024, many more people can see that, when compared with the Jewish victims of Nazism, the countless millions consumed by slavery, the numerous late Victorian holocausts in Asia and Africa, and the nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are barely remembered. Billions of non-Westerners have been furiously politicised in recent years by the West’s calamitous war on terror, ‘vaccine apartheid’ during the pandemic, and the barefaced hypocrisy over the plight of Ukrainians and Palestinians; they can hardly fail to notice a belligerent version of ‘Holocaust denial’ among the elites of former imperialist countries, who refuse to address their countries’ past of genocidal brutality and plunder and try hard to delegitimise any discussion of this as unhinged ‘wokeness’. Popular West-is-best accounts of totalitarianism continue to ignore the acute descriptions of Nazism (by Jawaharlal Nehru and Aimé Césaire, among other imperial subjects) as the radical ‘twin’ of Western imperialism; they shy away from exploring the obvious connection between the imperial slaughter of natives in the colonies and the genocidal terrors perpetrated against Jews inside Europe.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the great dangers today is the hardening of the colour line into a new Maginot Line. For most people outside the West, whose primordial experience of European civilisation was to be brutally colonised by its representatives, the Shoah did not appear as an unprecedented atrocity. Recovering from the ravages of imperialism in their own countries, most non-Western people were in no position to appreciate the magnitude of the horror the radical twin of that imperialism inflicted on Jews in Europe. So when Israel’s leaders compare Hamas to Nazis, and Israeli diplomats wear yellow stars at the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">UN</span>, their audience is almost exclusively Western. Most of the world doesn’t carry the burden of Christian European guilt over the Shoah, and does not regard the creation of Israel as a moral necessity to absolve the sins of 20<span class="ord" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span>-century Europeans. For more than seven decades now, the argument among the ‘darker peoples’ has remained the same: why should Palestinians be dispossessed and punished for crimes in which only Europeans were complicit? And they can only recoil with disgust from the implicit claim that Israel has the right to slaughter 13,000 children not only as a matter of self-defence but because it is a state born out of the Shoah.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp has-dropcap" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="dropcaps dropcap--i" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 101px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 60px; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 42px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 12px !important; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px 12px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 28px 8px 20px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">I</span><span class="smallcapslede smallcapslede-spaced lrb-t-cac" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">n</span> 2006, Tony Judt was already warning that ‘the Holocaust can no longer be instrumentalised to excuse Israel’s behaviour’ because a growing number of people ‘simply cannot understand how the horrors of the last European war can be invoked to license or condone unacceptable behaviour in another time and place’. Israel’s ‘long-cultivated persecution mania – “everyone’s out to get us” – no longer elicits sympathy’, he warned, and prophecies of universal antisemitism risk ‘becoming a self-fulfilling assertion’: ‘Israel’s reckless behaviour and insistent identification of all criticism with antisemitism is now the leading source of anti-Jewish sentiment in Western Europe and much of Asia.’ Israel’s most devout friends today are inflaming this situation. As the Israeli journalist and documentary maker Yuval Abraham put it, the ‘appalling misuse’ of the accusation of antisemitism by Germans empties it of meaning and ‘thus endangers Jews all over the world’. Biden keeps making the treacherous argument that the safety of the Jewish population worldwide depends on Israel. As the <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">New York Times</em> columnist Ezra Klein put it recently, ‘I’m a Jewish person. Do I feel safer? Do I feel like there’s less antisemitism in the world right now because of what is happening there, or does it seem to me that there’s a huge upsurge of antisemitism, and that even Jews in places that are not Israel are vulnerable to what happens in Israel?’</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">This ruinous scenario was very clearly anticipated by the Shoah survivors I quoted earlier, who warned of the damage inflicted on the memory of the Shoah by its instrumentalisation. Bauman warned repeatedly after the 1980s that such tactics by unscrupulous politicians like Begin and Netanyahu were securing ‘a post-mortem triumph for Hitler, who dreamed of creating conflict between Jews and the whole world’ and ‘preventing Jews from ever having peaceful coexistence with others’. Améry, made desperate in his last years by ‘burgeoning antisemitism’, pleaded with Israelis to treat even Palestinian terrorists humanely, so that the solidarity between diaspora Zionists like himself and Israel did not ‘become the basis for a communion of two doomed parties in the face of catastrophe’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">There isn’t much to be hoped for in this regard from Israel’s present leaders. The discovery of their extreme vulnerability to Hizbullah as well as Hamas should make them more willing to risk a compromise peace settlement. Yet, with all the 2000 lb bombs lavished on them by Biden, they crazily seek to further militarise their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Such self-harm is the long-term effect Boaz Evron feared when he warned against ‘the continuous mentioning of the Holocaust, antisemitism and the hatred of Jews in all generations’. ‘A leadership cannot be separated from its own propaganda,’ he wrote, and Israel’s ruling class act like the chieftains of a ‘sect’ operating ‘in the world of myths and monsters created by its own hands’, ‘no longer able to understand what is happening in the real world’ or the ‘historical processes in which the state is caught’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Forty-four years after Evron wrote this, it is clearer, too, that Israel’s Western patrons have turned out to be the country’s worst enemies, ushering their ward deeper into hallucination. As Evron said, Western powers act against their ‘own interests and apply to Israel a special preferential relationship, without Israel seeing itself obligated to reciprocate’. Consequently, ‘the special treatment given to Israel, expressed in unconditional economic and political support’ has ‘created an economic and political hothouse around Israel cutting it off from global economic and political realities’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Netanyahu and his cohort threaten the basis of the global order that was rebuilt after the revelation of Nazi crimes. Even before Gaza, the Shoah was losing its central place in our imagination of the past and future. It is true that no historical atrocity has been so widely and comprehensively commemorated. But the culture of remembrance around the Shoah has now accumulated its own long history. That history shows that the memory of the Shoah did not merely spring organically from what transpired between 1939 and 1945; it was constructed, often very deliberately, and with specific political ends. In fact, a necessary consensus about the Shoah’s universal salience has been endangered by the increasingly visible ideological pressures brought to bear on its memory.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">That Germany’s Nazi regime and its European collaborators had murdered six million Jews was widely known after 1945. But for many years this stupefying fact had little political and intellectual resonance. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Shoah was not seen as an atrocity separate from other atrocities of the war: the attempted extermination of Slav populations, Gypsies, disabled people and homosexuals. Of course, most European peoples had reasons of their own not to dwell on the killing of Jews. Germans were obsessed with their own trauma of bombing and occupation by Allied powers and their mass expulsion from Eastern Europe. France, Poland, Austria and the Netherlands, which had eagerly co-operated with the Nazis, wanted to present themselves as part of a valiant ‘resistance’ to Hitlerism. Too many indecent reminders of complicity existed long after the war ended in 1945. Germany had former Nazis as its chancellor and president. The French president François Mitterrand had been an apparatchik in the Vichy regime. As late as 1992, Kurt Waldheim was president of Austria despite there being evidence of his involvement in Nazi atrocities.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Even in the United States, there was ‘public silence and some sort of statist denial regarding the Holocaust’, as Idith Zertal writes in <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood</em> (2005). It wasn’t until long after 1945 that the Holocaust began to be publicly remembered. In Israel itself, awareness of the Shoah was limited for years to its survivors, who, astonishing to remember today, were drenched with contempt by the leaders of the Zionist movement. Ben-Gurion had initially seen Hitler’s rise to power as ‘a huge political and economic boost for the Zionist enterprise’, but he did not consider human debris from Hitler’s death camps as fit material for the construction of a strong new Jewish state. ‘Everything they had endured,’ Ben-Gurion said, ‘purged their souls of all good.’ Saul Friedlander, the foremost historian of the Shoah, who left Israel partly because he couldn’t bear to see the Shoah being used ‘as a pretext for harsh anti-Palestinian measures’, recalls in his memoir, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Where Memory Leads</em> (2016), that academic scholars initially spurned the subject, leaving it to the memorial and documentation centre Yad Vashem.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Attitudes began to change only with the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. In <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The Seventh Million</em> (1993), the Israeli historian Tom Segev recounts that Ben-Gurion, who was accused by Begin and other political rivals of insensitivity to Shoah survivors, decided to stage a ‘national catharsis’ by holding the trial of a Nazi war criminal. He hoped to educate Jews from Arab countries about the Shoah and European antisemitism (neither of which they were familiar with) and start binding them with Jews of European ancestry in what seemed all too clearly an imperfectly imagined community. Segev goes on to describe how Begin advanced this process of forging a Shoah consciousness among darker-skinned Jews who had long been the target of racist humiliations by the country’s white establishment. Begin healed their injuries of class and race by promising them stolen Palestinian land and a socioeconomic status above dispossessed and destitute Arabs.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">This distribution of the wages of Israeli-ness coincided with the eruption of identity politics among an affluent minority in the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span>. As Peter Novick clarifies in startling detail in <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The Holocaust in American Life</em> (1999), the Shoah ‘didn’t loom that large’ in the life of America’s Jews until the late 1960s. Only a few books and films touched on the subject. The film <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Judgment at Nuremberg</em> (1961) folded the mass murder of Jews into the larger category of the crimes of Nazism. In his essay ‘The Intellectual and Jewish Fate’, published in the Jewish magazine <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Commentary</em> in 1957, Norman Podhoretz, the patron saint of neoconservative Zionists in the 1980s, said nothing at all about the Holocaust.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Jewish organisations that became notorious for policing opinion about Zionism at first discouraged the memorialisation of Europe’s Jewish victims. They were scrambling to learn the new rules of the geopolitical game. In the chameleon-like shifts of the early Cold War, the Soviet Union moved from being a stalwart ally against Nazi Germany to a totalitarian evil; Germany moved from being a totalitarian evil to a stalwart democratic ally against totalitarian evil. Accordingly, the editor of <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Commentary</em> urged American Jews to nurture a ‘realistic attitude rather than a punitive and recriminatory one’ towards Germany, which was now a pillar of ‘Western democratic civilisation’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp has-dropcap" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="dropcaps dropcap--t" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 101px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 60px; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 42px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 10px !important; margin-top: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 28px 8px 20px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">T</span><span class="smallcapslede smallcapslede-spaced lrb-t-cac" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">his</span> extensive gaslighting by the free world’s political and intellectual leaders shocked and embittered many survivors of the Shoah. However, they weren’t then regarded as uniquely privileged witnesses of the modern world. Améry, who loathed the ‘obtrusive philosemitism’ of postwar Germany, was reduced to amplifying his private ‘resentments’ in essays aimed at ruffling the ‘miserable conscience’ of German readers. In one of these he describes travelling through Germany in the mid-1960s. While discussing Saul Bellow’s latest novel with the country’s new ‘refined’ intellectuals, he could not forget the ‘stony faces’ of ordinary Germans before a pile of corpses, and discovered that he bore a new ‘grudge’ against Germans and their exalted place in the ‘majestic halls of the West’. Améry’s experience of ‘absolute loneliness’ before his Gestapo torturers had destroyed his ‘trust in the world’. It was only after his liberation that he had again known ‘mutual understanding’ with the rest of humanity because ‘those who had tortured me and turned me into a bug’ seemed to provoke ‘contempt’. But his healing faith in the ‘equilibrium of world morality’ had quickly been shattered by the subsequent Western embrace of Germany, and the free world’s eager recruitment of former Nazis in its new ‘power game’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Améry would have felt even more betrayed if he had seen the staff memorandum of the American Jewish Committee in 1951, which regretted the fact that ‘for most Jews reasoning about Germany and Germans is still beclouded by strong emotion.’ Novick explains that American Jews, like other ethnic groups, were anxious to avoid the charge of dual loyalty and to take advantage of the dramatically expanding opportunities offered by postwar America. They became more alert to Israel’s presence during the extensively publicised and controversy-haunted Eichmann trial, which made inescapable the fact that Jews had been Hitler’s primary targets and victims. But it was only after the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when Israel seemed existentially threatened by its Arab enemies, that the Shoah came to be broadly conceived, in both Israel and the United States, as the emblem of Jewish vulnerability in an eternally hostile world. Jewish organisations started to deploy the motto ‘Never Again’ to lobby for American policies favourable to Israel. The <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span>, facing humiliating defeat in East Asia, began to see an apparently invincible Israel as a valuable proxy in the Middle East, and began its lavish subvention of the Jewish state. In turn, the narrative, promoted by Israeli leaders and American Zionist groups, that the Shoah was a present and imminent danger to Jews began to serve as a basis for collective self-definition for many Jewish Americans in the 1970s.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Jewish Americans were by then the most educated and prosperous minority group in America, and were increasingly irreligious. Yet, in the rancorously polarised American society of the late 1960s and 1970s, where ethnic and racial sequestration became common amid a widespread sense of disorder and insecurity, and historical calamity turned into a badge of identity and moral rectitude, more and more assimilated Jewish Americans affiliated themselves with the memory of the Shoah and forged a personal connection with an Israel they saw as menaced by genocidal antisemites. A Jewish political tradition preoccupied with inequality, poverty, civil rights, environmentalism, nuclear disarmament and anti-imperialism mutated into one characterised by a hyper-attentiveness to the Middle East’s only democracy. In the journals he kept from the 1960s onwards, the literary critic Alfred Kazin alternates between bafflement and scorn in charting the psycho-dramas of personal identity that helped to create Israel’s most loyal constituency abroad:</p><blockquote style="background-color: #fafaf7; border-bottom: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left: none; border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.444em; margin: 24px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 24px; quotes: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The present period of Jewish ‘success’ will some day be remembered as one of the greatest irony<span class="ellipsis" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><nobr style="box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; outline: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important;"> <span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></nobr></span> The Jews caught in a trap, the Jews murdered, and bango! Out of ashes all this inescapable lament and exploitation of the Holocaust<span class="ellipsis" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><nobr style="box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; outline: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important;"> <span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></nobr></span> Israel as the Jews’ ‘safeguard’; the Holocaust as our new Bible, more than a Book of Lamentations.</p></blockquote><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Kazin was allergic to the American cult of Elie Wiesel, who went around asserting that the Shoah was incomprehensible, incomparable and unrepresentable, and that Palestinians had no right to Jerusalem. In Kazin’s view, ‘the American Jewish middle class’ had found in Wiesel, a ‘Jesus of the Holocaust’, ‘a surrogate for their own religious vacancy’. The potent identity politics of an American minority was not lost on Primo Levi during his only visit to the country in 1985, two years before he killed himself. He had been profoundly disturbed by the culture of conspicuous Holocaust consumption around Wiesel (who claimed to have been Levi’s great friend in Auschwitz; Levi did not recall ever meeting him) and was puzzled by his American hosts’ voyeuristic obsession with his Jewishness. Writing to friends back in Turin he complained that Americans had ‘pinned a Star of David’ on him. At a talk in Brooklyn, Levi, asked for his opinion on Middle East politics, started to say that ‘Israel was a mistake in historical terms.’ An uproar ensued, and the moderator had to halt the meeting. Later that year, <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Commentary</em>, raucously pro-Israel by now, commissioned a 24-year-old wannabe neocon to launch venomous attacks on Levi. By Levi’s own admission, this intellectual thuggery (bitterly regretted by its now anti-Zionist author) helped extinguish his ‘will to live’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Recent American literature most clearly manifests the paradox that the more remote the Shoah grew in time the more fiercely its memory was possessed by later generations of Jewish Americans. I was shocked by the irreverence with which Isaac Bashevis Singer, born in 1904 in Poland and in many ways the 20<span class="ord" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> century’s quintessential Jewish writer, depicted Shoah survivors in his fiction, and derided both the state of Israel and the eager philosemitism of American gentiles. A novel like <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Shadows on the Hudson</em> almost seems designed to prove that oppression doesn’t improve moral character. But much younger and more secularised Jewish writers than Singer seemed too submerged in what Gillian Rose in her scathing essay on <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">Schindler’s List</em> called ‘Holocaust Piety’. In a review in the <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">LRB</em> (<a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n12/james-wood/tides-of-treacle" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(216, 216, 212); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.2s ease 0s, border-color 0.2s ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline; will-change: color, border-color;" title="">23 June 2005</a>) of <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The History of Love</em>, a novel by Nicole Krauss set in Israel, Europe and the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span>, James Wood pointed out that its author, born in 1974, ‘proceeds as if the Holocaust happened just yesterday’. The novel’s Jewishness had been, Wood wrote, ‘warped into fraudulence and histrionics by the force of Krauss’s identification with it’. Such ‘Jewish fervency’, bordering on ‘minstrelsy’, contrasted sharply with the work of Bellow and Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, who had ‘not shown a great interest in the shadow of the Shoah’.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">A strenuously willed affiliation with the Shoah has also marked and diminished much American journalism about Israel. More consequentially, the secular-political religion of the Shoah and the over-identification with Israel since the 1970s has fatally distorted the foreign policy of Israel’s main sponsor, the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span>. In 1982, shortly before Reagan bluntly ordered Begin to cease his ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon, a young <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span> senator who revered Elie Wiesel as his great teacher met the Israeli prime minister. In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children. Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span> president, Joe Biden. ‘No, sir,’ he insisted. ‘According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war<span class="ellipsis" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><nobr style="box-sizing: border-box; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; outline: none; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important;"> <span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><span class="ellipsis-dot" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums !important; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px 2px 0px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent !important; scrollbar-width: thin !important; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></nobr></span> This is a yardstick of human civilisation, not to hurt civilians.’</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp has-dropcap" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="dropcaps dropcap--a" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 101px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 60px; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 42px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 28px 8px 20px 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">A</span><span class="smallcapslede smallcapslede-spaced lrb-t-cac" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">long period</span> of relative peace has made most of us oblivious to the calamities that preceded it. Only a few people alive today can recall the experience of total war that defined the first half of the 20<span class="ord" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> century, the imperial and national struggles inside and outside Europe, the ideological mass mobilisation, the eruptions of fascism and militarism. Nearly half a century of the most brutal conflicts and the biggest moral breakdowns in history exposed the dangers of a world where no religious or ethical constraint existed over what human beings could do or dared to do. Secular reason and modern science, which displaced and replaced traditional religion, had not only revealed their incapacity to legislate human conduct; they were implicated in the new and efficient modes of slaughter demonstrated by Auschwitz and Hiroshima.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">In the decades of reconstruction after 1945, it slowly became possible to believe again in the concept of modern society, in its institutions as an unambiguously civilising force, in its laws as a defence against vicious passions. This tentative belief was enshrined and affirmed by a negative secular theology derived from the exposure of Nazi crimes: Never Again. The postwar’s own categorical imperative gradually acquired institutional form with the establishment of organisations like the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">ICJ</span> and the International Criminal Court and vigilant human rights outfits like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. A major document of the postwar years, the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, is suffused with the fear of repeating Europe’s past of racial apocalypse. In recent decades, as utopian imaginings of a better socioeconomic order faded, the ideal of human rights drew even more authority from memories of the great evil committed during the Shoah.