By Dania Akkad

Published date: 13 September 2024 19:12 BST

UCLA students arguing that Zionism is a First Amendment-protected religious belief have joined a powerful right-wing legal project.

Raphael Magarik

September 13, 2024

Patrick Wintour

Diplomatic editor

Fri 13 Sep 2024 11.38 EDT

Melissa Hellmann, Gloria Oladipo and Adria R Walker

Fri 13 Sep 2024 07.00 EDT

Prem Thakker

Sep 13, 2024

Sunjeev Bery

September 11 2024, 2:02 p.m.

Andrew Roth in Washington

Thu 12 Sep 2024 14.30 EDT

By Martin Belam

Thursday, September 12, 2024 09:54 EDT

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, has survived 75 years of Israeli-Palestinian strife. Can it survive the latest conflict?

By Ben Hubbard

For this article, Ben Hubbard conducted more than three dozen interviews and visited refugee camps in the West Bank. He has spent more than a decade covering the Middle East, and reported from inside Gaza for The Times during the Hamas-Israel war in 2014.

Sept. 12, 2024

Next month, the band will take the stage with an unlikely musical guest: legendary "king of Mizrahi music" Zohar Argov. Unlikely, because Argov has been dead for 37 years. His appearance at the Revivo show will be via hologram. "The first of its kind ever to be used in Israel," the correspondent said with breathless excitement.

In 1978, he was tried and found guilty of raping a woman who refused to go home with him and spent a year in prison. Nine years later, while on furlough from a prison sentence he was serving for stealing a pistol from a police station, Argov attempted to rape the girlfriend of his friend and fellow singer Yishai Levi.

But it's not only dead singers accused of rape who are given a pass in mainstream Israeli society. All of which pale in comparison to Israel's most recent, and arguably most glaring, example of rape denial and apology: the Sde Teiman prison facility, where nine reserve soldiers were accused of severely sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

News of the allegations prompted many on social media to speak out in their defense, calling the soldiers "national heroes" and "completely innocent of any wrongdoing," even as the evidence began to mount against them. When it was discovered where the suspects were being detained, dozens of protestors, including Knesset members, stormed the base and entered the military court inside while soldiers attempted to stop them.

The one thing we have not done, or at least done enough, is look inward at our own biases. Alongside the worthy #MeTooUNlessURaJew social media campaign, it's time for Israel to collectively declare that rape is rape is rape, no matter the victim, no matter the perpetrator, and certainly no matter the use of angled lights and lasers to create a three-dimensional illusion that appears to move and exist in real space.

By MEE staff in London

Published date: 10 September 2024 22:02 BST

By Simon Hooper

Published date: 9 September 2024 16:25 BST

After every successive war crime and crime against humanity perpetrated by Israel in its current genocidal rampage, the single most common refrain of Western government officials (and of Western corporate media) is that “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

No, it does not.

In fact, as a matter of international law, this is a double lie.

A temporary exception to the prohibition on the use of force is codified in Article 51 of the UN Charter for self-defense from external attacks. But importantly, no such right exists where the threat emanates from inside the territory controlled by the state.

This principle was affirmed by the World Court in its 2004 opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall. And the Court found then, and again in its 2024 opinion on the occupation, that Israel is the occupying power across the occupied Palestinian territory. Thus, Israel, as the occupying power, cannot claim self-defense as a justification for launching military attacks in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, or the Golan Heights.

Of course, Israel, from within its own territory, can lawfully repel any attacks to protect its civilians, but it cannot claim self-defense to wage war against the territories it occupies.

An IDF helicopter crashed overnight in a still unexplained accident in Rafah, killing two soldiers, including the lead pilot, and wounding seven soldiers on board.

Four soldiers were seriously wounded, and three were moderately wounded.

The accident occurred after midnight in an attempt to rescue a wounded soldier in the field with Unit 669 forces. Moreover, the IDF said that no enemy forces had hit the helicopter and that the reasons for the accident would be clarified in an ongoing probe.

