Dr Rahmeh Aladwan arrested at her home after her public support of Palestine
Give “I support Zionism without qualification” Starmer the Red Card for supporting and promoting racist rioters
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To understand who Keir Starmer is going to extraordinary lengths to support simply watch this one-minute clip of Maccabi fans in Greece last year. I have reviewed hours of footage of a similar kind; violence and intimidation is what they do, and Keir Starmer is ready to unleash them onto one of England’s most ethnically diverse communities.
“You’re the whores of Arabs. We will take your girls who love to party. We will rape them.” Maccabi fans chant this throughout Europe.
The Safety Advisory Group (SAG), a group of professionals who examine the safety of public events, had written to the club to recommend that no Maccabi fans should be permitted entry. The SAG was chaired by Birmingham City Council’s head of resilience and made up of representatives of the local authority, emergency services and event organisers. In making their decision, the Police stated: “This decision is based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 UEFA Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel-Aviv in Amsterdam.
The decision by West Midlands Police was taken because Maccabi fans are notoriously violent thugs and provocateurs, not because they come from a racist, fascist society that is committing genocide. Fans are routinely banned for bad behaviour. For example in the past couple of years PSV Eindhoven fans were banned from Paris for previous disturbances at RC Lens, Feyenoord fans were banned from Lille due to violent history across Europe, causing millions of Euros damage, Legia Warsaw fans were banned from Villa Park itself in 2023 after attacking police. Not one UK politician complained about any of these bans. Not Starmer. Not Badenoch. Not Farage.
In November last year I did a story “BBC goes full Goebbels in support of Israeli soccer hooligans” about Maccabi’s rampage through Amsterdam. Taxi drivers of Middle Eastern origins were beaten, a taxi torched, Amsterdammers were chased through the streets and beaten and Palestinian flags ripped down from private dwellings and burned. Then there were those chants, those utterly despicable, genocidal chants. At the match itself a minute’s silence for the victims of the Spanish floods was ruined by Maccabi fans boisterously chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there!”
Starmer knows this perfectly well. He and European football officials are totally relaxed about Islamophobic and genocidal chants but call any resistance to it antisemitism.
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Original article at https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2510/S00053/keir-starmers-maccabi-outrage-should-get-him-the-red-card.htm
Intelligence on ‘extreme’ Maccabi fans with history of violence led to Villa Park ban
Video: Tory MP embarrasses himself trying to back Maccabi Tel Aviv at any cost
Growing international criticism of German anti-Palestinian repression
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For several years now, the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany has faced severe repression. Yet after 7 October 2023, this harassment reached new levels: In the first weeks following the Gaza uprising and the beginning of the genocide, demonstrations were broadly banned in a number of German cities – especially in the capital, Berlin. Both Hamas and the international prisoner solidarity network “Samidoun” were declared illegal by executive order, and the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” was classified as a prohibited “symbol” of Hamas.
To this day, censorship, criminal charges and brutal police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators remain commonplace. Events are regularly cancelled – even UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, was denied access to university venues in Munich in February 2025. Repeatedly, police have conducted house searches because individuals “liked” posts online, used the phrase “From the river to the sea…”, compared Israel’s actions to Nazi crimes, or accused German politicians of complicity in war crimes.
According to estimates, police have opened around 10,000 criminal investigations related to Palestine solidarity over the past 24 months. In May 2024, the Berlin Palestine Congress was forcibly shut down by authorities; internationally recognised guests were denied entry to Germany. Six months after the bans on Samidoun and Hamas, the group “Palästina Solidarität Duisburg“ (Palestine Solidarity Duisburg) was outlawed as well, and further bans are reportedly being prepared by German authorities, including against the international BDS movement. Since the beginning of this year, there have also been multiple deportations of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian foreign nationals. The legal aid organisation “3ezwa” estimates that several thousand people across Germany are currently at acute risk of expulsion or deportation.
READ: Germany to send military personnel to support Gaza ceasefire monitoring
Criticism from NGOs, the EU and the UN
This campaign to suppress freedom of expression – which is openly racist and particularly targets Arab and Muslim communities – is drawing increasing international attention. As early as late October 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised the alarm, criticising, among other things, the handling of pro-Palestine demonstrations by German authorities. Soon after, criticism also came from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In mid-May 2025, the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) launched the “first available database on anti-Palestinian repression in Germany”. At that time, the database already documented 766 cases of censorship, surveillance, bans on demonstrations, arrests, workplace and financial repression, relevant laws and resolutions, intimidation, and migration-related reprisals.
In June, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights felt compelled to send a letter to the German Interior Minister. In it, he referred to “reports of excessive use of force by police against protesters, including minors,” expressed “concern” that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition “has been interpreted by some German authorities in ways which lead to the blanket classification of criticism of Israel as antisemitic,” and “recalled” that EU member states “have both an obligation to refrain from undue interference with human rights and also positive obligations to safeguard these rights by securing their effective enjoyment for everyone.”
Last week, the United Nations intervened again. Six independent experts called on Germany “to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism.” They, too, focused on police brutality, but also explicitly criticised the criminalisation of the slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free.” Their concluding statement declared: “Germany must support, not suppress, actions aiming to stop atrocity crimes and genocide.”