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">From Spaniards fighting for reparative justice after long years of brutal dictatorships, Latin Americans agitating on behalf of their <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">desaparecidos</em> and Bosnians appealing for protection from Serbian ethnic-cleansers, to the Korean plea for redress for the ‘comfort women’ enslaved by the Japanese during the Second World War, memories of Jewish suffering at the hands of Nazis are the foundation on which most descriptions of extreme ideology and atrocity, and most demands for recognition and reparations, have been built.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">These memories have helped define the notions of responsibility, collective guilt and crimes against humanity. It is true that they have been continually abused by the exponents of military humanitarianism, who reduce human rights to the right not to be brutally murdered. And cynicism breeds faster when formulaic modes of Shoah commemoration – solemn-faced trips to Auschwitz, followed by effusive camaraderie with Netanyahu in Jerusalem – become the cheap price of the ticket to respectability for antisemitic politicians, Islamophobic agitators and Elon Musk. Or when Netanyahu grants moral absolution in exchange for support to frankly antisemitic politicians in Eastern Europe who continually seek to rehabilitate the fervent local executioners of Jews during the Shoah. Yet, in the absence of anything more effective, the Shoah remains indispensable as a standard for gauging the political and moral health of societies; its memory, though prone to abuse, can still be used to uncover more insidious iniquities. When I look at my own writings about the anti-Muslim admirers of Hitler and their malign influence over India today, I am struck by how often I have cited the Jewish experience of prejudice to warn against the barbarism that becomes possible when certain taboos are broken.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">All these universalist reference points – the Shoah as the measure of all crimes, antisemitism as the most lethal form of bigotry – are in danger of disappearing as the Israeli military massacres and starves Palestinians, razes their homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, bombs them into smaller and smaller encampments, while denouncing as antisemitic or champions of Hamas all those who plead with it to desist, from the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to the Spanish, Irish, Brazilian and South African governments and the Vatican. Israel today is dynamiting the edifice of global norms built after 1945, which has been tottering since the catastrophic and still unpunished war on terror and Vladimir Putin’s revanchist war in Ukraine. The profound rupture we feel today between the past and the present is a rupture in the moral history of the world since the ground zero of 1945 – the history in which the Shoah has been for many years the central event and universal reference.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">There are more earthquakes ahead. Israeli politicians have resolved to prevent a Palestinian state. According to a recent poll, an absolute majority (88 per cent) of Israeli Jews believe the extent of Palestinian casualties is justifiable. The Israeli government is blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. Biden now admits that his Israeli dependants are guilty of ‘indiscriminate bombing’, but compulsively hands out more and more military hardware to them. On 20 February, the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span> scorned for the third time at the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">UN</span> most of the world’s desperate wish to end the bloodbath in Gaza. On 26 February, while licking an ice-cream cone, Biden floated his own fantasy, quickly shot down by both Israel and Hamas, of a temporary ceasefire. In the United Kingdom, Labour as well as Tory politicians search for verbal formulas that can appease public opinion while providing moral cover to the carnage in Gaza. It hardly seems believable, but the evidence has become overwhelming: we are witnessing some kind of collapse in the free world.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">At the same time, Gaza has become for countless powerless people the essential condition of political and ethical consciousness in the 21<span class="ord" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">st</span> century – just as the First World War was for a generation in the West. And, increasingly, it seems that only those jolted into consciousness by the calamity of Gaza can rescue the Shoah from Netanyahu, Biden, Scholz and Sunak and re-universalise its moral significance; only they can be trusted to restore what Améry called the equilibrium of world morality. Many of the protesters who fill the streets of their cities week after week have no immediate relation to the European past of the Shoah. They judge Israel by its actions in Gaza rather than its Shoah-sanctified demand for total and permanent security. Whether or not they know about the Shoah, they reject the crude social-Darwinist lesson Israel draws from it – the survival of one group of people at the expense of another. They are motivated by the simple wish to uphold the ideals that seemed so universally desirable after 1945: respect for freedom, tolerance for the otherness of beliefs and ways of life; solidarity with human suffering; and a sense of moral responsibility for the weak and persecuted. These men and women know that if there is any bumper sticker lesson to be drawn from the Shoah, it is ‘Never Again for Anyone’: the slogan of the brave young activists of Jewish Voice for Peace.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">It is possible that they will lose. Perhaps Israel, with its survivalist psychosis, is not the ‘bitter relic’ George Steiner called it – rather, it is the portent of the future of a bankrupt and exhausted world. The full-throated endorsement of Israel by far-right figures like Javier Milei of Argentina and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and its patronage by countries where white nationalists have infected political life – the <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">US</span>, <span class="caps" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">UK</span>, France, Germany, Italy – suggests that the world of individual rights, open frontiers and international law is receding. It is possible that Israel will succeed in ethnically cleansing Gaza, and even the West Bank as well. There is too much evidence that the arc of the moral universe does not bend towards justice; powerful men can make their massacres seem necessary and righteous. It’s not at all difficult to imagine a triumphant conclusion to the Israeli onslaught.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">The fear of catastrophic defeat weighs on the minds of the protesters who disrupt Biden’s campaign speeches and are expelled from his presence to a chorus of ‘four more years’. Disbelief over what they see every day in videos from Gaza and the fear of more unbridled brutality hounds those online dissenters who daily excoriate the pillars of the Western fourth estate for their intimacy with brute power. Accusing Israel of committing genocide, they seem deliberately to violate the ‘moderate’ and ‘sensible’ opinion that places the country as well as the Shoah outside the modern history of racist expansionism. And they probably persuade no one in a hardened Western political mainstream.</p><p class="lrb-t-r lrb-t-mdp" style="background-color: #fafaf7; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #494746; font-family: Quadraat, TimesNewRoman, "Times New Roman", Times, Baskerville, Georgia, serif; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: oldstyle-nums; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 24px; outline: none; padding: 0px; scrollbar-color: rgb(232, 231, 221) transparent; scrollbar-width: thin; vertical-align: baseline;">But then Améry himself, when he addressed his resentments to the miserable conscience of his time, was ‘not at all speaking with the intention to convince; I just blindly throw my word onto the scale, whatever it may weigh.’ Feeling deceived and abandoned by the free world, he aired his resentments ‘in order that the crime become a moral reality for the criminal, in order that he be swept into the truth of his atrocity’. Israel’s clamorous accusers today seem to aim at little more. Against the acts of savagery, and the propaganda by omission and obfuscation, countless millions now proclaim, in public spaces and on digital media, their furious resentments. In the process, they risk permanently embittering their lives. But, perhaps, their outrage alone will alleviate, for now, the Palestinian feeling of absolute loneliness, and go some way towards redeeming the memory of the Shoah.</p><div><br /></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-793344774472636652024-03-18T09:53:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:53:26.814-07:00India's evolutionary past tied to huge migration 50,000 years ago and to now-extinct human relatives<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-size: 16px;">Researchers have gleaned new insights into India's evolutionary history after conducting the largest genome study of its kind.</span></div><div class="ad-unit" id="ad-unit-1" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">Scientists analyzed more than 2,700 modern Indian genomes from 17 states, including <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/37247-dna.html" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/37247-dna.html" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">DNA</u></a> from individuals from most geographic regions, speakers of all major languages, tribal and caste groups. </p><aside class="hawk-nest hawk-processed" data-render-type="fte" data-result="missing" data-skip="dealsy" data-widget-id="3eb9b2f7-a3fb-4b45-ad45-27b8ea33cacf" data-widget-type="seasonal" style="--amazon-orange: #ffce00; --amazon-prime-day-blue: #70b7d9; --available-from: var(--site-color); --black: #1b1b1b; --cc-border-color: var(--light-mid-grey); --cc-filters-title-color: var(--black); --checkbox-color: #c1c1c1; --comparison-load-more-background-color: #262626; --countdown-in-progress-color: var(--trd-pink); --dark-grey: #545454; --deal-hero-promo-background-progressive: transparent; --deal-hero-promo-background: var(--grey); --deal-hero-promo-color-progressive: #d21f26; --deal-hero-promo-color: #fff; --deal-widget-border-color: #ddd; --deal-widget-hero-box-shadow-color: #e9e9e93b; --description-hover-background: #cac7c7; --display-price-code-color: var(--site-color); --dotw-header-background: transparent; --dotw-header-border-bottom: 4px solid #006ea9; --dotw-header-border-top: 1px solid #ddd; --dotw-header-text-color: var(--black); --dotw-search-input-border-color: #ddd; --dotw-toggle-background-color: #1b1b1b; --editors-pick-background-color: #ededed; --editors-pick-promo-color: var(--trd-blue); --editors-pick-promo-rgba-color: rgba(47,110,145,.3); --editors-pick-voucher-background-color: #e6248a; --error-red: #f33f3f; --expanded-row-box-shadow: 4px 4px 20px var(--expanded-row-color); --expanded-row-color: var(--trd-blue); --filter-border-color: #c1c1c1; --filter-hover-border-color: #535353; --filter-selected-hover-border-color: #666; --game-platform-background: transparent; --game-platform-grey: #dbddde; --green: #3c8d0d; --grey: #adadad; --hawk-footer-background: var(--trd-grey); --hawk-footer-game-platform-border: solid 1px var(--game-platform-grey); --hawk-tab-background: #d6d6d6; --hawk-tab-text-color: #666; --heading-color: #2f6e91; --hover-panel-color: orange; --index-color: #999; --light-blue: #97edfc; --light-grey: #eaeaea; --light-mid-grey: #ccc; --lighter-mid-grey: #ebebeb; --merchant-link-border-radius: 3px; --merchant-link-mona-background-color: var(--site-color); --merchant-link-mona-text-color-hover: var(--white); --merchant-link-mona-text-color: var(--white); --mid-grey: #333; 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--seasonal-event-grey: #797979; --seasonal-event-merchants-background: var(--white); --seasonal-link-color: inherit; --shop-filter-button-background-color: var(--trd-blue); --shop-filter-button-text-color: var(--white); --shop-font-family-headings: "Source serif Pro",serif; --shop-font-family-secondary-text: sans-serif; --site-color-hover: #005f00; --site-color: #5aaf0b; --site-font-family: inherit; --sticky-promo-color: #e19c42; --tab-color: var(--trd-blue); --terms-conditions: #c0464a; --text-highlight: var(--site-color); --toggle-color: var(--trd-blue); --toggle-switch-color: var(--trd-blue); --trd-blue: #2f6e91; --trd-dark-blue: #315062; --trd-dark-grey: #333; --trd-grey: #ededed; --trd-light-pink: #ea489d; --trd-pink: #e6248a; --tv-channels-display-label-color: #696969; --user-input-color: #c1c1c1; --user-input-hover-color: #535353; --user-input-input-background: #f2f2f2; --user-input-input-error-color: #838383; --voucher-promo: #c0464a; --vulture-button-hover-underline: none; --was-price-light-promo-color: #ededed; --was-price-light-promo-text-color: #be0707; --was-price-promo-color: #be0707; --was-price-text-color: #848484; --white: #fff; --xbox-green: #107c10; --yellow: #ffd800; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;"><div class="hawk-master-widget-hawk-wrapper" style="all: inherit;"></div></aside><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">They revealed that one of the three main ancestral groups in India — ancient Iranian farmers — can be traced back to a group of agricultural farmers from Sarazm in modern-day Tajikistan. They also uncovered the extraordinary diversity of DNA inherited from <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/neanderthals-our-extinct-human-relatives" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/neanderthals-our-extinct-human-relatives" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Neanderthals</u></a> and <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/denisovans-extinct-human-relative" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/denisovans-extinct-human-relative" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Denisovans</u></a>, the closest, now-extinct relatives of modern humans. </p><div class="in-article ad-unit" id="desktop-in-article" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; height: 345px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto 50px; max-width: 480px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 480px;"><div class="trc_related_container trc_spotlight_widget trc_elastic trc_elastic_thumbnails-a-mid" data-placement-name="Mid Article" id="desktop-taboola-mid-article" observeid="tbl-observe-0 tbl-observe-3" style="border: 0px; clear: both; font-family: inherit; 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line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 169px; left: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"></div></div><iframe allow="autoplay" allowfullscreen="" height="169" id="goog_703643994" src="https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.627.0_en.html#goog_703643994" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color-scheme: light; contain: content; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; opacity: 1; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Advertisement" width="300"></iframe></div></div></div><div class="jw-plugin jw-reset" id="botr_0Gir9pgh_n8PLZiU4_div_jwpsrv" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; bottom: 66px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: all; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div><div class="jw-hidden-accessibility" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 1px; line-height: inherit; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 1px;"><span aria-live="assertive" class="jw-time-update" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">0 seconds of 30 seconds</span><span aria-live="assertive" class="jw-volume-update" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Volume 0%</span></div><div class="jw-controls jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 169px; inset: 0px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><div class="jw-display jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; flex-direction: column; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 169px; justify-content: center; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: relative; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: hidden; width: 300px;"><div class="jw-display-container jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="jw-display-controls jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: inline-block; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"></div></div></div><div class="jw-controlbar jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border-radius: 0px; border: none; bottom: 0px; box-shadow: none; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; flex-flow: column-reverse; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 169px; justify-content: center; left: 0px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: none; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; text-align: left; transition: opacity 250ms cubic-bezier(0, 0.25, 0.25, 1) 0s, visibility 250ms ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: hidden; width: 300px;"><div aria-label="Seek" aria-valuemax="30" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuenow="undefined" aria-valuetext="0 seconds of 30 seconds" class="jw-slider-time jw-chapter-slider-time jw-background-color jw-reset jw-slider-horizontal jw-reset" role="slider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background: none transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;" tabindex="-1"><div class="jw-slider-container jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; touch-action: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px; z-index: 1;"><div class="jw-reset jw-old-rail" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); backface-visibility: hidden; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><div aria-hidden="true" class="jw-timesegment jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; flex: 30 0 0px; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="jw-timesegment-resetter jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; top: 2.5px; transform: translate(0px, -50%) scale(1, 0.6); vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><div class="jw-timesegment-container jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="jw-timesegment-bar jw-progress jw-timesegment-progress jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background: rgb(242, 242, 242); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; top: auto; transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 38.9792px;"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="jw-reset jw-old-buffer" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 0px;"></div><div class="jw-reset jw-old-progress" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; vertical-align: baseline; width: 38.9792px;"></div></div></div><div class="jw-reset jw-button-container" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: flex-end; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; flex-flow: wrap; flex: 1 1 auto; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; justify-content: flex-start; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px 0px 7px; padding: 0px 12px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;"><div aria-label="Pause" class="jw-icon jw-icon-inline jw-button-color jw-reset jw-icon-playback" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8); cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 30px; justify-content: center; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: all; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px; z-index: 9995;" tabindex="0"><svg class="jw-svg-icon jw-svg-icon-pause" focusable="false" viewbox="0 0 240 240" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="M100,194.9c0.2,2.6-1.8,4.8-4.4,5c-0.2,0-0.4,0-0.6,0H65c-2.6,0.2-4.8-1.8-5-4.4c0-0.2,0-0.4,0-0.6V45c-0.2-2.6,1.8-4.8,4.4-5c0.2,0,0.4,0,0.6,0h30c2.6-0.2,4.8,1.8,5,4.4c0,0.2,0,0.4,0,0.6V194.9z M180,45.1c0.2-2.6-1.8-4.8-4.4-5c-0.2,0-0.4,0-0.6,0h-30c-2.6-0.2-4.8,1.8-5,4.4c0,0.2,0,0.4,0,0.6V195c-0.2,2.6,1.8,4.8,4.4,5c0.2,0,0.4,0,0.6,0h30c2.6,0.2,4.8-1.8,5-4.4c0-0.2,0-0.4,0-0.6V45.1z"></path></svg></div><div aria-label="Unmute button" class="jw-icon jw-icon-tooltip jw-icon-volume jw-button-color jw-reset jw-off" role="group" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8); cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 30px; justify-content: center; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: all; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px; z-index: 9995;" tabindex="0"><div aria-label="Volume" aria-orientation="vertical" aria-valuemax="100" aria-valuemin="0" aria-valuenow="0" aria-valuetext="Volume 0%" class="jw-overlay jw-reset" role="slider" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); background-color: transparent; border: 0px; bottom: 30px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; left: 22px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 44px; min-width: 44px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; transform: translate(-50%, 0px); transition: opacity 150ms cubic-bezier(0, 0.25, 0.25, 1) 0s, visibility 150ms ease 0s; vertical-align: baseline; width: 44px; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0"><div aria-hidden="true" class="jw-slider-volume jw-volume-tip jw-reset jw-slider-vertical" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; flex-direction: column; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 13px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="jw-slider-container jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); align-items: center; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; direction: ltr; display: flex; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 88px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; touch-action: none; vertical-align: baseline; width: 5px;"><div class="jw-rail jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); backface-visibility: hidden; background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.3); border: 0px; bottom: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: 88px; left: 2.5px; line-height: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; transform: translate(-50%, 0px); transition: transform 150ms ease-in-out 0s; vertical-align: baseline; width: 5px;"></div><div class="jw-buffer jw-reset" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); backface-visibility: hidden; background: rgba(242, 242, 242, 0.5); border: 0px; bottom: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; direction: ltr; float: none; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 1em; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; 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border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">Additionally, the team found that most of the genetic variation within the current Indian population stems from a single, major migration event of modern humans to India from Africa around 50,000 years ago. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">The researchers described their findings in a preprint paper published Feb. 20 on the <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.15.580575v2" href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.15.580575v2" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">bioRxiv</u></a> database. </p><div class="ad-unit" id="ad-unit-2" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Related: </span><a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/europeans-ancient-ancestors-passed-down-genes-tied-to-multiple-sclerosis-alzheimers-risk" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/health/genetics/europeans-ancient-ancestors-passed-down-genes-tied-to-multiple-sclerosis-alzheimers-risk" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Europeans' ancient ancestors passed down genes tied to multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's risk</span></u></a></p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">"South Asian populations are often underrepresented in genomic studies," <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://ekerdoncuff.github.io/" href="https://ekerdoncuff.github.io/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Elise Kerdoncuff</u></a>, lead study author and a population geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), told Live Science in an email. "Studying Indian populations helps us understand the history of India, and as our study demonstrates, it also provides valuable insights into broader aspects of human history." </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">Home to more than 1.4 billion people, India is one of the most populated countries in the world, with <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24932744/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24932744/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">more than 4,500 anthropologically well-defined populations</u></a>, including castes, tribes and religious groups. However, despite this extensive diversity, Indian populations have often been underrepresented in genomic studies, which have primarily <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-custom-tracking-id="4881305714470562184" data-google-interstitial="false" data-hawk-tracked="hawklinks" data-hl-processed="skimlinks" data-label="focused on people of European ancestry" data-merchant-id="undefined" data-merchant-name="SkimLinks - nature.com" data-merchant-network="undefined" data-merchant-url="undefined" data-placeholder-url="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X1590019&xcust=hawk-custom-tracking&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41576-022-00572-8%3Futm_medium%3Daffiliate%26utm_source%3Dcommission_junction%26utm_campaign%3DCONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK%26utm_content%3Dtextlink%26utm_term%3DPID100052172%26CJEVENT%3D1cd6e539dd6c11ee83df2acd0a82b836&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2Farchaeology%2Findias-evolutionary-past-tied-to-huge-migration-50000-years-ago-and-to-now-extinct-human-relatives" data-url="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-022-00572-8?