CAIR

US Rights Group Urges Media to Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

A funeral ceremony is held for Palestine TV correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab, who was killed, along with his family members, in an airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis, Gaza on November 3, 2023. (Photo: Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass killing of their Palestinian colleagues is the decadeslong and systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people.”

The largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Friday implored American and international media outlets to speak out against Israel’s killing of more than 100 journalists, almost all of them Palestinians, during the ongoing assault on Gaza.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) renewed its plea following Israeli airstrikes on the homes of Palestine TV journalist Tamim Ma’mmar and Al-Aqsa TV‘s Abdullah Al-Sousi. Ma’mmar was killed along with his wife and two of their children, while the other attack killed Al-Sousi and two of his nephews, according to Quds News Network.

“The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass killing of their Palestinian colleagues is the decadeslong and systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people, in which the lives of Palestinians have lesser or no value,” CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Cooper said in a statement.

“Journalists worldwide must begin to speak out about these killings and about the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he added.

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Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Its 308-day assault on Gaza has left more than 142,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to local and international officials.

Preliminary investigations by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists found that at least 113 media professionals—including 108 Palestinians, three Lebanese, and two Israelis—have been killed during the war, “making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.”

CPJ has condemned what it called an “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families,” noting cases in which media workers were killed while wearing press insignia and after being threatened by Israeli officials.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said this week that Israeli forces have killed 166 journalists since October.

In May, the Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) filed a third complaint at the International Criminal Court alleging “war crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

RSF said it had “reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians” and accused Israel of “an eradication of the Palestinian media.”

The following month, the Gaza Project—led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—published a report detailing a “chilling pattern” of Israeli forces apparently targeting journalists during the war.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for official investigations into Israeli killing of journalists including an October 13 attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.

Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, was wounded while administering first aid to Christina Assi, an Agence-France Presse journalist who was seriously wounded in the attack. Assi-one of whose legs was amputated—recently carried the Olympic torch in Paris.

CPJ president Jodie Ginsburg recently told Al Jazeera that the killing of journalists by Israeli forces “appears to be part of a broader strategy that aims to stifle the information coming out of Gaza.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingUS Rights Group Urges Media to Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza

Israeli Minister Threatens to Turn Occupied West Bank Into Ruins ‘Like in the Gaza Strip’

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, speaks during a rally with supporters in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on October 26, 2022.
 (Photo: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)

One advocate responded: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza.”

Israel’s forces have killed at least 36,224 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in less than eight months, and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to similarly attack the illegally occupied West Bank.

Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, shared on social media a video he recorded in Bat Hefer, following similar posts a day earlier. The Times of Israel reported that the minister’s comments came after Palestinians’ gunfire from Tulkarem in the West Bank toward the Israeli settlement.

“Our message to the neighbors beyond the fence in Tulkarem, Nur Shams, Shuweika, and Qalqilya: We will turn you into ruined cities like in the Gaza Strip if the terror you are exerting on the settlements continues,” Smotrich said in Hebrew, according to a translation from Al Jazeera.

NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy pointed out that not only is Smotrich an advocate of illegal Israeli settlements—he has a home near Kedumim—but also “his role as finance minister means he oversees budgets, like police and army.”

Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns of the U.K.-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, said of Smotrich’s remarks: “Take this seriously. If extremists like Smotrich get their way they will do to the West Bank exactly what they have done to Gaza. Starting with the refugee camps and Area C communities (to a certain extent it has already begun).”

Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 500 Palestinians in the West Bank.

Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights group in the United States, issued a statement about multiple recent events, including the minister’s comments.

“Every day, we see Israel’s far-right government targeting civilian infrastructure vital to the lives of ordinary Palestinians, whether in Gaza or the West Bank,” Hooper said. “This ongoing destruction has one goal—to make life unbearable for the Palestinian people and to force their removal from the land of Palestine.”

CAIR also “condemned the far-right Israeli government’s destruction of a vegetable market in the West Bank city of Ramallah,” explaining: “During a raid, Israeli stun grenades and tear gas canisters ignited the blaze that consumed a large portion of the market. Some 200 shops and stalls were impacted.”

The group further pointed out that the devastation in Ramallah followed Israeli forces bombing a pair of encampments in and near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, attacks that killed dozens of Palestinians displaced by the war—which over 30 countries have argued to the International Court of Justice amounts to genocide.

