We no longer hear much about the Uyghur issue, which Arab and international media outlets often promoted as a narrative to tarnish the reputation of the Chinese government and pressure it. This issue has always been framed through the lens of “generality” implying that “China is persecuting Muslims within its borders,” which is certainly not true, since the Uyghurs are not the only Muslim ethnic group in China; there are ten Muslim ethnicities in China.
Rafah has been at the center of a growing rift between Israeli and U.S. political leaders. Those tensions boiled over on Monday, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a visit to Washington by top aides to discuss U.S. concerns over the planned offensive on Rafah, where Hamas fighters are making a final stand. The tit-for-tat move was in response to the U.S. abstaining from a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire while also demanding the release of hostages.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, however, proceeded with his meetings at the White House and Pentagon on Monday and Tuesday, which had been previously scheduled. Gallant is part of Israel’s three-member war cabinet that includes Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, the prime minister’s chief political rival.
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Both sides also agreed that the Hamas battalions in Rafah must be dislodged so that the militants cannot attempt a comeback or continue to smuggle weapons into the enclave, which are prerequisites for ending the war and paving the way for a new political authority in Gaza. And that means trying to find ways to work with Israel on its Rafah strategy, for lack of better options.
MOSCOW – Strikes by the US and the UK on Yemen are another example of the distortion of UN Security Council resolutions and complete disregard for international law in the name of escalation in the region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
The previous generation had their own Left Behind series – another mega-bestseller (28 million copies) futurist geopolitical fiction mapping Darby’s doctrines on to the 1970s it was called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay. Lindsay’s genius was to update versions of the book as America’s enemies changed. In 1970, the threat to Israel came from Russia; by the 1990s, it was a joint Russia-Muslim operation; by 1999, China was in there too. “It is amazing, is it not”, wrote Lutheran critic of Christian Zionism Joseph Neuberger in his Master’s thesis, “that the great enemies of God’s people just happen to coincide with the national enemies of America at any given moment?” In the Christian Zionist reading of the bible, unlike non-Zionist Christian readings, “Israel” means the state of Israel – this is to be read literally. But Israel’s enemies in the bible are tribes (Canaanites, etc.) that don’t exist any more – these enemies have to be read figuratively and flexibly, which the Lindsay and the Left Behind authors do.
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It is apparent that God’s will coincides perfectly with joint US/Israel geopolitical ambitions.
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The murder of literature teacher Refaat Alareer, the target had been put on his back by social media figure Bari Weiss (Refaat had said, after the death threats started pouring in, that if he died he held Weiss responsible), looks like it was a targeted assassination. He had apparently “received an anonymous phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli officer and threatened Refaat that they knew precisely the school where he was located and were about to get to his location with the advancement of Israeli ground troops.”
Max Blumenthal writes: “According to EuroMed’s report, he then returned to his sister’s apartment to avoid endangering others in the school/shelter. There, he was killed by a “surgical” strike by the Israeli military.” Refaat Alareer’s murder was celebrated online by many pro-Israel people, “publicly, under their own names celebrating and cheering the killing of Refaat Alareer and his family which includes children”, as one tweeter noted. His poem, “If I must die”, is being translated into many of the languages of the earth in this twitter thread.
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On one of the telegram channels where Israelis watch the carnage, one poster expressed concern about how the glee would be seen from the outside.
“It’s fun to watch and all,” wrote ben, “but these videos reach social media and portray us as psychopaths who commit genocide while smiling and laughing. I don’t know if it’s wise or not, but I’ve come across a lot of posts like this that are used by the enemy.”
Iran has urged the BRICS group of nations to intervene in an active, constructive and responsible manner to stop the Israeli regime’s war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Some 500 people have been arrested during a sit-in at the United States Congress in Washington, DC, where they protested against “Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians”, according to Jewish Voice for Peace, the group that organised the demonstration.
But if we are honest with ourselves, we should admit that we have also copied the worst of imperial Europe. We share a dark past of settler colonialism, war, ethnic cleansing of Indigenous inhabitants and a persistent history of racism and discrimination including slavery in the Americas, and apartheid in Palestine.
Our success was made possible through the blood and tears of countless victims. We’ve treated our nemeses as warmongers, our critics as enemies, and our enemies as modern-day Hitlers, but no other states have waged as many wars, or embarked on as many military interventions in the past eight decades as we have.
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But unlike him [Chaim Herzog], I can no longer keep silent as our military and civilian occupation mutates into an apartheid system in the Middle East. I do not say that lightly; I say it with a heavy heart. I do not say it out of pity for the millions of Palestinians, most of whom stubbornly linger under occupation and in refugee camps, I say it out of pity for my people and what’s become of us as decades-long occupiers and dispossessors. Our chutzpah is self-defeating. Our hasbara is wearing thin.
I never was a particularly brave or charismatic parliamentarian and head of the opposition. But that stops now, knowing I will never again have a better platform to address your people and mine. We may have become rich and powerful but we’ve never been so divided, so fanatical; so morally bankrupt.
Friends speak truth to each other. Good friends speak the bitter truth. It befalls upon you, once again, to save us from ourselves. To free us and the Palestinians from an entrenching system of apartheid that is bound to lock us in hatred and violence for decades to come. There is little I can do, as a ceremonial president, other than to speak out.
So, I urge you to condemn racism and apartheid today, as you condemned apartheid in South Africa, albeit belatedly in the past. And I urge you to push us to come to terms with the Palestinians, who soon will become the majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Do not believe a word Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says about the Palestinians; he has made a career out of trafficking in fear.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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