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=CONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK&utm_content=textlink&utm_term=PID100052172&CJEVENT=1cd6e539dd6c11ee83df2acd0a82b836" href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=92X1590019&xcust=livescience_us_4881305714470562184&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41576-022-00572-8%3Futm_medium%3Daffiliate%26utm_source%3Dcommission_junction%26utm_campaign%3DCONR_PF018_ECOM_GL_PHSS_ALWYS_DEEPLINK%26utm_content%3Dtextlink%26utm_term%3DPID100052172%26CJEVENT%3D1cd6e539dd6c11ee83df2acd0a82b836&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2Farchaeology%2Findias-evolutionary-past-tied-to-huge-migration-50000-years-ago-and-to-now-extinct-human-relatives" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade" rel="sponsored noopener" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">focused on people of European ancestry</u></a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">To paint a clearer picture of genetic variation in India, the authors of the new study analyzed the genomes of thousands of individuals who participated in the <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513796/" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513796/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Longitudinal Aging Study in India-Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia</u></a> (LASI-DAD). Participants were over the age of 60 and agreed to have blood samples taken for analysis. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">Most Indians derive ancestry from <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat7487" href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat7487" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">three ancestral groups</u></a>: ancient Iranian farmers, Eurasian Steppe pastoralists and South Asian hunter-gatherers. Researchers already understood how the latter two groups came to India, but they didn't know how and when DNA from ancient Iranian farmers arrived in the region, co-senior study author <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://mcb.berkeley.edu/directory/search/detail/7359" href="https://mcb.berkeley.edu/directory/search/detail/7359" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Priya Moorjani</u></a>, an assistant professor of genetics, genomics, evolution and development at UCB, told Live Science in an email. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">In one analysis in the new study, the team compared the DNA of modern Indians to that of Iranian-related individuals from the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, to the Iron Age. They found that ancient Iranian-related DNA inherited by Indian populations originated from individuals from Sarazm from the early Neolithic. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">In a separate analysis, the researchers compared the DNA of modern Indians to that of sequenced Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes and found that Indians, <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493715/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34493715/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">like most non-Africans</u></a>, inherited between 1% and 2% of their DNA from these groups. This DNA is highly diverse: Almost 90% of all known Neanderthal genes found in humans outside of Africa were detected in the Indian genomes studied.</p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">The team also discovered that most of the genetic variation found in modern Indians comes from a single major migration of individuals from Africa 50,000 years ago. This contrasts with previous archaeological studies that suggested modern humans settled in India earlier, for instance before the <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37463958/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37463958/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Toba volcano erupted</u></a> around <a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-component-tracked="1" data-url="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7042215/" href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7042215/" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><u style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">74,000 years ago</u></a>. </p><div class="fancy-box" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; float: right; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 0px 1.5em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 270.896px; z-index: 1;"><div class="fancy_box-title" style="background: rgb(249, 174, 59); border: 0px; color: white; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; padding: 15px; position: relative; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">RELATED STORIES</div><div class="fancy_box_body" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 20px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="fancy-box__body-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 230.896px;">—<a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/largest-ever-genetic-family-tree-reconstructed-for-neolithic-people-in-france-using-ancient-dna" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/largest-ever-genetic-family-tree-reconstructed-for-neolithic-people-in-france-using-ancient-dna" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Largest-ever genetic family tree reconstructed for Neolithic people in France using ancient DNA</a></p><p class="fancy-box__body-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 230.896px;">—<a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2-waves-of-mass-murder-struck-prehistoric-denmark-genetic-study-reveals" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/2-waves-of-mass-murder-struck-prehistoric-denmark-genetic-study-reveals" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2 waves of mass murder struck prehistoric Denmark, genetic study reveals</a></p><p class="fancy-box__body-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 230.896px;">—<a class="hawk-link-parsed" data-analytics-id="inline-link" data-before-rewrite-localise="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/machu-picchus-servants-hailed-from-distant-lands-conquered-by-the-incas-genetic-study-finds" data-component-tracked="1" href="https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/machu-picchus-servants-hailed-from-distant-lands-conquered-by-the-incas-genetic-study-finds" style="border: 0px; color: #026ca2; font-family: inherit; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Machu Picchu's servants hailed from distant lands conquered by the Incas, genetic study finds</a></p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">Many questions remain, in particular regarding the population that was living in India 50,000 years ago. For example, the researchers still don't know whether the range of Neanderthals and Denisovans extended to South Asia, or if modern humans encountered Neanderthals and Denisovans further east in Eurasia than widely believed, Moorjani said. These genes may have then been carried with them to India, for instance. </p><p style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans", "Open Sans-fallback"; font-feature-settings: inherit; font-kerning: inherit; font-optical-sizing: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-alternates: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-position: inherit; font-variation-settings: inherit; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 602px;">"In future, combined with insights from other fields like archaeology and linguistics, I hope the fine-scale story of our evolutionary past will become clearer," she said. </p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-75798696614976452492024-03-18T09:51:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:51:37.605-07:00Human rights groups sue Denmark over arms exports to Israel<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="color: #1a1b1b; font-family: Inter, "Arial size-adjust", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: -0.02em;">The groups mentioned serious concerns that weapons and military equipment sent to Israel may be used in violation of international law in Gaza.</span></div><div class="c-article-content js-article-content " style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1a1b1b; font-family: Inter, "Arial size-adjust", sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: font-size 1s ease 0s; vertical-align: initial;"><div class="c-article-content__first-element" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: initial;"></div><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">A group of the world’s most prominent human rights organisations is suing Danish authorities over the continued exports of arms to Israel even as more than 30,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">The local branches of Oxfam, Amnesty, Action Aid and the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq have announced a lawsuit against the Danish National Police and the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">Their action asks Danish authorities to stop Denmark’s arms exports to Israel on the grounds that there is “a clear risk that weapons and military equipment that Denmark, directly and indirectly, exports to Israel will be used to commit serious crimes against civilians in Gaza”.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 2rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">According to the group, this would represents a violation of international rules on arms trade on behalf of Denmark, making the country complicit in “plausible genocide.”</p><div class="widget widget--type-tweet widget--size-fullwidth widget--align-center" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 2rem auto 0px; max-width: 550px; min-height: 220px; min-width: 250px; opacity: 1; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; transform: translate(0px); transition: opacity 1.3s ease 0s, transform 1.3s ease 0s; vertical-align: initial; width: 550px;"><div class="widget__wrapper" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: initial;"><div class="widget__ratio widget__ratio—auto" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: 673px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; 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border-width: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; display: block; flex-grow: 1; height: 673px; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; position: static; vertical-align: initial; visibility: visible; width: 550px;" title="X Post"></iframe></figure><figure class="widget__figure" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; height: 673px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: initial; width: 550px;"><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 2rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">The UN top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), concluded in January that it is plausible that Israel's actions in Gaza could amount to genocide.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">“Denmark must not supply weapons to bomb civilians,” Lars Koch, secretary general of Oxfam Denmark, said in a statement published on social media.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">“With the trial, we will test whether Denmark respects international law and the value we profess,” he added. “We cannot ignore clear violations of humanitarian law, war crimes and the warning of a potential genocide.”</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">What the NGOs are seeking for is the court’s word on whether Denmark’s actions represent a violation of international law.</p><div class="advertising advertising--no-label js-adzone outstream advertising--outstream advertising--called advertising--rendered" data-ad-id="adzone-outstream" data-ad-name="adzone-outstream" data-google-query-id="CNyC_8-i_oQDFb7SKAUdz5wNyA" id="adzone-outstream" style="background-image: none; background-repeat: no-repeat; 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padding: 0px; vertical-align: initial;"></div><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">The country is bound by the UN Arms Trade Treaty and the EU Common Rules for Arms Exports to ensure that exports of arms and military equipment from Danish companies are not used in violation of international law.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">”For five months we have been talking about a potential genocide in Gaza, but we have not seen politicians take action," said Tim Whyte, Secretary General of Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, one of the organisations behind the lawsuit.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">"Denmark should not be sending weapons to Israel when there is a reasonable suspicion that it is committing war crimes in Gaza. "We need to get the court’s word on Denmark’s responsibility."</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.02em; line-height: 1.5rem; margin: 1rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; vertical-align: initial;">In February, a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to stop selling F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over fears these might be used in violation of international law in Gaza.</p></figure></div></div></div></div></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-51375260502344241002024-03-18T09:47:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:48:22.944-07:00More than 20 progressive groups form a coalition to counter pro-Israel groups before the election<div style="text-align: left;"> <span face="var(--font-1)" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;">WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a barrage of super PAC money, more than 20 progressive groups are coming together to forcefully counter pro-Israel groups’ efforts to primary challenge liberal members who’ve been critics of</span><span face="var(--font-1)" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span class="LinkEnhancement" face="var(--font-1)" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 18px; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war" rel="noopener" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">Israel’s blistering military offensive</a></span><span face="var(--font-1)" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span face="var(--font-1)" style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;">in Gaza.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">The coalition, called Reject AIPAC, includes Jewish peace organizations and Arab American and Muslim groups that have been <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-congress-squad-progressives-aipac-b110bee792a51ca838f88b2b632d8953" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">organizing in record numbers since the Israel-Hamas war</a></span> began in October.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Their efforts are a direct response to pro-Israel political action committees like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/american-israel-public-affairs-committee" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">AIPAC</a></span>, that are pledging or planning to spend tens of millions of dollars to try to defeat Democratic members of the <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/f80a96ce79934860936ebdc2127c28fc" rel="noopener" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank">so-called “squad”</a></span> in primaries and the general election this year. That campaign has turned the otherwise safely Democratic districts into election battlegrounds.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;"><span style="font-family: AP;">“These are a handful of Black and brown progressive incumbents who are under attack from a threat of $100 million in spending and usually Democratic leadership and establishment is up in arms anytime someone primaries an incumbent,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, one the groups leading the coalition. “But the energy is a little lighter when it comes to some of these progressives and so we are coming together to ensure that they have the resources to defend themselves against AIPAC.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">The strategy, according to Andrabi, is to link up the grassroots organizations behind a seven-figure “electoral defense campaign” that aims to not only protect members of Congress being targeted by AIPAC but also to bring light to what they see as the group’s divergence from the longstanding values of the Democratic Party.</p><div class="HTMLModuleEnhancement" data-align-center="" style="--marginforextraspace: -20px; align-items: center; background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; justify-content: center; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin: var(--marginForExtraSpace) 0;"><div class="HTMLModuleEnhancement-item" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); width: 720px;"><div class="HTMLModuleEnhancement-embed" style="--color-video-bg: #fff; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); min-width: calc(100% + 80px);"><div class="HtmlModule" data-gtm-topic="No Value" data-main-module-number="2" data-module-number="2" data-module-tracksubscribe="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="AnchorLink" id="html-embed-module-e30000" name="html-embed-module-e30000" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-link-text); display: block; height: 0px; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); pointer-events: none; position: absolute; scroll-margin-top: calc(var(--headerHeight) + var(--hatHeight) + 20px); touch-action: manipulation; visibility: hidden;"></a><div class="taboola_readmore" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"></div><p class="embed-caption" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-primary-text); font-size: 13px; font-stretch: semi-condensed; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"></p></div></div></div></div><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;"><span style="font-family: AP;"></span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">AIPAC has defended its track record, telling The Associated Press last month that “it is entirely consistent with progressive values to stand with the Jewish state” and that the group has a history of supporting members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Nonetheless, the coalition’s lobbying effort will focus on promoting pro-Palestinian members and candidates as well as highlighting national polling that shows that the majority of Democratic voters are aligned with their stances, including increasing calls for a cease-fire in Gaza and conditioning U.S. aid to Israel as the number of civilian casualties rises above 30,000 Palestinians in just five months of war.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Israel’s air and ground offensive has also driven most Palestinians from their homes and pushed one-quarter of the population toward starvation. In the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war, militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">In Congress, the war has driven a familiar wedge between Democrats, with even some lawmakers aligned with AIPAC declining to discuss the dynamics on the record.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Part of the strategy of the new coalition is to force those fissures into the open by requiring any candidate or member aligned with them to sign a pledge, outright rejecting any campaign money from groups like AIPAC, which has historically yielded immense clout in Washington.</p><div class="Page-storyBody gtmMainScrollContent" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: var(--moduleVerticalSpace); margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 800px; padding-left: var(--bodyExtraHorizontalPad); padding-right: var(--bodyExtraHorizontalPad);"><div class="RichTextStoryBody RichTextBody" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: var(--body-1); font-stretch: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">This comes as AIPAC shifted in its own strategy in the last several years, transitioning from strictly a lobbying organization to helping elect centrist, pro-Israel Democrats. In 2022, it began challenging Democratic incumbents in primaries.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: var(--body-1); font-stretch: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Before November, the group and PACs connected to its ethos have once again begun contributing to candidates running against members of the squad. The Democrats facing challengers include Jamaal Bowman of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Cori Bush of Missouri, all of whom have not only called for a cease-fire but have demanded an end to U.S. aid to Israel.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: var(--body-1); font-stretch: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">In 2022, AIPAC spent around $27 million targeting progressive candidates. Its war chest this cycle is expected to be more than twice that amount.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: var(--body-1); font-stretch: normal; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">“We will never be at parity and that’s the reality of this,” Andrabi said. “This has always been a David vs. Goliath conflict and it will continue to be but the most we can do is organize now in a concerted way and take them on head-on in a way that folks haven’t in past cycles.”</p></div></div><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;"><bsp-story-page style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"></bsp-story-page><span style="font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></p><div class="Page-authorInfo" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: grid; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; gap: 20px; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin: 40px auto 20px; max-width: 800px; padding-left: var(--bodyExtraHorizontalPad); padding-right: var(--bodyExtraHorizontalPad);"><div class="Author" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: grid; gap: 20px; grid-template-columns: 80px 1fr; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><div class="Author-image" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a href="https://apnews.com/author/farnoush-amiri" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;"><source height="100" loading="lazy" srcset="https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/fbf1c84/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x400+0+0/resize/100x100!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Ffa%2F61%2Ff8615ba7488380220100fef1418f%2Famiri-farnoush.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);" type="image/webp" width="100"></source><source height="100" loading="lazy" srcset="https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/63309ce/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x400+0+0/resize/100x100!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Ffa%2F61%2Ff8615ba7488380220100fef1418f%2Famiri-farnoush.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);" width="100"></source><img alt="FARNOUSH AMIRI" class="Image" height="100" loading="lazy" src="https://dims.apnews.com/dims4/default/63309ce/2147483647/strip/true/crop/400x400+0+0/resize/100x100!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Ffa%2F61%2Ff8615ba7488380220100fef1418f%2Famiri-farnoush.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border-radius: 100%; border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; flex-shrink: 0; height: auto; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: 20px; margin-right: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 80px;" width="100" /></a></div><div class="Author-content" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); width: 465px;"><div class="Author-name" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1.8rem; font-weight: 700; left: 0px; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: 5px; position: relative; top: 0px;"><a href="https://apnews.com/author/farnoush-amiri" style="--color-link-text-hover: var(--color-primary-text); --color-link-text: var(--color-primary-text); background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">FARNOUSH AMIRI</a></div></div></div></div><div class="SovrnAd Advertisement sovrn-story-feed proper-dynamic-insertion" data-class="sovrn-story-feed" data-delayadinsertion="" data-module="" style="--bgphcolor: #f4f4f4; --borderphcolor: transparent; --pltextcolor: #333; align-items: flex-start; background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-color: var(--color-module-border); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; justify-content: center; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: var(--moduleVerticalSpace); margin-top: 0px; min-height: 300px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-60724492480473510612024-03-18T09:40:00.000-07:002024-03-18T09:40:26.815-07:00Allegations UNRWA collaborated with Hamas are ‘flat-out lies’: Van Hollen <div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Sen.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span class="person-popover" data-nid="7175" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; z-index: auto;"><a class="person-popover__link" href="https://thehill.com/people/chris-van-hollen/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-underline-offset: 0.3rem; z-index: auto;">Chris Van Hollen </a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">(D-Md.) ripped into Israel’s allegations that the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency, commonly referred to as UNRWA, is a proxy for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, arguing the accusations are an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> </span><span class="person-popover" data-nid="13480" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; z-index: auto;"><a class="person-popover__link" href="https://thehill.com/people/benjamin-netanyahu/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-underline-offset: 0.3rem; z-index: auto;">Benjamin Netanyahu </a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">to eliminate the agency. </span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">“There’s no doubt that the claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others are making, that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas, are just flat-out lies,” Van Hollen said Sunday in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “If you look at the person who’s in charge of operations on the ground for UNRWA, it’s about a 20-year U.S. Army veteran. You can be sure he’s not in cahoots with Hamas.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;"><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-international/ap-document-spells-out-allegations-against-12-un-employees-israel-says-participated-in-hamas-attack/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">UNRWA came under scrutiny</a> earlier this year after Israel claimed 12 of the agency’s employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">Hamas, a Palestinian militant group that has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel in a surprise assault. More than 240 people were taken hostage, and more than 100 are believed to still be held captive. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">No substantial evidence has been presented to support these allegations, though UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini earlier this month said “serious action” was taken nonetheless, including the termination of the <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/serious-allegations-against-unrwa-staff-gaza-strip" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">alleged members’ contracts</a>. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">“Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA since at least 2017. That’s been his goal, not just in Gaza, but also in the other places you talked about,” Van Hollen said. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan further pressed the senator on why he believes Netanyahu is trying to end UNRWA and pointed out the agency is one of the biggest distributors of aid in Gaza. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">“Well, that’s exactly right. And there have been allegations made by the Netanyahu government that up to 14 of those 13,000 people were involved in the horrific Oct. 7 attacks,” he said. “We should investigate it, we should hold all those people accountable. But … let’s not hold 2 million innocent Palestinian civilians who are dying of starvation, let’s not hold them, essentially, accountable for the bad acts of 14 people.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">Van Hollen further argued Netanyahu wants to dismantle UNRWA because he sees “them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own. And he has been opposed to a two-state solution. And this has been his primary objective, stopping a two-state solution.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">The U.S., along with nearly a dozen other nations, <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/4431333-us-halts-funds-unrwa-allegations-hamas-attack-israel/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">has paused funding</a> to the agency in the wake of the allegations. UNRWA at the time said it has a strict policy of “neutrality,” while recognizing the challenging circumstances in Gaza due to Hamas’s rule. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">Republicans in Congress <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/4533075-gop-effort-to-halt-unrwa-funding-emerges-as-late-shutdown-threat/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">have heightened calls</a> to block further funding to the agency, while Democrats have both acknowledged the gravity of the accusation and also stressed the allegation applies to a very small fraction of the more than 30,000 employees of the agency. The U.S. funds UNRWA <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12316" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">through an account</a> covered by the annual State Department funding bill, which is due on May 22. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">Van Hollen warned of the wide-reaching impacts of cutting UNRWA funding in Gaza, which has largely been devastated by Israel’s bombardment following the Oct. 7 attacks. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">“And if you get rid of UNRWA in Gaza today, it is the primary distribution system for food and aid. So if you cut off funding for UNRWA and Gaza entirely, it means more people will starve, more people won’t get the medical assistance they need. And so it would be a huge mistake to cut them off,” he said. </p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; font-family: "Graphik Web", sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 20px 0px 0px;">The Maryland Democrat was among a group of Senators last week to demand <span class="person-popover" data-nid="5215" style="box-sizing: border-box; z-index: auto;"><a class="person-popover__link" href="https://thehill.com/people/joe-biden/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-underline-offset: 0.3rem; z-index: auto;">President Biden </a></span>comply with the Foreign Assistance Act and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4526385-democratic-senators-demand-biden-halt-military-aid-to-israel/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2b2c30; text-decoration-color: rgb(42, 83, 193); text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; text-underline-offset: 0.3rem;" target="_blank">cut off military aid to Israel</a>. The senators argued Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act requires the Biden administration to stop the sale and transfer of weapons to Israel if Netanyahu’s government continues to block humanitarian assistance to Gaza. </p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-13697517017217113772024-03-16T10:58:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:58:23.078-07:00India rejects US concern over citizenship law as ‘misplaced, unwarranted’<div style="text-align: left;">There is an old cliche that says that feeding a wild boar is harmful because it is going to bite the very feeder one day when it is fat and strong. The case in point is India's attitude to the USA, which has been guilty of fattening Modi and his fascist, anti-minority, Hindutvadi government since the days of Obama. See the report below to understand India's arrogance on a bigoted law. - HS<br />=============</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;">India has rejected comments by a United States official raising concern over the implementation of a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;"> </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/why-is-indias-citizenship-amendment-act-so-controversial" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;">religion-based citizenship law</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;">as “misplaced, misinformed and unwarranted”.</span></div><div aria-atomic="true" aria-live="polite" class="wysiwyg wysiwyg--all-content css-ibbk12" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family-article-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: 1.5; margin: 7px 0px 30px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On Monday, just weeks before the general election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/dark-day-india-on-edge-over-religion-based-citizenship-law-before-polls" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">announced rules to implement</a> the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which makes getting Indian citizenship easier for non-Muslim refugees from three Muslim-majority South Asian nations: Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.</p><div class="more-on" style="border-color: rgb(190, 190, 190); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); margin: 30px 0px; padding: 30px 0px; text-align: initial; width: 770px;"><h2 class="more-on__heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">KEEP READING</h2><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list of 4 items</span><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 1 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/dark-day-india-on-edge-over-religion-based-citizenship-law-before-polls" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">‘Dark day’: India on edge over religion-based citizenship law before polls</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 2 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/why-is-indias-citizenship-amendment-act-so-controversial" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Why is India’s Citizenship Amendment Act so controversial?</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 3 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/15/the-devious-anti-muslim-dog-whistle-in-indias-citizenship-amendment-act" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">India’s Citizenship Amendment Act is a devious anti-Muslim dog whistle</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 4 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/why-is-indias-modi-pushing-for-simultaneous-elections-who-would-gain" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Why is India’s Modi pushing for simultaneous elections? Who would gain?</a></h3></article><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">end of list</span></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The move sparked sporadic protests with critics, including Muslims groups and opposition parties, saying the law discriminates against Muslims and undermines India’s secular constitution.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><div style="box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 770px; min-width: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="video-player-facade-container" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="aj-video-player in-article-bc-video-player aj-parsed-component" style="background: rgb(0, 0, 0); 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clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">Video Duration 02 minutes 29 seconds</span><span aria-hidden="true" class="video-duration__duration" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 2.25; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 1.5px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">02:29</span></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On Tuesday, a US Department of State spokesperson expressed concern about the law and said Washington is “closely monitoring how this act will be implemented”.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; 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margin-right: 5px; margin-top: 1.5px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">24:55</span></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The United Nations, which also expressed concerns about the CAA’s enforcement, had called the CAA “fundamentally discriminatory in nature” when it was passed in parliament in 2019.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Modi’s government did not implement the law that year as nationwide protests broke out over its passage. In eastern parts of New Delhi, Muslim neighbourhoods were attacked for days, and dozens of people were killed.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Activists and human rights groups said the law, combined with a proposed national register of citizens, could discriminate against India’s 200 million Muslims – the world’s third largest Muslim population. Some fear the government <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/15/caa" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">might remove</a> the citizenship of Muslims without documents in some border states.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Rights groups also note the law leaves out Muslim minority groups like the Shias from India’s neighbouring Muslim-majority countries while also excluding countries where Muslims are a minority, like the Rohingya in Myanmar.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="ads__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; display: block; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75;"><br /></span></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On Thursday, Amnesty International said the CAA was “a blow to Indian constitutional values and international standards” and demanded its repeal.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The Citizenship Amendment Act is a bigoted law that legitimises discrimination on the basis of religion and should never have been enacted in the first place. Its operationalisation is a poor reflection on the Indian authorities as they fail to listen to a multitude of voices critical of the CAA,” said Aakar Patel, chairperson of the board at Amnesty International India.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Next week, India’s top court will hear nearly 200 petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the law implemented before the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/why-is-indias-modi-pushing-for-simultaneous-elections-who-would-gain" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">general election</a>, local media reports said on Friday.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">India is expected on Saturday to announce the date of the vote, scheduled to be held in April and May, in which Modi is seeking a third straight term.</p></div><div class="article-source" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; margin: 40px 0px; position: relative; text-transform: uppercase;">SOURCE: AL JAZEERA</div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-41433024215977663952024-03-16T10:50:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:50:08.202-07:00India’s Citizenship Amendment Act is a devious anti-Muslim dog whistle by Apoorvanand<p> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">India moved a step closer to formalising itself as a majoritarian country with the announcement of the rules to operationalise the</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/why-is-indias-citizenship-amendment-act-so-controversial" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;">, which was passed back in 2019 with much controversy. This is yet another move by the Indian government led by the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to stir the simmering communal cauldron.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The move has reignited the debate about the objective of the Act itself. Passed in 2019, the CAA was criticised by jurists and others for being discriminatory against certain communities, mainly Muslims. The Act claims to provide a faster pathway to Indian citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and other minorities who have come to India illegally from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. The absence of Muslims in this list has been causing outrage and communal tensions since the conception of the Act. In a clear violation of the Indian Constitution, which demands all people to be treated equally under the law, the CAA changes the very concept of Indian citizenship and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/12/dark-day-india-on-edge-over-religion-based-citizenship-law-before-polls" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">makes it faith-based</a>. It opens a new path to Indian citizenship for all, except Muslims.</p><div class="more-on" style="background-color: white; border-color: rgb(190, 190, 190); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 20px; margin: 30px 0px; padding: 30px 0px; width: 770px;"><h2 class="more-on__heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">KEEP READING</h2><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list of 4 items</span><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 1 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/16/nearly-half-the-worlds-migratory-species-are-declining-can-they-be-saved" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Why are one-fifth of the world’s migratory species facing extinction?</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 2 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/india-rejects-us-concern-over-citizenship-law-as-misplaced-unwarranted" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">India rejects US concern over citizenship law as ‘misplaced, unwarranted’</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 3 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/13/former-navalny-aide-attacked-with-hammer-outside-home" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Former Navalny aide attacked with hammer outside home</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 4 of 4</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/7/state-of-the-union-2024-live-gaza-trump-rematch-loom-over-bidens-address" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">State of the Union 2024 updates: Biden says US will set up Gaza aid port</a></h3></article><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">end of list</span></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The CAA is a reiteration of the ideology of the BJP, which holds that Muslims do not belong to India in the same way that Hindus do. The government claims that with this amendment it is merely seeking to help those who had to leave these three countries because of religious persecution. Muslims are not in the list, as it is assumed that Muslims cannot be religiously persecuted in Muslim-majority countries. Critics point out, however, that Muslim communities like Hazaras and Ahmadis, who undisputedly face religious persecution in their homelands, would not have been left out, if the aim was to help victims of religious persecution in these countries.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It is also intriguing that the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/11/india-implements-anti-muslim-2019-citizenship-law-weeks-before-election" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">amendment is aiming to help migrants</a> from these three countries only and leaving out those from countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bhutan. Many Tamil Hindus, who had to leave Sri Lanka due to persecution, have been languishing in India as refugees without any state support for decades. This is because India does not have a clear policy for refugees and is not even a signatory to the International Covenant on Refugees. So the government’s talk of empathy for the persecuted people from the neighbouring countries sounds hollow.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The real aim of the CCA is to keep the focus on Muslims or Islam in the most devious and cunning way by singling out three Muslim-majority countries where religious persecution takes place. The idea is to reinforce the prejudice in Hindus that wherever Muslims are in majority, other communities are bound to suffer.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">One can read between the lines what the BJP government actually wants to say. It claimed in a document it issued to explain the objective of the law that: “Due to the persecution of minorities in those three Muslim countries, the name of Islam was badly tarnished all around the world. However, Islam, being a peaceful religion, never preaches or suggests hatred/violence/any persecution on religious grounds. This Act, showing compassion and compensation for the persecution, protects Islam from being tarnished in the name of persecution.”</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The government claims that CAA seeks to salvage the image of Islam which is getting tarnished due to persecution of non-Muslims in these countries. Even if we ignore the horrible wording of the text, one can see that it is nothing but a sinister act of dog-whistling. The followers of the BJP often refer to Islam mockingly as a peaceful religion and Muslims as peaceful people. But if we take this text at its face value, what the CAA does is quite contrary to this claim. It actually says that these Muslim-majority countries persecute their minorities.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There is one more thing. Defending the CAA, the leaders of the BJP, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, have been saying that it is also to complete the unfinished business of the partition of India in 1947. What could that be? According to them, the creation of Pakistan implied a complete transfer of population. Which means all Muslims needed to move to “their” designated country, Pakistan, and all Hindus to India. Since millions of Muslims remained in India, what needs to be done is to make India a Hindu-first country by placing Muslims on an inferior plane. This is what this Act does ideologically. Muslims cannot attain citizenship through this law, but Hindus can.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="ads__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; display: block; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75;"><br /></span></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">This Act should be seen as part of the ideological design of the BJP which has enacted other laws restricting the lives of Muslims like the religious freedom laws, anti-cow slaughter laws, and anti-triple talaq law, which put restrictions on Muslims in ways which Hindus would never be. In India, Muslims can be converted, but they cannot convert; Muslim men deserting their wives without a process would be jailed but not Hindus. Muslims cannot have their food choices, but there is no such restriction on Hindus. The CAA is yet another way to legalise religious inequality and discrimination, mainly against Muslims.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Muslims have reasons beyond its ideological or psychological purpose to fear this Act. The Home Minister had averred that the CAA should not be seen in isolation. It is to be seen along with the creation of a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/8/31/india-publishes-final-nrc-all-you-need-to-know-on-citizens-list" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">National Register of Citizens</a> (NRC). The NRC process would identify so-called “outsiders” or “infiltrators” and weed them out. He has said repeatedly that the NRC would be applied to the entire country. It is again a dog-whistle executive exercise which tells Hindus that outsiders – who other than Muslims? – would be deprived of citizenship rights through the process of the NRC. At the same time, Hindus were also assured that those who were left out would be included using the CAA. They can get citizenship, but not the Muslims.</p><div id="article-newsletter-slot" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;"><div aria-label="Newsletter signup Widget" class="sib-newsletter-form general-style" style="background-color: #f0f0f0; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 30px 0px 52px; padding: 20px; position: relative;"><div class="sib-form-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: auto; position: relative;"><div class="sib-container--large sib-container--horizontal" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="sign-up-for-al-jazeera-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1rem; margin: auto; padding-left: 31px; position: relative; width: 730px; z-index: 0;"><h3 class="sign-up-for-al-jazeera" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 20px; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 5px; z-index: 0;">Sign up for Al Jazeera</h3><h4 class="newsletter-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; width: 699px;">Weekly Newsletter</h4></div><form data-type="subscription" id="sib-form-general" method="POST" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 31px; padding-top: 5px;"><div class="sib-newsletter-form-fields-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; min-height: 50px; padding: 0px;"><span aria-hidden="false" class="newsletter-description-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; overflow: hidden;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The latest news from around the world. 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It was done to appease the Assamese chauvinists who had been demanding non-Assamese outsiders to be thrown out. An accord was reached between them and the government of India after violent agitations. The government promised that those who have entered Assam after 1971 would be identified and declared “illegal”. The NRC was that process of identifying and excluding the outsiders. The NRC process created havoc in Assam. Approximately 1.9 million people could not find a place in the NRC. But contrary to the claim of the BJP, and the popular perception, more Hindus than Muslims, nearly 1.5 million, got excluded.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">These are mostly Bengali Hindus. The BJP treats them as its natural constituents. It was to allay their fears that the CAA was brought: to say that the Hindus thus excluded would get in using the CAA route, but Muslims would remain out. It also changed the cut-off year. Those who have entered till 2014 were eligible to get citizenship through CAA. But Muslims cannot use this route, only Hindus can. We can see that persons in similar situations, living in India for decades or even centuries, but unable to show the required papers, are treated differently by the CAA. Hindus would be allowed to use it to naturalise themselves as citizens, but Muslims would not be able to do it.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The unsaid argument is that Muslims have these Muslim-majority countries to go to, but Hindus have only India.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="ads__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; display: block; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75;"><br /></span></div></div><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">There are well-meaning people in India who say that there is no need to fear the NRC outside Assam as it has not been announced. So Muslims need not be anxious. But can one take the assertion of the home minister that NRC would be implemented, and implemented in the entire country, made on the floor of the parliament, lightly?</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">It has also been pointed out that the claims by the government to provide succour to the persecuted people of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh are insincere as those who have entered India after 2014 are not eligible. This law was enacted in 2019. So does the government want us to believe that there has been no religious persecution in these countries after 2014? But the BJP can always assure its constituents that changes would be brought in the law to correct this anomaly.</p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">While these questions are legitimate, one cannot underestimate the larger ideological message of this law: There are two sets of rules in India, one for Hindus and one for Muslims, and Hindus will always have more rights than Muslims. It is no surprise that Muslims understand it well.