Smotrich has come under fire for other statements since Israel launched its retaliation for the October 7 attack. Just last month, in what critics called blatantly genocidal language, he advocated for “total annihilation” of Gaza.

In January, Smotrich said that the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would be a “humanitarian solution” and “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where, four minutes away from our settlements, there is a hotbed of hatred and terror, where there are 2 million people who wake up every morning with the desire to destroy the state of Israel.”

Smotrich made similar remarks before the current escalation, declaring in March 2023 that an entire Palestinian town should be “wiped out” by Israel and that “there’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingIsraeli Minister Threatens to Turn Occupied West Bank Into Ruins ‘Like in the Gaza Strip’

‘Relentless Hate’: Late 2023 Saw Surge in Anti-Muslim Crimes, Discrimination

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Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A young boy watches as people pray during a funeral service for 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoumi at the Mosque Foundation on October 16, 2023 in Bridgeview, Illinois.  (Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“The way to stop the hate is to end the apartheid, occupation, and genocide occurring in Palestine,” said one CAIR leader.

Nearly four months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States on Monday highlighted that the U.S. saw a dramatic rise in Islamophobic hate during the final three months of 2023.

In line with data released last month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealed that it received 3,578 complaints from October through December—a 178% jump from a similar three-month period the previous year.

The highest reported categories last quarter were employment discrimination (19%), hate crimes and incidents (13%), and education discrimination (13%), according to CAIR, which plans to release a full analysis and dataset in the months ahead.

Victims of high-profile incidents have included six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, who was stabbed to death in Illinois; three university students shot and wounded in Vermont; and a New York City food cart vendor harassed by a former U.S. State Department official.

“Despite this disturbing wave of bias targeting the Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian communities, we are witnessing an impressive resilience in the face of bigotry.”

“Despite this disturbing wave of bias targeting the Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian communities, we are witnessing an impressive resilience in the face of bigotry,” said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad in a statement.

CAIR’s Monday release comes as the death toll in Gaza has topped 26,600 people—including at least 11,500 children—with over 65,300 others injured and thousands more missing. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are displaced and hungry.

Despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday ordering Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocide in Gaza, the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the besieged enclave continues, and fears of a wider regional war keep mounting.

The ICJ’s initial ruling last week also emboldened supporters of a cease-fire, who have repeatedly taken to the streets around the world since Israel launched its current military campaign against Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on October 7.

“In the face of relentless hate and bogus smears, American Muslims, Arabs, and a broad coalition of Jewish, Christian, African American, Asian Americans, and others continue calling for justice for Palestine,” CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said Monday. “This coalition knows the way to stop the hate is to end the apartheid, occupation, and genocide occurring in Palestine.”

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, since Israel declared war, there has also been a significant rise in antisemitism in the United States and worldwide—though reliable figures have been hard to come by, as some individuals and groups conflate protests against the war or criticism of the right-wing Israeli government with hostility toward Jews.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in the early weeks of the war that the Department of Justice was monitoring the increase in threats against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities nationwide and the Department of Homeland Security last month released resources to help houses of worship and faith-based groups enhance their security.

However, the United States also gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and since October 7, U.S. President Joe Biden has sought a new $14.3 billion package while also bypassing Congress to arm Israeli forces—degrading many Arab and Muslim Americans’ trust in the Democrat, who is seeking reelection in November.

As a federal court on Friday held a hearing for a case accusing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of complicity in genocide, some local leaders in Michigan—a key swing state with the nation’s biggest Arab American population—refused to meet with a delegation from the president’s campaign.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, told CNN on Saturday: “There is no possibility of repair while he is supporting an act of genocide. So, there is no reason to have communication.”

Original article by JESSICA CORBETT republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

dizzy: I’ve been considering Islamaphobia recently. The term doesn’t do it justice – it’s more of a relentless hatred as the title of this article suggests than a fear or similar. It appears to be a form of Neo-Fascism with Muslims as the scapegoat with the classic German Fascist concept of untermensch applied to them.

Opposition to or criticism of Zionism is not anti-semitism of course, they are obviously and clearly distinct. The Zionist UK Labour Party claims that they are equal.

Continue Reading‘Relentless Hate’: Late 2023 Saw Surge in Anti-Muslim Crimes, Discrimination