♦️ Palestinian Union of Women’s Action Committees:
—
The Union of Women's Action Committees mourn the comrade Shaima Jabir Al-Shaer and affirm that the crime of her assassination will not deter our people from continuing the struggle and resistance.

The Union of Women's Action Committees mourns the martyr, comrade Shaima Jabir Al-Shaer (18 years old), who was martyred in the horrific Mawasi massacre in Khan Younis Governorate, southern Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of more than 100 martyrs and wounded, along with a large number of missing persons.

The Union of Women's Action Committees condemns this cowardly crime and affirms that this and other crimes of genocide will not deter our people and its women’s movement from continuing their struggle and resistance until the expulsion of the fascist occupation from our Palestinian land, within the borders of June 4, 1967, with Al-Quds as its capital, and ensuring the return of refugees to their homes from which they were displaced since 1948, in accordance with UN Resolution 194.

It is noted that comrade Shaima Al-Shaer was displaced from Rafah Governorate due to the genocide crimes to the Mawasi area in Khan Younis, believing it to be a humanitarian safe zone, as claimed by the fascist occupation, which urged citizens to move there.

The Union of Women's Action Committees 
Gaza Strip, Palestine 
10/09/2024

Source: Resistance News Network

Edit: removed telegram link. Edit: fkc android keyboard: doing the title readable

American killed in West Bank was longtime activist ‘bearing witness to oppression’, friends say

Ayşenur Eygi ‘was not a naive traveler – This experience was the culmination of all her years of activism’, says professor

by Sam Levin in Los Angeles Sat 7 Sep 2024 00.48 BST

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, at her graduation from the University of Washington earlier this year (Eygi family/International Solidarity Movement/AP)

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old American activist killed while protesting in the occupied West Bank, was remembered by friends and former professors as a dedicated organizer who felt a strong moral obligation to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians.

"I begged her not to go, but she had this deep conviction that she wanted to participate in the tradition of bearing witness to the oppression of people and their dignified resilience," said Aria Fani, a professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, which Eygi attended. "She fought injustice truly wherever it was."

Fani, who had become close with Eygi over the last year, spoke to the Guardian on Friday afternoon, hours after news of her death sparked international outrage. Eygi was volunteering with the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement when Israeli soldiers fatally shot her, according to Palestinian officials and two witnesses who spoke to the Associated Press. Two doctors told the AP she was shot in the head. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said it was investigating a report that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an "instigator of violent activity", and the White House has said it was "deeply disturbed" by the killing and called for an inquiry.

Eygi, who is also a Turkish citizen and leaves behind her husband, graduated from UW earlier this year with a major in psychology and minor in Middle Eastern languages and culture, Fani said. She walked the stage with a large "Free Palestine" flag during the ceremony, Fani said.

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi (top) at her graduation (Courtesy of Aria Fani)

The professor said the two met when he was giving a guest lecture in a course on feminist cinema of the Middle East and he spoke of his own experience protesting in the West Bank in 2013.

"I had no idea she would then be inspired to take on a similar experience," he said, recounting how she reached out to him for advice as she prepared to join the International Solidarity Movement. "I tried to discourage her, but from a very weak position, since I'd already done it myself. She was very, very principled in her activism in this short life that she lived."

In her final academic year, she devoted significant time "researching and speaking to Palestinians and talking about their historical trauma", Fani said. "She was incredibly well-informed of what life was like in the West Bank. She was not a naive traveler. This experience was the culmination of all her years of activism."

She fought injustice truly wherever it was

Aria Fani, University of Washington in Seattle

Eygi was an organizer with the Popular University for Gaza Liberated Zone on UW's campus, one of dozens of pro-Palestinian encampments established during protests in the spring, he said. "She was an instrumental part of ... protesting the university's ties to Boeing and Israel and spearheading negotiations with the UW administration," Fani said. "It mattered to her so much. I'd see her sometimes after she'd only slept for an hour or two. I'd tell her to take a nap. And she'd say: 'Nope, I have other things to do.' She dedicated so much, and managed to graduate on top of it, which is just astounding."