</p><div><br /></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-34883883421043792432024-03-16T10:47:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:47:17.081-07:00Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation BY ARUN GUPTA<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div class="post_content" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 16.452px; margin: 0px; max-width: 680px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_316206" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; width: 690px;"><img alt="" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-316206" class="wp-image-316206 size-medium" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" height="453" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-680x453.jpg" srcset="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-680x453.jpg 680w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-945x630.jpg 945w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-768x512.jpg 768w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-500x333.jpg 500w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/jakayla-toney-APm4g7xKEcI-unsplash-600x400.jpg 600w" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;" width="680" /><p class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-316206" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Sans Pro"; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0.3em 0px 20px;">Image by Jakayla Toney</p></div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that <a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/new-tally-puts-october-7-attack-dead-in-israel-at-1-163-78182279" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">resulted in at least 1,163 deaths</a>, rumors began circulating that Israeli women were experiencing horrific mass rape and sexual violence. Months later, a <a href="https://www.phr.org.il/en/gender-based-violence-eng/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">position paper</a> by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em> investigation</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">convinced</a> <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">many</a> <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-official-in-israel-asks-victims-of-hamas-sexual-assault-to-break-silence/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">observers</a> that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war. But an investigation by YES! examining both reports, other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-hamas-used-sexual-violence-on-october-7th" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New Yorker</em></a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/hamas-violence-women-israel.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Associated Press</a>, and <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/world/feminists-hamas-rapes/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Nation</em></a> treat PHRI’s paper as the gold standard for proof of Hamas’ rape and sexual violence. But the paper is shockingly thin. It lacks original reporting and is based on media reports that are dubious at best with no corroboration—no forensic evidence, no survivor testimony, no video evidence.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">During a two-hour-long interview that was heated at times, Hadas Ziv, director of ethics and policy at <a href="https://www.phr.org.il/en/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Physicians for Human Rights Israel</a> (PHRI), acknowledged numerous problems with the position paper she co-authored, “<a href="https://www.phr.org.il/en/gender-based-violence-eng/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Sexual and Gender-Based Violence As a Weapon of War During the October 7, 2023 Hamas Attacks.</a>”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Ziv admitted credibility problems with sources and that she did not review all available evidence. She was “unaware” numerous sources had fabricated atrocity stories about Oct. 7. Ziv said, “Yeah, that’s a problem,” about a soldier she quotes whose claim of rape was changed by the government. She quoted volunteers from <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Zaka, a scandal-plagued organization</a> that collected human remains after Oct. 7, but Ziv did not realize Zaka openly talks of inventing stories. When discussing claims that women’s sexual organs were deliberately mutilated, Ziv conceded, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you can’t say that.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">While admitting “I did not know all the stories that you speak about that discredit those witnesses,” Ziv also lashed out: “I feel like I’m a rape victim that’s being interrogated.” YES! responded, “Not every interview is a friendly interview.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Further, the PHRI paper is riddled with errors small and large. Names are misspelled, quotes don’t match links, and an individual is misidentified. Ziv was unaware that <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-start-building-oct-7-rape-cases-focusing-on-footage-and-testimonies/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the Israeli government alleges</a> it has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/israel-attack-victims-forensic-identification/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">forensic evidence</a> of rape, which it has not produced publicly. Most egregious, Ziv didn’t realize her paper counted one alleged gang rape as two separate incidents.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The</em> <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em>’ Dec. 28, 2023, story, “<a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1ep5yhwp" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Screams Without Words</a>,” has also been <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/news/gut-wrenching-new-york-times-report-details-widespread-sexual-atrocities-on-october-7-i-still-remember-her-voice-screams-without-words/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">treated</a> as <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/investigation-reveals-tragic-details-of-hamass-sexual-violence/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">proof</a> that <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1ep5yhwp" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Hamas committed</a> <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1ep5yhwp" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">widespread</a> sexual violence.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The cornerstone of that report is Gal and Nagi Abdush, a couple killed on Oct. 7. The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> says Israeli police believe Gal Abdush was raped. But the only evidence given is a “<a href="https://www.oct7factcheck.com/research-hamas-weaponized-sexual-violence-oct-7-nytimes" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">grainy video</a>” of Gal’s burned corpse, “lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed.” Gal became known as “the woman in the black dress.” The story <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/01/28/new-york-times-daily-podcast-camera/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">blew up</a> in the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times’</em> face. Surviving family members denied she was raped.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">PHRI references the video of Gal Abdush as evidence of possible “sexual abuse.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> mentioned messages that Gal and Nagi, parents of two children, sent to their family during the attack. After Gal was killed, Nagi sent “a final audio message” to his brother Nissim Abdush at 7:44 a.m., “Take care of the kids. I love you,” right before he was killed.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> fails to mention other text and phone messages that make it almost impossible Gal was raped. She messaged at 6:51 a.m. about intense explosions on the border, based on an <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Instagram</a> comment by Miral Altar, Gal’s sister.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Nine minutes later, at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Mondoweiss</em> said</a> Nissim told his story to <a href="https://13tv.co.il/item/documentary/worth-a-story/usmj7-903873429/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">an Israeli TV station</a>. He said Nagi never mentioned Gal was raped, nor did Israeli police indicate to the surviving family that Gal was sexually assaulted. The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">YES! spoke with Nissim and Neama Abdush, siblings of Nagi. They said Nagi called twice, first to say Gal had been shot in the heart and had died, and then his farewell call asking them to take care of their children. Neama said, “No, no, no,” when asked whether Nagi said anything about Gal being attacked or raped.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">In a follow-up call, Nissim reiterated the police did not give any indication Gal was sexually assaulted, but he refused to offer any more details unless he was paid 60,000 “dollars, shekels.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Tali Barakha, another sister of Gal, <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/family-of-key-case-in-new-york-times-october-7-sexual-violence-report-renounces-story-says-reporters-manipulated-them/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">wrote on Instagram</a>, “No one can know if there was rape.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Dubious Dozen</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">PHRI’s paper stated there is “sufficient evidence to require an investigation of crimes against humanity.” <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em> claimed “attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Yet there are extraordinarily few sources. Twelve individuals account for the vast majority of rape and sexual violence claims in hundreds of articles.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Eight of these sources are in PHRI’s paper and six are in <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em> report. Investigations by <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Washington Post</em></a><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">, </em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/evidence-points-to-systematic-use-of-rape-by-hamas-in-7-october-attacks" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Guardian</em></a><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">, </em><a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/israel-pieces-together-puzzle-of-october-7-sexual-violence" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Straits Times</em></a><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">, </em><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">BBC</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">AP</a>, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Reuters</a>,<em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"> </em><a href="http://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-oct-7-murder-sexual-violence-torture-45aab439" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Wall Street Journal</em></a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hamas-rape-israeli-women-oct-7-rcna128221" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">NBC News</a>, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New Yorker</em></a>, and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">various</a> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/05/exp-hamas-rape-golodryga-pkg-120512aseg2-world.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">CNN</a> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/12/05/exp-hamas-rape-golodryga-pkg-120512aseg2-world.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">segments</a> all rely on a combination of these 12 sources.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">All but one of the 12 sources are connected to the Israeli military and police, such as the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/death-and-donations-did-the-volunteer-group-handling-the-october-7-dead-exploit-its-role/0000018d-5a73-d997-adff-df7bdb670000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Home Front Command</a>. Five of the sources are Zaka volunteers who told stories that smack of fabrications. Five other sources claimed they saw corpses that bore signs of rape or sexual violence. Not one of these sources was professionally trained to make such assessments, and nearly all fabricated stories, as described below.</p><img alt="" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-316204" decoding="async" height="490" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" src="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-680x490.webp" srcset="https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-680x490.webp 680w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-874x630.webp 874w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-768x554.webp 768w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-500x360.webp 500w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg-600x432.webp 600w, https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Debunking-Israel-Graph-V2-1024x738-jpg.webp 1024w" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px; display: block; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;" width="680" /><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">That leaves only two people who claimed they witnessed rape. The government of Israel’s entire case for mass rape is built on two allegations: a source known as “Witness S.,” or Sapir, put forward by the police, and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) special forces soldier, Raz Cohen. The soldier has changed his story numerous times, making it suspect, while Sapir’s account is so fantastical as to defy belief, as explained below.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Even if all 12 sources are considered entirely credible, their accounts lack photo and forensic evidence and survivor testimony. At best they are unsubstantiated claims.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">As for evidence, two reports have thrown cold water all over it. First, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-24/ty-article/.premium/without-victims-consent-police-orders-hospitals-to-reveal-info-about-hamas-sexual-crimes/0000018c-9c3f-d17b-addd-bf7f3f300000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em> reported</a> on Dec. 24 that Israeli police sent a court order to “general and psychiatric hospitals” to “provide information on the victims of sexual offenses committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.” It was a tacit admission that police lack survivor testimony. The court order also undercut <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/evidence-points-to-systematic-use-of-rape-by-hamas-in-7-october-attacks" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">claims</a> that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">alleged survivors</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">were not being identified</a> to protect them as unique details would make it simple to identify them.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Second, an even more revealing<a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2024-01-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-d3e4-ddba-abad-d3e502980000?gift=0d660f6ae8134267b732f295253d7d35" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"> <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em> report</a> published on Jan. 4, 2024, pointed out that “[t]he police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it.” Police are so desperate they appealed through the media, without success so far, “to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">United Nations experts have provided some evidence. On Jan. 29, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-official-in-israel-asks-victims-of-hamas-sexual-assault-to-break-silence/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">a U.N. envoy in Israel</a> investigating sexual violence on Oct. 7 issued a plea through the Israeli president’s office for “victims of alleged sexual assault [to] break your silence.” It was met with silence. Then on Feb. 19, <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">four U.N. experts</a> said they “expressed alarm over credible allegations” that Israel had subjected hundreds of Palestinian women and girls in Gaza to “arbitrary detention,” “degrading treatment,” “multiple forms of sexual assault,” including rape, and “deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Extrapolating “Evidence” From Hearsay</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Much of the coverage of Oct. 7 is reminiscent of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Reporters have tried to glean “truth” from ambiguous photos and jumped to conclusions without considering other possibilities. An undressed corpse does not equal sexual assault. Clothes might be torn off while fleeing, in panic, hiding in brush, or dressing wounds.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The</em> <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em> recounted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/22/world/europe/beeri-massacre.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the death of the Evens family</a> in Kibbutz Be’eri, using texts and photos. Caught in a fire, “they stripped to their underwear.” Soldiers later found “several half-naked bodies lying under a line of trees.” The parents and two teenage boys “had all been shot dead.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Similarly, metal fragments in a body does not equal sexual violence. A <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/israel-palestinians-kibbutz-attack/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Reuters</a> report on Be’eri, one of the worst-hit communities on Oct. 7, described how grenade blasts in a safe room turned screws from a sofa into shrapnel that punctured the leg of a 13-year-old girl. If she had not lived would that now be a case of Hamas sexual violence?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Asked about the Reuters report, PHRI’s Ziv admitted, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you can’t say that” it was sexual violence.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Alternative explanations applies to nearly every sexual violence claim in the media.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Head in Hands</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Two witnesses, the anonymous source Sapir and Raz Cohen, provide the most dramatic claims of sexual violence in PHRI’s paper, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em></a>, and other media. Sapir and Cohen attended the Supernova music festival and claimed to see gang rapes taking place 50 to 150 feet away from their hiding spots. The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> places them a few miles apart, meaning Sapir and Cohen were describing different assaults.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">In early November Israeli <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-11-08/ty-article/0000018b-afa1-d3c1-a39b-bfe10ae50000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">police showed</a> a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html?" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">three-minute video clip</a> with Sapir’s face blurred to reporters, but they refused to take questions and have since <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">“declined” to release</a> the entire interview. Reports on the three-minute clip and shorter excerpts <a href="https://www.hamas-massacre.net/content/a-testimony-of-an-israeli-woman-who-witnessed-a-woman-being-raped-and-then-killed" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">on the web</a> were all that was known of Sapir’s story until <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The</em> <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html?" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">interviewed</a> her “several times.” The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> says Sapir is “a 26-year-old accountant” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">who</a> “has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> said Sapir was wounded in her back and feeling faint. She hid near a road covered “in dry grass and lay as still as she could.” She claimed to see a group of “about 100 men” involved in the horrific rape and murder of “at least five women.” The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> said:</p><p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 1.25em 2.375em;">The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road.” …</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Compare this to what is known of the police video. In a <a href="https://www.hamas-massacre.net/content/a-testimony-of-an-israeli-woman-who-witnessed-a-woman-being-raped-and-then-killed" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">52-second clip</a> of the police video, Sapir claimed a woman standing on her feet was raped by militants and passed around. Sapir said a militant “cuts her breasts. He throws it on the road. They are playing with it.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Referring to the police video, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">BBC added</a> that Sapir claimed a militant killed the woman and continued to rape her. “He … shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://twitter.com/mrconfino" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">One journalist</a> who viewed part of the video said <a href="https://twitter.com/mrconfino/status/1724385046583234841?t=r9L3a5S0cBrcfCiZDHuaaA&s=08" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Sapir claimed</a> “some terrorists were carrying heads in their hands [beheaded] as trophies, saying there wasn’t a thing [they] didn’t do to the heads,” implying that Hamas fighters were having sex with severed heads.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Sapir’s story and how it changes between the police video and <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> report raises many questions. How could she see 100 militants and numerous assaults while lying still, covered? How does one victim of rape become five? Why did one woman who was raped and had her breast cut off in the police video become two women in the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> story?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Given such a slaughter—severed heads, hacked-off parts, blood sprays, and five mutilated corpses—where is the forensic and photo evidence? Why are there no witnesses who can verify any of her accounts, such as sex with severed heads and corpses that sound like they are out of Dante’s <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Inferno</em>?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> published a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html?" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">follow-up</a> defending the Dec. 28 report after it was <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/we-cant-find-witnesses-israeli-police-contradicts-nyt-report-on-oct-7-sexual-assaults/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">hammered</a> for <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/zaka-is-not-a-trustworthy-source-for-allegations-of-sexual-violence-on-october-7/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">poor sourcing</a> and <a href="https://www.oct7factcheck.com/research-hamas-weaponized-sexual-violence-oct-7-nytimes" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">lack of evidence</a>, but it only raised more questions about flimsy reporting.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">PHRI’s position paper bungles Sapir’s story as well, citing it as two separate incidents. It is first mentioned in the “Victims” section as “a woman who detailed the group rape and murder of a young woman by assailants dressed in military uniforms.” Then, PHRI cited Sapir’s story again under “Visual Testimonies” as it is a video. Hadas Ziv admitted the mistake to YES!, but no other media outlets have picked up PHRI’s error.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Changing Stories</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Raz Cohen, the second eyewitness to claim he saw rape, is a former Israeli officer from “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d84FMJItajM&t=75s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the elite Maglan unit</a>.” Neither the original <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em> report nor PHRI mentions Cohen is an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-11/israeli-relatives-of-hostages-on-anxious-wait-for-news/102955354" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">ex-special forces soldier</a> or that his story has changed numerous times.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Cohen <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CyGoNMpsVGB/?igsh=czd2eHkwOWYwYWVt" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">hid</a> in a streambed with friends after fleeing the Supernova festival. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em></a>, he claimed to see a white van pull up about 40 yards away and five men drag a woman across the ground, “young, naked, and screaming.” Cohen said, “They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words. Then one of them raises a knife, and they just slaughtered her.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Initially, Cohen’s story was different. On Oct. 7, he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CyGoNMpsVGB/?igsh=czd2eHkwOWYwYWVt" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">described</a> hundreds of terrified people fleeing Hamas gunmen across a field as some were shot and fell. Cohen and others hid for six hours in the bush as gunshots whistled above them and a battle between “our army and the terrorists” raged around them.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">In the next three days, a shaken <a href="https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2016575/i-have-never-seen-such-brutality-says-er-doctor-in-israeli-city-close-to-gaza-border" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Cohen</a> described similar experiences in <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@lior.shapira92/video/7287997383185632530" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">videos</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1711377634381509018" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">interviews</a>. He said people were “slaughtered with knives.” The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-11/israeli-relatives-of-hostages-on-anxious-wait-for-news/102955354" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Oct. 10 story</a> based on an interview with Cohen that, “Hamas militants stabbed a group of women nearby.” But he made no mention of rape or sexual violence.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Then Cohen’s story changed. Later in the day in an Oct. 10 appearance, Cohen said on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/survivors-of-hamas-assault-on-music-fest-describe-horrors-and-how-they-made-it-out-alive" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">PBS Newshour</em></a>, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that.” In an <a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/just-as-cruel-as-the-terrorists-many-ordinary-palestinians-joined-in-hamass-atrocities-against-israel/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Oct. 24 interview</a> with the <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Washington Free Beacon</em> he also claimed a woman was raped and murdered.