READ: EU is in no position to influence events in Mideast, German chancellor says
What is going on with Germany?
International media now report regularly on the state-driven anti-Palestinian repression and violence in Germany. Images of police officers beating peaceful demonstrators with their fists circulate around the world. Journalists and analysts attempt to explain to a bewildered international audience why a state that so often invokes human rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law acts in such a repressive and inhumane way. Frequently, reference is made to Germany’s “special historical responsibility” arising from the Holocaust. But this explanation is part of the myth.
In reality, the issue has always been about power and money: After the Second World War, West Germany had to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the Western public. The Federal Republic was built by men who, only yesterday, had been committed Nazis – politicians, bureaucrats, judges, officers, police and intelligence agents who had all taken part in the crimes of the fascist regime, including mass murder and world war. The focus on the genocide of the Jews – the second-largest group of victims after the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe (who were, however, the enemy during the Cold War) – coincided with Israel’s emergence as an outpost of Western imperialism. The so-called “reparations payments”, which went not to Holocaust survivors or their descendants but to the “Jewish state”, in fact served as a programme for the economic development and militarisation of the Zionist regime in Palestine. The phrase “historical responsibility” thus functions as a euphemism, much like the colonial “protection treaties” and “protectorates”.
What Germany has created through its “ideology of guilt” is unique: instead of denying or relativising its own crimes, it has singularised, dehistoricised and fetishised them. Germany is perhaps the only country that does not deny a genocide it itself committed, but rather invokes it to justify its imperial foreign policy – even to the point of supporting another genocide.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Secret UK-Israel military deal in place throughout genocide
https://www.declassifieduk.org/secret-uk-israel-military-deal-in-place-throughout-genocide
A military agreement Britain and Israel signed in 2020 has not been modified despite Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the Ministry of Defence admits.
In December 2020, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted that it had signed a military agreement with the UK.
It said British and Israeli military chiefs had agreed to “formalise and enhance the defence partnership and support the growing Israel-UK partnership.”
In Britain, the government gave the new agreement no publicity. Months passed in silence, with no press release or mention by the Ministry of Defence, together with no noticeable interest from the national media.
The silence was broken in May 2021 when Kenny MacAskill MP questioned the government in parliament, requesting it to publish the accord.
But Conservative defence minister James Heappey said the agreement was “being kept at a higher security classification and therefore it will not be made public”.
Heappey said the accord “strengthens the defence relationship between Britain and Israel” and was “an important piece of defence diplomacy”.
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Now, a response by the MoD to a freedom of information request states that “no amendments or modifications to this agreement exist”, confirming it is still active.
The admission is significant, showing that UK ministers have been content to keep a military accord alive with a state engaged in genocide.
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See the original article at https://www.declassifieduk.org/secret-uk-israel-military-deal-in-place-throughout-genocide
300,000 students resume classes in Gaza amid aid blockade, UN refugee agency says
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About 300,000 Palestinian students will resume classes in Gaza on Saturday under the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, the agency said, although Israel’s blockade continues to prevent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from entering the enclave, Anadolu reports.
The agency has “put plans in place to resume the educational process for 300,000 Palestinian students in UNRWA and this number is likely to increase,” Adnan Abu Hasna, UNRWA’s media advisor, said in televised remarks published through the US social media company X.
He said around 10,000 students will attend in-person classes in schools and shelters, while the vast majority will receive remote instruction because “it is absolutely impossible to have two years without schooling, preceded by two years of Corona.”
Abu Hasna said 8,000 teachers will take part in the program.
The educational process in Gaza has been suspended since Oct. 8, 2023, following the start of Israel’s genocide in the enclave. Most UNRWA and government schools were turned into shelters for displaced families, while many others were destroyed or severely damaged.
According to data from the Palestinian Education Ministry, as of Sept. 16, Israel had destroyed 172 government schools, bombed or damaged 118 others, and struck more than 100 UNRWA-run schools.
The ministry said 17,711 students have been killed in Gaza since the start of the genocide and 25,897 injured. It also reported the deaths of 763 education-sector employees and injuries to 3,189 others.
READ: Netanyahu’s office says remains of 11th Israeli hostage received from Gaza under ceasefire deal
“We also have a plan in the health sector to revitalize 22 central clinics in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “We have dozens of food-distribution points and thousands of employees with great logistical experience.”
He added that UNRWA had already purchased supplies worth hundreds of millions of dollars that remain stuck outside Gaza.
Abu Hasna condemned Israel’s obstruction of the relief effort, saying: “Many basic necessities, including shelter materials, blankets, winter clothing, and medicines, are not being allowed into Gaza from the Israeli side, worsening the humanitarian situation.”
He warned that 95% of Gaza’s population now depends on humanitarian assistance after losing their sources of income, and that conditions are deteriorating rapidly.
“Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are living in the open after returning to Gaza City following the entry into force of the ceasefire on Oct. 10,” he said. “Bringing in aid has become an urgent necessity before winter.”
The Gaza ceasefire deal was reached between Israel and Hamas last week, based on a plan presented by US President Donald Trump. Phase one included the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.
Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, and rendered it largely uninhabitable.
READ: UN official says Gaza situation catastrophic, urges unrestricted entry of essential supplies
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