He warned her of the violence he had faced in the West Bank, including teargas, and he feared deeply for her safety: "I thought, worst-case scenario, she'd come back losing a limb. I had no idea she'd be coming back wrapped in a shroud," he said.

Eygi had also previously protested the oil pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation, and was critical of Turkish nationalism and violence against Kurdish minorities, Fani said: "She was very critical of US foreign policy and white supremacy in the US, and Israel was no exception."

Carrie Perrin, academic services director of UW's psychology department, told the Seattle Times in an email that Eygi was a friend and a "bright light who carried with her warmth and compassion", adding: "Her communities were made better by her life and her death leaves hearts breaking around the world today."

Ana Mari Cauce, the UW president, said Eygi had been a peer mentor in psychology who "helped welcome new students to the department and provided a positive influence in their lives".

Fani said Eygi had been deeply dismayed by the UW administration's handling of campus protests, and that he hoped her killing would encourage campus administrators across the country to end their crackdowns on pro-Palestinian activism.

Eygi's killing drew immediate comparisons to the 2003 killing of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American, also from Washington state, who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the military's destruction of homes in Rafah with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

ISM said in a statement that the group had been engaged in a peaceful, weekly demonstration before Israeli forces shot Eygi: "The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill."

Eygi's family released a statement on Saturday through the ISM, calling for an independent investigation to "ensure full accountability for the guilty parties", and remembering Eygi as a "loving daughter, sister, partner, and aunt".

"She was gentle, brave, silly, supportive, and a ray of sunshine," her family said. "She wore her heart on her sleeves. She felt a deep responsibility to serve others and lived a life of caring for those in need with action. She was a fiercely passionate human rights activist her whole life -- a steadfast and staunch advocate of justice."

Fani and a colleague spoke earlier about the irony of her killing garnering an international response, he said: "She wanted to bring attention to the suffering of Palestinians. And if she were alive right now, she'd say: 'I got that attention because I'm an American citizen, because Palestinians have become a number. The human cost has been strategically hidden from the American public and certainly from the Israeli public.' ... Obviously this is not the outcome she would have wanted, but it is just so poetic, in such a twisted, stomach-churning way, that she went this way."

The professor recounted the musicality in the way Eygi spoke, and said he used to joke that he wanted to study her voice: "She was so easy to talk to and truly an embodiment of the meaning of her name, Ayşenur, which is 'life and light'. She was just an incredibly beautiful person and good friend and the world is a worse place without her."

Lawyer Rafik Chekkat, founder of the Islamophobia platform, said Imane Maarifi was arrested in the morning after raiding her home and taken into custody in front of her husband and children.

He criticized the arrest and said it took place at a time when French soldiers who fought in Gaza “enjoy total impunity.”

Thomas Portes, a lawmaker from the La France Insoumise, or France Unbowed (LFI) party, wrote that Maarifi was released from custody on Thursday afternoon.

“Imane Maarifi has just been released. Her police custody is over, and no charges will be filed. The search of her home in front of her family leaves no doubt about the intent to intimidate those who speak out in support of the Palestinian people and call for an immediate ceasefire,” he wrote on X.

According to the French daily newspaper l’Humanité, Maarifi was allegedly accused of making “insults in connection with a campaign against the Israeli investment and real estate fair taking place in Paris on September 8.”

Her supporters and friends believe this is “merely an attempt to intimidate her.”

By Mohammad Salem and Nidal Al-Mughrabi

September 10, 2024 7:11 AM EDT

by Mariam Barghouti

Sep 09, 2024

By MEE staff

Published date: 9 September 2024 20:27 BST