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">It is notable that Cohen’s story is strikingly similar to Sapir’s: multiple gang rapes, killing with knives, sexual assault of corpses. No major media has picked up on the similarities, nor that the number of victims appears to go from several to one.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Since both Sapir and Cohen’s accounts surfaced, a different companion who hid with each one has since come forward. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times</em></a> interviewed both, and their accounts don’t back up those of Sapir or Cohen. There are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">other</a> <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ten-hamas-fighters-were-raping-the-woman-she-begged-for-death-6ldlmh8sp" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">accounts</a> of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">rape</a> and sexual violence, but the sources <a href="https://www.oct7factcheck.com/Yoni-Saadon-Attendee-8790243eafd6404c8da064ec078a96ce" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">can’t be identified</a> or say they “<a href="https://www.oct7factcheck.com/Ron-Freger-Attendee-db6fa849aea546508126874d30133084" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">heard</a>” but <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">did not visually witness</a> rape.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Further undermining Sapir and Cohen are reports on the <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s12kff8n6" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">massacre</a> of <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/tv-police-probe-of-reim-massacre-shows-terrorists-didnt-know-about-party-in-advance/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">364 people</a> at the festival. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middleeast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmd-intl/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">CNN,</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67047034" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">BBC</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/09/how-the-hamas-attack-on-the-supernova-festival-in-israel-unfolded" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Guardian</em></a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/how-hamas-turned-an-israeli-music-festival-into-a-massacre/F24366C2-CB00-49C9-BF6A-08A2B275C5CD" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Wall Street Journal</em></a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/world/middleeast/israel-music-festival-massacre.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/when-massacre-came-to-a-music-festival-in-israel" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New Yorker</em></a>, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/timeline-israel-supernova-music-festival-civilian-massacre/story?id=103892969" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">ABC News</a>, and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/supernova-israel-music-festival-attack-hamas-video-survivors/index.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">NBC</a> <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/supernova-israel-music-festival-attack-hamas-video-survivors/index.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">News</a> reconstructed the killing field using photos, videos, social media, and interviews with dozens of festival goers. It was a horrific slaughter, but no one mentioned torture, sexual violence, or rape.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Nor have police substantiated Sapir or Cohen’s stories despite <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">possessing</a> “over 60,000 ‘visual documents’ including videos from GoPro cameras worn by attackers, CCTV footage and images from drones.” YES! reviewed every graphic video and photo it could locate, including in a <a href="https://www.memri.org/reports/special-announcement-%E2%80%93-hamas-atrocities-documentation-center-hadc" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Telegram channel</a>, Israeli <a href="https://govextra.gov.il/mda/october-7/october-7/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">government</a> <a href="https://www.hamas-massacre.net/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">websites</a>, and a <a href="https://thejudean.com/index.php/news/42-shabbat-shachor" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">five-part series</a> of, frankly, snuff films. They show militants, brutal killings, and hundreds of corpses, but nothing like the scenes Sapir or Cohen described.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Body Bags and Money Grabs</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The dearth of evidence of mass rapes has been <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">attributed</a> to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Israeli government claims</a> that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/opinion/hamas-violence-women-israel.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">religious concerns</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">chaos</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">prevented</a> the gathering of forensic evidence. But other reports indicate Israel manipulated evidence, forensics, and Zaka testimony that all create the appearance of a campaign of mass rape.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/death-and-donations-did-the-volunteer-group-handling-the-october-7-dead-exploit-its-role/0000018d-5a73-d997-adff-df7bdb670000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em></a> reported Zaka volunteers sidelined soldiers in collecting evidence after Oct. 7.</p><p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 1.25em 2.375em;">[The] IDF decided to forego the deployment of hundreds of soldiers specifically trained in the identification and collection of human remains in mass casualty incidents. Instead, the Home Front Command chose to use Zaka, a private organization.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">A Nov. 12 <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/judaism/discourse/article/sytbeuk7t" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Ynet report</a> suggests why Zaka took the lead. An information specialist in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office boasted to Ynet that Zaka testimonies “had a tremendous impact on the reporters” by portraying Hamas as “human-monsters.” That bolstered Israel’s narrative that “Hamas is equal to Isis … deepening the legitimacy of the state to act with great force,” the official said.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">On top of serving as war propaganda, stories by Zaka volunteers appear invented. This author described in a recent <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Intercept</em></a> investigation how <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/israel-gaza-war-recovered-bodies-show-bloodthirsty-gunmen-took-time-over-torture-and-that-hamas-has-changed-12985212" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Zaka</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d84FMJItajM&t=32s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">officials</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptL6KvnDmjs&t=770s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">say</a> “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QTPlr4fn7I&t=497s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">we’re</a> using our imagination” when they recount atrocities and “the bodies is telling us the stories that happened to them.” Western media is full of Zaka atrocity claims, nearly all of which are fabrications, dubious, or unsubstantiated.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Even more shocking, Zaka was founded decades ago by <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-03-11/ty-article/.highlight/israel-prize-winner-sexually-assaulted-children-women-haaretz-probe-reveals/0000017f-e87d-d62c-a1ff-fc7f8fe00000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Yehuda Meshi-Zahav</a>, who allegedly <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/meshi-zahav-dies-a-year-after-attempting-suicide-amid-rape-allegations/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">sexually assaulted at least 20 minors</a> over decades before being exposed in 2021. Meshi-Zahav and relatives reportedly used “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/zaka-officials-suspected-of-financial-fraud-misdirecting-funds-report" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">shadow organizations</a>” to divert <a href="https://www.makorrishon.co.il/nrg/online/1/ART2/348/880.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">millions of dollars</a> from a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/zaka-officials-suspected-of-financial-fraud-misdirecting-funds-report" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">nearly insolvent</a> Zaka into a “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/court-papers-shine-light-on-suspicions-that-embattled-zaka-founder-duped-donors/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">slush fund</a>” to finance “a lavish lifestyle in 5-star hotels and a multi-million dollar villa.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/death-and-donations-did-the-volunteer-group-handling-the-october-7-dead-exploit-its-role/0000018d-5a73-d997-adff-df7bdb670000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em></a> reported that during Oct. 7 recovery efforts, a financially troubled Zaka used “the dead as props” for fundraising. In the process, <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em> says, Zaka wrecked forensic evidence that could prove or disprove rape claims.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">PHRI’s paper includes testimony from two Zaka volunteers. After being told a few Zaka stories, Hadas Ziv told YES!, “I didn’t know that they are unreliable. … But maybe I’m just trusting people who tell the story as it is and I don’t look into [it].”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Reuters, CNN, <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em>, BBC, <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Guardian</em>, NBC, <a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/israelsfirst-responders-struggling-to-heal-100-days-on-from-october-7-hamas-attack/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Politico</em></a>, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-mourns-and-prepares-for-war-hamas-terrorism-gaza-9dbb21bf" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Wall Street Journal</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/israel-attack-victims-forensic-identification/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Washington Post</em></a> also quote Zaka volunteers with no mention of past scandals or present controversies.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">A Flood of Disinformation</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Remaining sources also have credibility problems. One is an <a href="https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1717109976420741504" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">anonymous</a> paramedic with Unit 669, an elite Israeli search-and-rescue outfit. The soldier claims he found a dead girl, “14, 15-years-old teenager,” on the floor of a home in a kibbutz. She was “on her stomach, her pants are pulled down, and she is half-naked. Her legs are spread out, wide open, and there are remains of sperm on her back. Someone executed her right after he brutally, brutally raped her.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiBXuEYkaM" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">He first spoke</a> on Oct. 25 with Republic World, a right-wing Indian <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@RepublicWorld" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">news channel</a>, his back to the camera. Ziv <a href="https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bjnxpwufp" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">linked to a clip</a> in the PHRI paper from the same interview that Eylon Levy tweeted the same day. A spokesperson for Netanyahu, Levy is a <a href="https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1717517532465074486" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">conduit</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/28/israel-gaza-rafah-humanitarian-strikes/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">of</a> <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/war-in-israel/israel-worry-fate-hostages/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">disinformation</a>.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">In the full interview, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiBXuEYkaM&t=560s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">the paramedic said a teammate</a> “pulled out of the garbage” a 1-year-old baby “multiple times stabbed all over his body.” He also claimed there were “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses [with] the blood of the people that were living in those houses.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">One infant was killed on Oct. 7, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/yona-ohad-mila-cohen-73-43-10-months-three-generations-slain/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">10-month-old Mila Cohen</a>, “who was shot while in the arms of her mother,” who survived.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Needless to say, these stories appear to be fabrications as well. More significantly, the paramedic is typical of other major sources. Their claims are wild, there’s no other witnesses, no independent reporting, no photo or forensic evidence, no information about the deceased.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Further weakening his credibility, the paramedic initially <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiBXuEYkaM" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">identified Kibbutz Nahal Oz</a> three times as the site of the attack and translated its name as “River of Strength.” <a href="https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/2023-10-12/ty-article-magazine/0000018b-1367-dcc2-a99b-17779a0a0000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">In Nahal Oz</a>, at least 60 soldiers were killed and 12 civilians. Five family members were killed in one home, including two sisters, but they were adults, aged 18 and 20.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Perhaps realizing none of the victims in Nahal Oz matched the paramedic’s description, Eylon Levy changed the location to Be’eri in a <a href="https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1717109976420741504" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">tweet</a> and trimmed the clip to cut out all references to Nahal Oz.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">When talking to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em></a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">AP</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/25/israel-hamas-rape-sexual-violence/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Washington Post</em></a><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">,</em> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">CNN</a>, the paramedic only referenced Be’eri as the location. The number of victims changed as well, hardly a minor point, from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SiBXuEYkaM" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">one</a> to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/16/the-lead-israel-investigates-sexual-violence-claims-on-october-7-jake-tapper.cnn" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">two</a>, to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">half a dozen</a>, and back to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">one or two</a>.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">When asked about how she did her research for the PHRI paper, Ziv said, “I checked every report that was available to me.” The Republic World interview of the paramedic was available to her as she linked to the short clip Levy tweeted out in the PHRI paper.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">After listening to a description of the paramedic’s false stories, Ziv said, “No, I didn’t see this one.” YES! asked, “So you didn’t look at all the evidence then?” Ziv responded, “No I didn’t, probably.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Ziv also said, “Yeah, that’s a problem” about the fact Netanyahu’s office altered the paramedic’s story and that he is an anonymous military source.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Dead Babies</strong></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Six of the 12 sources fabricated dead-baby stories, including Shari Mendes. A volunteer military reservist who worked in the Rabbinate Corps at the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/31/israel-attack-victims-forensic-identification/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Shura military morgue</a> in Central Israel for two weeks, Mendes helped “medics with fingerprinting and cleaning female soldiers’ bodies,” according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Reuters</a>.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">On Oct. 20, Mendes told <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12653435/Israeli-morgue-worker-says-horrors-inflicted-Hamass-victims-worse-Holocaust-including-decapitated-pregnant-woman-beheaded-unborn-child.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Daily Mail</em></a>, “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.” Senior personnel at Shura, <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2023/10/israel-hamas-terror-attack-shura-army-base-identifying-the-dead/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Col. Rabbi Haim Weisberg</a> and retired <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/i-only-knew-that-from-the-nazis-what-israeli-forensics-have-been-seeing-for-days/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Brig. Gen. Rabbi Israel Weiss</a>, also claimed they discovered a pregnant mother killed with her fetus.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/death-and-donations-did-the-volunteer-group-handling-the-october-7-dead-exploit-its-role/0000018d-5a73-d997-adff-df7bdb670000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em> says</a>, “This horrific incident … simply didn’t happen.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1716737563749237030" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">PHRI quotes Mendes</a> from a <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/amid-war-and-urgent-need-to-id-bodies-evidence-of-hamass-october-7-rapes-slips-away/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Nov. 9 <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Times of Israel</em> report</a>. Mendes says, “Yes, we have seen that women have been raped. Children through elderly women have been raped. Forcible entry, to the point that bones were broken.” <a href="https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1716737563749237030" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Mendes</a> has also alleged, “We saw genitals cut off, heads cut off, babies, hands, feet, no reason.” <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2023/10/israel-hamas-terror-attack-shura-army-base-identifying-the-dead/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">She says</a>, “This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">PHRI cites Capt. Maayan, an IDF reservist and dentist at Shura, from the same article. <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Times of Israel</em> wrote:</p><p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 1.25em 2.375em;">Maayan said on October 31 that she has seen several bodies that had signs consistent with sexual abuse.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">“I can tell that I saw a lot of signs of abuse in the [genital region],” Maayan said, using her hand to euphemistically demonstrate. “We saw broken legs, broken pelvises, bloody underwear,” and women who were not dressed below the waist, she said.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">The Times of Israel</em> said Mendes is not “legally qualified to determine rape.” Likewise PHRI cautioned that “emergency and medical personnel who provided testimonies” were not “professionally trained to determine whether rape had occurred.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But PHRI tries to have it both ways. It cites claims of rape and sexual abuse from Shari Mendes, Capt. Maayan, the paramedic, Itzik Itah and Simcha Greiniman of Zaka, and its final source, Rami Shmuel, a music festival organizer.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">If these sources can’t determine rape, why include them? PHRI also says “the accounts they provided indicate the perpetration of sexual violence.” What qualifies them to conclude wounds are deliberate signs of sexual violence and not from weapons?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">When asked how <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12653435/Israeli-morgue-worker-says-horrors-inflicted-Hamass-victims-worse-Holocaust-including-decapitated-pregnant-woman-beheaded-unborn-child.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Mendes could have known broken pelvises</a> were caused by mass rape, Ziv said, “She doesn’t, she doesn’t. She can only say that this is what she saw. She can’t say this is a result of rape.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">So why is Israel seemingly making untrained civilians the face of mass rape claims? At a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/04/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-un.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">high-profile U.N. session</a> on Dec. 4, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/world/middleeast/hamas-sexual-violence-un-israel.html" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">organized</a> with the help of tech mogul Sheryl Sandberg, Mendes, and Greiniman testified and parts of Sapir’s video were shown.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl8yqZ71QR8&t=87s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Greiniman</a>, a <a href="https://hamodia.com/prime/i-felt-like-we-were-in-gehinnom-an-interview-with-zaka/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">deputy commander</a> in Zaka, claimed naked women were tied to trees at the Supernova festival, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEmiTnJjlGQ&t=180s" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">he found a toddler</a> with a knife stuck through its head, and he discovered foreign fighters—they left their IDs in their pockets. Why did Israel choose to present sources with some of the most bizarre and hard-to-believe stories to the world?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Why have doctors, pathologists, or soldiers who recovered remains not offered testimony or documentation of rape, sexual assault, or other atrocities? Israel has produced <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnPJBKD4_fQ&rco=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">videos</a> of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtdmBxXJdFA" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">forensic investigations</a> of Oct. 7 victims. Media were given access to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-media-given-unprecedented-access-to-forensic-institute-to-witness-atrocities/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">document atrocities </a>at the National Center of Forensic Medicine on Oct. 16.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">On Oct. 14, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forensic-teams-describe-signs-torture-abuse-2023-10-15/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Reuters</a>, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-15/ty-article-magazine/confirming-the-worst-hamas-atrocities-where-israel-identifies-the-dead/0000018b-3313-dff1-a5eb-ffffee6f0000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Ha’aretz</em></a>, and <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/i-only-knew-that-from-the-nazis-what-israeli-forensics-have-been-seeing-for-days/" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Politico</em></a> joined a media tour of <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-15/ty-article-magazine/confirming-the-worst-hamas-atrocities-where-israel-identifies-the-dead/0000018b-3313-dff1-a5eb-ffffee6f0000" rel="noreferrer noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Shura</a> organized by Israeli officials. Reuters reported, “Military forensic teams … found multiple signs of torture, rape and other atrocities.” Rabbi Israel Weiss, who helped oversee the identification of the dead, said “Many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.” Capt. Maayan said, “Forensic examination found several cases of rape,” according to <em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Politico</em>.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But, according to Reuters, “The military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Not long after, Zaka volunteers, Shari Mendes, and the Unit 669 paramedic began making a splash in the media. Little has been heard from the forensic experts since.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Tali Shapiro provided research help for this story.</em></p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: SSit; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">This piece first appeared in <a href="https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/03/05/israel-hamas-oct7-report-gaza" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #dd0000; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Yes!</a></em></p></div><div style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 16.452px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><p class="author_description" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #111111; font-family: SSit; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; max-width: 680px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;"><em style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;"><strong style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;">Arun Gupta</strong> is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York and has written for publications including the Washington Post, the Nation, Salon, and the Guardian. He is the author of the upcoming “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: A Junk-Food-Loving Chef’s Inquiry into Taste” (The New Press).</em></p></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-72958955254435386812024-03-16T10:44:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:44:06.047-07:00 Washington’s Renewed Urgency for TikTok Ban Is Due to War on Gaza<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><header class="entry-header" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="pagesub" style="box-sizing: inherit;">The bill’s author said the platform’s videos about the Israeli war sparked renewed interest in passing the legislation</span></header><footer class="entry-footer" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; font-family: Montserrat, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 0.8125rem; line-height: 1.61538; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><span class="byline" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute !important; width: 1px;"></span><a class="url fn n" href="https://news.antiwar.com/author/kyle_anzalone/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; text-decoration-line: none;">by Kyle Anzalone</a></span> <span class="posted-on" style="box-sizing: inherit;">March 15, 2024 at 10:58 am ET</span> <span class="cat-links" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; clip-path: inset(50%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute !important; width: 1px;">Categories</span><a href="https://news.antiwar.com/category/news/" rel="category tag" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #686868; text-decoration-line: none;">News</a></span></footer><div class="entry-content" style="background-color: white; border-color: rgb(209, 209, 209); box-sizing: inherit; color: #1a1a1a; counter-reset: footnotes 0; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/how-tiktok-was-blindsided-by-a-u-s-bill-that-could-ban-it-7201ac8b" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">renewed urgency</a> to pass a bill to ban TikTok emerged due to Washington’s concerns about how its users were interacting with content regarding the Israeli war in Gaza. Many of TikTok’s users share pro-Palestinian messages far more frequently than pro-Israeli viewpoints.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The public debate between members of the House of Representatives centers around Chinese ownership of TikTok and the Chinese government’s level of influence over the platform. However, renewed interest in passing the legislation only materialized in Washington because many of TikTok’s users share content with an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian message.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Glenn Greenwald <a href="https://rumble.com/v4j9vyc-system-update-show-242.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">drew attention</a> to the issue on his nightly show, System Update. He explained that the TikTok ban bill made no progress over four years because of the app’s popularity among young Americans. Greenwald went on to report that members of Congress and Washington insiders on both sides of the aisle were spurred to act immediately by the platform’s overwhelming pro-Palestinian content.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">On Wednesday, a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the House voted in favor of the bill. President Joe Biden said he would sign it if it reached his desk. The administration helped Congress craft some of the language in the bill.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Jacob Helberg, a member of a congressional research and advisory panel called the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, spoke with the <a href="https://archive.is/ZNXzk" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Wall Street Journal</em></a> about Congress’s recent change of attitude. Officials from TikTok said the bill regained momentum so quickly that it was caught off guard.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">“It was slow going until Oct. 7. The attack that day in Israel by Hamas and the ensuing conflict in Gaza became a turning point in the push against TikTok,” Helberg said, according to <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">WSJ</em>. “People who historically hadn’t taken a position on TikTok became concerned with how Israel was portrayed in the videos and what they saw as an increase in antisemitic content posted to the app.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">The bill’s author is Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), one of the most outspoken China hawks in Washington and the chair of the House subcommittee on China. He explained that the likelihood of the legislation becoming law has sharply increased because he and other members of the China committee believed the platform was exposing users to too much Pro-Palestinian content.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Proponents of the legislation argue that TikTok’s young users are manipulated by the Chinese government through the app. However, the pro-Palestinian viewpoint alarming members of Congress is widely shared among TikTok’s core demographic.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit;">Around half of TikTok’s users and content creators are 18-34. Support for <a href="https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/poll-shows-young-americans-support-for-israel-plummeting/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Tel Aviv</a> and President <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/01/trump-biden-latino-voters-poll" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">Biden</a> has been <a href="https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/bidens-approval-rating-slips-to-40-as-70-of-young-voters-disapprove-of-israel-policy/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; color: #990000; text-decoration-line: none;">dropping</a> among that demographic as Israel’s five-month slaughter in Gaza has killed over 31,000 Palestinians and caused a humanitarian nightmare. About half of voting Americans under 35 believe Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza.</p></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-72088159759616310912024-03-16T10:43:00.000-07:002024-03-16T10:43:17.277-07:00 Israel’s war on Gaza: List of key events, day 162<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><p class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98barticle__subhead yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcss-1wt8oh6" style="background-color: white; color: #595959; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.33; margin: 0px; outline: none !important;"><em style="outline: none !important;">Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed 36 people, mainly children, near the Nuseirat refugee camp.</em></p><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bresponsive-image" style="background: rgb(224, 224, 224); color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px auto; outline: none !important; position: relative;"><img alt="Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip, Friday, March 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)" src="https://ecp.yusercontent.com/mail?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F03%2FAP24075396205501-1710569262.jpg%3Fresize%3D770%252C513%26quality%3D80&t=1710610759&ymreqid=d41d8cd9-8f00-b204-1c99-4d001e01ac00&sig=q_iRXiMYpZrXPl4_SfAeRQ--~D" style="border-style: none; color: transparent; display: block; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important; text-indent: -9999px; width: 770px;" /></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; outline: none !important;">Smoke rises following an Israeli air strike in the central Gaza Strip [Abdel Kareem Hana/AP Photo]</span><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98barticle-info-block yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcss-ti04u9" style="background-color: white; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; outline: none !important; position: relative;"><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98barticle-b-l" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(250, 144, 0); border-left: 4px solid rgb(250, 144, 0); border-right: none rgb(250, 144, 0); border-top-color: rgb(250, 144, 0); margin: 30px 0px 20px; outline: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 0px 10px;"><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98barticle-dates" style="border-color: rgb(250, 144, 0); margin: 0px; outline: none !important; padding: 0px;"><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bdate-simple yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcss-1yjq2zp" style="color: #595959; outline: none !important; position: relative;"><span class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bscreen-reader-text" style="margin: 0px; min-height: 1px; outline: none !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">Published On 16 Mar 2024</span><span style="outline: none !important;">16 Mar 2024</span></div></div></div><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bsocial-share-buttons" style="direction: ltr; line-height: 0; margin: 30px 0px auto auto; outline: none !important;"><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bupdate-reading-list" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(150, 150, 150); 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color: #196ad4; display: inline; margin-right: 20px; outline: none !important; position: relative;" target="_blank"></a><a class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bsocial-share-button yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcopylink" href="https://aje.io/dp73qr" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; display: inline; margin-right: 20px; outline: none !important; position: relative;" target="_blank"><span class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcopylink__tooltip yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcopylink__tooltip-hidden" style="background-color: #595959; border-radius: 4px; color: #f7f7f7; outline: none !important; padding: 12px 6px; visibility: hidden; z-index: 3;"></span></a></div></div><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bwysiwyg yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bwysiwyg--all-content yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bcss-ibbk12" style="background-color: white; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5; margin: 7px 0px 30px; outline: none !important; position: relative;"><p style="font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: none !important;">Here’s how things stand on Saturday, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/16/israels-war-on-gaza-live-will-the-netanyahu-government-attack-rafah" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0059a5; outline: none !important;" target="_blank">March 16</a>, 2024:</p><h2 id="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bfighting-and-humanitarian-crisis" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 60px; outline: none !important;">Fighting and humanitarian crisis</h2><ul class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bspaced-bullet-spacing" style="outline: none !important;"><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">At least 36 people have been killed after Israeli forces hit a house near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">The government media office in Gaza said most people killed in the attack were children, adding that pregnant women were also among the dead.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">The Open Arms aid ship, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of aid, has started unloading its cargo in Gaza.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Japan has said it will join a project to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza via a Mediterranean maritime corridor, which was launched this week by Cyprus, the European Union, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Dominic Allen, a representative for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for Palestine, who recently visited the Emirati hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, said conditions in the facility’s maternity ward are deeply disturbing.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;"> “The doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Allen told Al Jazeera. “What they do see though tragically is more stillborn babies and more neonatal deaths.”</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">UNICEF, the UN’s children agency, said 31 percent of children under the age of two in northern Gaza have acute malnutrition, compared with 15.6 percent in January.<div dir="ltr" style="outline: none !important;"><div dir="ltr" style="outline: none !important;"><a class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpbdc78ca0enhancr_card_0663426581" href="https://youtu.be/llSXtQOvYrI?t=3" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="color: #338fe9; outline: none !important;" target="_blank">Ramadan in a time of war: Palestinians cling to hope and sense of renewal</a></div><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895bayahoo-link-enhancr-card yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895baymail-preserve-class yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895baymail-preserve-style" data-embed-url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/llSXtQOvYrI?start=3&feature=oembed" data-size="MEDIUM" data-type="YENHANCER" data-url="https://youtu.be/llSXtQOvYrI?t=3" id="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895baenhancr_card_0663426581" style="font-family: "YahooSans VF", YahooSans, "OpenSans VF", "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 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min-width: 36px; outline: none !important; text-indent: -9999px;" /></a></td><td style="border-radius: 0px 0px 2px; outline: none !important; padding: 12px 24px 16px 12px; vertical-align: middle; width: 314.933px; word-break: normal;"><h2 class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895bacard-title" style="color: #1d2228; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px; max-width: 314px; outline: none !important;"><a class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895bayahoo-enhancr-cardlink yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036enhancr_card_1244120551" href="https://youtu.be/llSXtQOvYrI?t=3" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0) !important; outline: none !important;" target="_blank">Ramadan in a time of war: Palestinians cling to hope and sense of renewal</a></h2><p class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp396895bacard-description" style="color: #979ea8; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px; outline: none !important;"></p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="card-controls-injection-wrapper" style="height: 0px; 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margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: none !important;"></p><h2 id="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bdiplomacy-and-regional-tensions" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 60px; outline: none !important;">Diplomacy and regional tensions</h2><ul class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bspaced-bullet-spacing" style="outline: none !important;"><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed as “ridiculous” Palestinian group Hamas’s new <a class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydp4a1598e1enhancr_card_1208204118" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/15/hamas-new-gaza-truce-proposal-outlines-exchange-of-captives-for-prisoners" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="background-color: transparent; color: #0059a5; outline: none !important;" target="_blank">proposal</a> for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, Israel will still send a delegation, led by the head of its Mossad intelligence agency, to join truce talks in Qatar.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Netanyahu said a military plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, has been approved. The UN and countries including Germany and the Netherlands have warned Israel against going ahead with the plan.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">The United States needs to see a clear and implementable plan for Rafah, including to get civilians out of harm’s way, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is heading to Jordan and Israel on a two-day visit to the region with discussions on increasing humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza on the agenda.</li></ul><h2 id="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bviolence-in-the-occupied-west-bank" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 60px; outline: none !important;">Violence in the occupied West Bank</h2><ul class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98bspaced-bullet-spacing" dir="ltr" style="outline: none !important;"><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Armed Israeli settlers physically assaulted Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, and prevented access to their grazing fields. A 14-year-old Palestinian boy was injured in the attack.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 20px; outline: none !important;">Several Israeli NGOs warned the UN in Geneva that the war in Gaza is contributing towards a “crisis” in Israeli prisons. Advocates say there are a record number of Palestinian detainees facing “systemic abuse” and torture.<div style="outline: none !important;"><div dir="ltr" style="outline: none !important;"><a class="yiv5352483411ydp6a3979acenhancr_card_1570285594" href="https://youtu.be/bGdw5DKa3bU?t=5" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" style="color: #338fe9; outline: none !important;" target="_blank">Food distribution point targeted: Israeli fire kill people seeking humanitarian aid</a></div><div class="yiv5352483411ydp198b1fc7yahoo-link-enhancr-card yiv5352483411ydp198b1fc7ymail-preserve-class yiv5352483411ydp198b1fc7ymail-preserve-style" data-embed-url="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bGdw5DKa3bU?start=5&feature=oembed" data-size="MEDIUM" data-type="YENHANCER" data-url="https://youtu.be/bGdw5DKa3bU?t=5" id="yiv5352483411ydp198b1fc7enhancr_card_1570285594" style="font-family: "YahooSans VF", YahooSans, "OpenSans VF", "Helvetica Neue", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; max-width: 400px; outline: none !important; 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margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: none !important;"></p></div><p style="font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; outline: none !important;"></p></div><div class="yiv5352483411ydp98f0f36cyiv5331962036ydpa242f98barticle-source" style="background-color: white; color: #595959; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; margin: 40px 0px; outline: none !important; position: relative; text-transform: uppercase;">SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES</div><div><br /></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-67530308756281788842024-03-15T16:09:00.000-07:002024-03-15T16:09:48.999-07:00Evangelical Christians are fierce Israel supporters. Now they are visiting as war-time volunteers<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px;">TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — When Shawn Landis, an evangelical Christian from Pennsylvania, heard about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, he knew he would come to Israel to volunteer as soon as it was safe.</span></div><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Five months later, he was chopping vegetables in a Tel Aviv kitchen, preparing meals for <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">Israeli soldiers.</a></span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Evangelicals have been among Israel’s fiercest foreign supporters for years, particularly in the United States, where their significant political influence has helped shape the Israel policy of recent Republican administrations.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">They believe <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/christian-zionists-israel-republican-presidential-candidates-97a5bd9359a9af724fb55cfb154007ef" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">Israel is key to an end-times prophecy</a></span> that will bring about the return of the Christian Messiah. Many of these Christians support Israel due to Old Testament writings that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Israel is their rightful homeland.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">“In the Scripture it instructs us to support Israel, and sometimes the best time to support someone is when they’re grieving,” said Landis, who has been on four previous faith-based trips to Israel. “Friendship is not just about being there for the good times, it’s also about the rough times.”</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Landis is part of a wave of religious “voluntourism” to Israel, organized trips that include some kind of volunteering aspect connected to the war in Gaza.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Israel’s Tourism Ministry estimates around one-third to half of the approximately 3,000 daily visitors expected to arrive in March are part of faith-based volunteer trips. Before the fighting, around 15,000 visitors arrived in Israel per day, about half of whom were Christian, according to Tourism Ministry statistics. In 2019, the latest tourism statistics available that were not impacted by COVID-19, about 25% of visitors arrived on organized trips, according to the Tourism Ministry.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;"><span style="font-family: AP;">A study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that almost half of Israelis volunteered in some capacity during the early weeks of the war. But many Israeli volunteers have returned to work and school, and now international visitors are filling the gaps.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;"><span style="font-family: AP;">In the U.S., support for Israel has become a </span><span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: AP; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/evangelicals-iowa-israel-christians-bcfac5d77dd90e733c58d3c7242c3185" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">top priority for evangelical Christians</a></span><span style="font-family: AP;"> during a presidential election year. They are among the most outspoken backers of Israel’s handling of the conflict, and Republicans have faced pressure to hew not just to </span><span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: AP; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-hamas-israel-gop-trump-desantis-13641817571f8df9afeeb720d1774cdc" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">traditional Republican support for Israel</a></span><span style="font-family: AP;"> but to beliefs rooted in the Bible.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">The war began with <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-attack-military-war-a8f63b07641212f0de61861844e5e71e" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">Hamas’ attack</a></span> in southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Israel responded with an invasion of the Gaza Strip that so far has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">On Oct. 11, dozens of leading evangelicals signed a statement of support for Israel organized by the public policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical faith group in the U.S.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">One of the key pro-Israel groups in the U.S. is Christians United for Israel, founded and led by evangelical pastor John Hagee. CUFI says it has raised and dispersed more than $3 million to support Israeli first responders, health care workers, and survivors of the Oct. 7 attack.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Landis was part of a two-week volunteer trip organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The evangelical group has put together five volunteer trips since January and expects to bring half a dozen more in the coming month. Normally, ICEJ brings about 6,000 Christian visitors to Israel annually.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Like Landis, Claudio Pichardo, a 37-year-old from Colombia studying business in Holland, was inspired by Scripture to join the ICEJ trip. “This is the best way I can help, because posting on Facebook doesn’t help,” he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">When the war started, many international airlines suspended flights and tourism stopped, aside from a handful of Jewish and Christian solidarity missions. Some major airlines <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/united-airlines-israel-hamas-war-ff1b12f6da5517e1fd22ed97aa4a734e" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">resumed flights to Israel</a></span> in recent weeks, and others plan to soon.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Peleg Lewi, the foreign affairs adviser to the Tourism Ministry, said the faith-based solidarity missions boost morale. They can also kick-start overall tourism to Israel after a cycle of war or violence, he said.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">With the war in its sixth month, Israel is under growing international pressure to do more to end the suffering of civilians in Gaza, including allowing in more aid. Aid groups say the fighting has displaced most of the territory’s population and pushed a quarter of the population <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-un-humanitarian-famine-gaza-malnutrition-cf622f843fe531fb6dbd5657a39d6b49" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">to the brink of famine</a></span>. Hospitals have reported that some children have <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-malnutrition-famine-children-dying-israel-palestinians-2f938b1a82d7822c7da67cc162da1a37" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">died of hunger.</a></span></p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Many Israelis fear the world is forgetting about Oct. 7.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">Elizabeth Ødegaard, a trip participant from Norway, said she was surprised by how emotional Israelis get when they meet international visitors who have come to support them.</p><p style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-size: 18px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px;">“Many people tell us, `The whole world hates us. Everyone is against us,’ so I want to say to them, `You’re not alone,’” she said. “I know the people of Israel are important to God. These are my brothers and sisters, and when they attack Israel, they attack me too.”</p><div class="SovrnAd Advertisement sovrn-story-feed proper-dynamic-insertion" data-class="sovrn-story-feed" data-delayadinsertion="" data-module="" style="--bgphcolor: #f4f4f4; --borderphcolor: transparent; --pltextcolor: #333; align-items: flex-start; background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-color: var(--color-module-border); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; justify-content: center; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: var(--moduleVerticalSpace); margin-top: 0px; min-height: 300px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: start;">ICEJ trip participants visited hard-hit communities in southern Israel, including the site where the shells of hundreds of burned-out cars are being stored, many from the <span class="LinkEnhancement" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px);"><a class="Link AnClick-LinkEnhancement" data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-airstrikes-festival-survivors-5b5dc4eb87be8d7b51dceff1c9f906fd" style="background-color: transparent; background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); touch-action: manipulation;">Tribe of Nova music festival</a></span>, where 364 people were killed.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: start;">“It was humbling and sobering to be there, to know what happened a few months ago and to see Israeli resilience,” said Landis.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: start;">During such trips, visitors join volunteer initiatives that sprang up in Israel over the past five months, providing extra hands for farmers struggling to harvest crops, cooking meals for families who have a parent serving in the reserves or sorting donations for evacuees still living in hotels.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: start;">One initiative is Citrus & Salt, which previously hosted cooking classes and tours of Tel Aviv’s markets for tourists. When the war started, it pivoted to making more than 35,000 donated meals.</p><p style="background-repeat: no-repeat; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-1); font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.55; margin: 20px 0px; text-align: start;">“It really helps boost morale for people to come from abroad to Israel in a time of conflict, to physically say, ‘I’m here to help. What do you need?’” said Aliya Fastman, a native of Berkeley, California, who has lived in Israel for over a decade and runs Citrus & Salt with her sister. “Chopping onions is no small thing when you fly across the world to do it.”</p></div><div class="SovrnAd Advertisement sovrn-story-feed proper-dynamic-insertion" data-class="sovrn-story-feed" data-delayadinsertion="" data-module="" style="--bgphcolor: #f4f4f4; --borderphcolor: transparent; --pltextcolor: #333; align-items: flex-start; background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; border-color: var(--color-module-border); box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; font-family: AP, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; justify-content: center; line-height: calc(1em + 4px); margin-bottom: var(--moduleVerticalSpace); margin-top: 0px; min-height: 300px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"></div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-68763814962246045732024-03-15T12:25:00.000-07:002024-03-15T12:25:25.208-07:00Words vs. Action: A Supplication for Gaza, and Humanity BY RAMZY BAROUD<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em;">‘All we can do for Gaza is just offer our Du’a.” This is an oft-repeated statement by enraged Arabs and Muslims who feel helpless before the Israeli genocide in Gaza.</span></div><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But is it true that only invocations and supplications are possible, as tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being killed and wounded by the Israeli war machine?</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">No. There is much that can be done and, in fact, many people around the world are already doing it.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">In the traditions of Hadith, sayings attributed to Prophet Mohammed, the most cited reference to the need for action, collectively or individually, is this <a href="https://www.iium.edu.my/deed/articles/alhisba.html#:~:text=%22Whoever%20of%20you%20sees%20wrong,weight%20of%20faith%20(iman)." rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">one</a>: “Whoever among you sees evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart, which is the weakest level of faith.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Du’a is an invocation, communicated by the heart; it is a Muslim’s conversation with God. It can be verbalized, or not. In group prayers, especially during Friday sermons or throughout the holy month of Ramadan, among other occasions, Du’as can be performed collectively.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The nature of the collective Du’a highlights the priorities of any given Muslim group, community or even nation. Gaza, Palestine, Al-Aqsa Mosque are among the some of the main themes, or causes, for which Muslims beseech God’s help.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">“Oh Allah, please free the Al-Aqsa Mosque”, “Oh, Merciful One, stand by the children of Gaza” or “Oh All Powerful, deliver Palestinians from injustice” are only a few of an almost endless stream of Du’a that are uttered from Mecca to Medina to Jerusalem to Kuala Lumpur, to every mosque and every Muslim home throughout the world.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Du’a is the affirmation in a relationship between man and God, delineating that nothing would occur without God’s permission, and that a person, no matter how poor, beleaguered and weakened, can transcend all earthly relations to speak directly to the highest of all authorities.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">“Your Lord has proclaimed, ‘Call upon Me, I will respond to you’,” Allah <a href="https://quran.com/en/ghafir/60" rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">says</a> in Surah Ghafir, verse 60.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">That does not necessarily mean that Du’a is a last resort. Rather, it goes hand in hand with action. It does not supplant action, but reinforces it. Collective Du’a is a communal declaration that all Muslims are driven by similar priorities, those of peace, justice, equality, mercy, kindness and all the rest.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The dichotomy, however, arises from the fact that many Muslims feel unable to affect change regarding the horrific fate of Gaza, whether on a small or a large scale, thus the widespread notion that “all we can do is offer Du’a”.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">I have visited South Africa several times in the past. Each time, I learned more than I could have possibly imparted. I learned that people’s power is far more effective, in the long run, than the opposing powers of state violence. I also learned that no worldly law, especially those that aim at imposing racist apartheid, can possibly stand against our innate rejection of social inequality and other evils. Finally, I also learned that when people rise, nothing can stand in their way.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">The latter maxim is as true in the case of South Africa during the anti-apartheid struggle, as it is now in Palestine, particularly in Gaza. Of that, famed Tunisian poet, Abu Al-Qasim al-Shabi wrote a hundred years ago.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">“Should the people one day truly aspire to life / then fate must needs respond / the night must needs shine forth / and the shackles must needs break,” he <a href="https://arablit.org/2011/01/16/two-translations-of-abu-al-qasim-al-shabis-if-the-people-wanted-life-one-day/#:~:text=Should%20the%20people%20one%20day,in%20her%20air%20and%20vanish." rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">wrote</a>, just before he died at the very young age of 25.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">His powerful words also included a caveat, an ominous warning of terrible things to come: “Those who are not embraced by life’s yearning / shall evaporate in her air and vanish.”</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">South Africa did not make the latter choice, nor did Gaza. And every attempt at crushing these great peoples continued to fail. They remained, persisted, healed their wounds and fought back.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">I always believed that South Africa will play a central role in international solidarity with Palestine. But, frankly, I had not expected that the African nation would become so intrinsic, even unparalleled, to holding Israel accountable for its crimes in Palestine to this extent.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Pretoria’s <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192" rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">push</a> to hold Israel and its war criminals to account at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/world/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-gaza-starvation.html" rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">continues</a> unabated.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">It was not the sheer military, economic or political power or prowess that made South Africa a factor in the Palestinian fight for justice. It was the sheer will of a nation and, subsequently, a government to translate its desire to achieve a more equitable, just and law-governed international system into meaningful action.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">South Africa could have simply resorted to self-pity, highlighting its supposed insignificance in the face of more powerful US-western governments that continue to support Israel, feeding it with all the necessary weapons to sustain its genocide.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">It, too, could have resorted to prayers, invocations and supplications as the “only thing that can be done”. It did not. To the contrary, it used its diplomatic leverage and moral authority to articulate one of the most powerful cases in favor of Palestinian freedom and against Israeli brutality ever argued before an international legal institution.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">It is understandable that many may feel helpless, especially when one attempts to fathom the enormity of the crime underway in Gaza. Israel might have not used weapons of mass destruction in the Strip, but it has certainly applied all of its western-supplied weapons to inflict mass <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147272#:~:text=Gaza%3A%20Massive%20destruction,displacing%20over%201.5%20million%20persons." rel="noopener" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; color: #333333; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">destruction</a>, nonetheless.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">But if Gaza has not given up, why should we? Even giving up is a privilege. Gaza does not have that privilege nor should we grant it to ourselves. Gaza is fighting for its very survival and we, too, must fight for the same end.</p><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgb(59 130 246 / 0.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: "Source Serif Pro", serif; font-size: 1.125em; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px 0px 1em;">Make a Du’a for Gaza. Let it be your first act as you undertake your quest for a just world. And make another Du’a for Gaza, to beseech God to reward your selfless and well-intentioned deeds. And, if you are besieged by desperation, still make a Du’a, so that you may discover the power to make a difference, which has always been within your grasp.</p>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2378955474317305270.post-56794777027401111502024-03-15T12:23:00.000-07:002024-03-15T12:23:59.464-07:00Pakistan PM Sharif holds icebreaker meeting with opposition PTI leader<div style="text-align: left;"> <span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem; font-weight: bolder;">Islamabad, Pakistan – </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 1.25rem;">Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday held a meeting with a leader of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, marking the first attempt at an icebreaker between the firm political rivals after February’s contested elections.</span></div><div aria-atomic="true" aria-live="polite" class="wysiwyg wysiwyg--all-content css-ibbk12" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family-article-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: 1.5; margin: 7px 0px 30px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Less than two weeks ago, Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and a PTI leader, had refused to participate in Sharif’s oath-taking ceremony.</p><div class="more-on" style="border-color: rgb(190, 190, 190); border-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); margin: 30px 0px; padding: 30px 0px; text-align: initial; width: 770px;"><h2 class="more-on__heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 14px !important; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">KEEP READING</h2><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list of 3 items</span><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 1 of 3</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/2/9/nawaz-sharif-tells-crowds-in-lahore-he-will-seek-to-form-a-coalition?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Nawaz Sharif tells crowds in Lahore he will seek to form a coalition</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 2 of 3</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/3/shehbaz-sharif-set-to-become-pakistans-new-pm-after-controversial-election?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Shehbaz Sharif elected Pakistan PM for second term after controversial vote</a></h3></article><article class="more-on__article" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; position: relative;"><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">list 3 of 3</span><h3 class="more-on__article-heading" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 18px !important; line-height: 1.333; margin: 0px;"><a class="more-on__link" href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/4/shehbaz-sharif-sworn-in-as-pakistans-pm-for-second-time?traffic_source=KeepReading" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-size: 1.125rem; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.333; text-decoration-line: none;">Shehbaz Sharif sworn in as Pakistan’s PM for second time</a></h3></article><span class="screen-reader-text" style="box-sizing: border-box; clip-path: inset(100%); clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: normal !important; overflow: hidden; position: absolute !important; text-wrap: nowrap; width: 1px;">end of list</span></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On Wednesday, however, both Gandapur and Sharif appeared reconciliatory.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The federal government will fulfil all “genuine” demands of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which borders Afghanistan, said a statement issued by Sharif’s office.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Speaking to media after the meeting, Gandapur said that the prime minister assured him of working together for the “betterment of the people”.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“I also told him that it is necessary to engage with [former Prime Minister] Imran Khan to resolve political matters, to which he responded positively and said the meeting with him will be made possible,” he said.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The PTI has alleged rigging in the elections to favour Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN), and has staged protests demanding a recount of votes. The party has challenged the results of dozens of constituencies in court.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Khan’s party was stripped of its electoral symbol days before elections, forcing it to field candidates as independents, and its electoral campaign faced a crackdown by authorities. Khan has been behind bars since August last year, and days before the election was convicted on lengthy prison terms. Khan has dubbed the convictions politically motivated.</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="ads__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; display: block; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75;">Advertisement</span><div class="ads__slot" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="freestar-ads" data-google-query-id="COXSmZH_9oQDFfzr4wcdYaANnQ" id="div-gpt-ad-154866181004" name="aljazeera_incontent_1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="_fs-sf" id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_0__container__" style="align-items: center; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-flex; flex-flow: wrap; height: 280px; justify-content: space-evenly; position: relative; width: 728px;"><iframe aria-label="Advertisement" data-google-container-id="6" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="1" id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_0" scrolling="no" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 250px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom; width: 300px;" tabindex="0" title="3rd party ad content" width="1"></iframe><div class="_fs-sf" data-google-query-id="CLmuxpH_9oQDFevnlAkdLhoClg" id="_fs-sf-182946f2ae197402-1" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 250px; width: 300px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_1__container__" style="border: 0pt none; box-sizing: border-box;"><iframe aria-label="Advertisement" data-google-container-id="8" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_1" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_1_1" scrolling="no" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: bottom;" tabindex="0" title="3rd party ad content" width="300"></iframe></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Despite the hurdles, PTI candidates managed to win 93 seats, the highest number, followed by PMLN at 75 seats, while Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto stood in third position with 54 seats. Sharif was sworn as prime minister on March 4 after his PMLN stitched an alliance together with the PPP and other smaller parties.</p><h2 id="the-country-needs-to-move-forward" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 2rem; line-height: 2.4375rem; margin: 60px 0px 0.6rem;">‘The country needs to move forward’</h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Analysts have said the meeting may not reduce the political temperature, given that PTI continues to agitate against the election results.</p><div id="article-newsletter-slot" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both;"><div aria-label="Newsletter signup Widget" class="sib-newsletter-form general-style" style="background-color: #f0f0f0; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin: 30px 0px 52px; padding: 20px; position: relative;"><div class="sib-form-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: auto; position: relative;"><div class="sib-container--large sib-container--horizontal" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="sign-up-for-al-jazeera-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1rem; margin: auto; padding-left: 31px; position: relative; width: 730px; z-index: 0;"><h3 class="sign-up-for-al-jazeera" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 20px; font-weight: 300; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 5px; z-index: 0;">Sign up for Al Jazeera</h3><h4 class="newsletter-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 32px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 38px; margin: 0px 0px 5px; width: 699px;">Weekly Newsletter</h4></div><form data-type="subscription" id="sib-form-general" method="POST" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 31px; padding-top: 5px;"><div class="sib-newsletter-form-fields-container" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; min-height: 50px; padding: 0px;"><span aria-hidden="false" class="newsletter-description-line" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; overflow: hidden;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The latest news from around the world. 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If anything, they will want to maintain this maximalist, anti-PMLN position. However, it serves the PMLN’s interest to try and bring the PTI to the table and talk, to reduce tension, give the impression of cooperation,” he told Al Jazeera.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“PTI’s entire politics exists on the narrative of its opposition against PMLN, as well as the coalition partners such as the PPP. This distance from other mainstream parties is what gives PTI its unique identity.”</p><div class="container--ads in-article-ads" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: both; padding: 0px 0px 30px; text-align: center;"><div class="ads" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="ads__title" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; display: block; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75;">Advertisement</span><div class="ads__slot" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="freestar-ads" data-google-query-id="CLKtppH_9oQDFajnlAkdXHgIIA" id="div-gpt-ad-695463114829" name="aljazeera_incontent_2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="_fs-sf" id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_2_0__container__" style="align-items: center; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-flex; flex-flow: wrap; height: 280px; justify-content: space-evenly; position: relative; width: 728px;"><iframe aria-label="Advertisement" data-google-container-id="7" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="1" id="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_2_0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="google_ads_iframe_/15184186,5287/aljazeera_incontent_2_0" scrolling="no" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; position: absolute; vertical-align: bottom; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0" title="3rd party ad content" width="1"></iframe><div class="_fs-sf" id="_fs-sf-wrapper-2398d8885f7bb162-1" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="_fs-sf-2398d8885f7bb162-1" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 250px; max-width: 100%; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></div><div class="_fs-sf" id="_fs-sf-wrapper-21447a29cb4453c4-2" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" id="_fs-sf-21447a29cb4453c4-2" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" style="box-sizing: border-box; height: 250px; max-width: 100%; width: 300px;" width="300"></iframe></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">However, another political analyst, Zaigham Khan, said that the fact that the PTI has decided to meet Sharif is evidence of the party’s growing maturity.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The PTI understands it must rule a province, which is facing financial difficulties, and they cannot do it without help from the central government. They also know that having a provincial government means they have a safe space, they can conduct their politics, and they can even exert political pressure by doing well there,” he told Al Jazeera.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The PTI came to power nationally in August 2018, when Khan’s relations with the military were cordial. But four years later the relations soured. Khan was replaced as prime minister by Sharif after a parliamentary vote of no confidence.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">On May 9 last year, thousands of PTI workers stormed the streets across the country and vandalised military installations after Khan was briefly arrested. The government retaliated by arresting senior PTI leaders along with thousands of party workers. Many are still in jail.</p><figure aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2771835" class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_2771835" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-family: var(--font-family); font-size: 0.875rem; line-height: 1.3; margin: 0px 0px 30px; max-width: 770px; width: 770px;"><img alt="Thousands of PTI supporters stormed the streets on May 9 last year to protest their leader Imran Khan's detention. [Rahat Dar/EPA]" class="size-arc-image-770 wp-image-2771835" data-recalc-dims="1" loading="lazy" src="https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Lahore-Rahat-dar-1710406858.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C455&quality=80" style="border-style: none; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%; object-fit: cover; width: 770px;" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" id="caption-attachment-2771835" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #626262; font-size: 1rem; line-height: 1.75; margin-top: 0px;">Thousands of PTI supporters stormed the streets on May 9 last year to protest their leader Imran Khan’s detention. [Rahat Dar/EPA]</figcaption></figure><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Islamabad-based Zaigham said that the PTI needed to find a way out with establishment, a euphemism used for Pakistan’s military, which Khan has accused of engineering his removal from power. The military has consistently denied those allegations.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif !important; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">“The country needs to move forward, and it cannot be done without giving space to the party that has won the most votes, and there are signs that the system realises that. After all, they are in power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province,” he added.</p></div><div class="article-source" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #595959; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.2; margin: 40px 0px; position: relative; text-transform: uppercase;">SOURCE: AL JAZEERA</div>Habib Siddiquihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17571945627776378991noreply@blogger.com0