Tag: palestine

New Israeli policy targeting Christian schools in Jerusalem could threaten their future existence

The Israeli government instituted a policy prohibiting Christian Palestinian teachers who live in the West Bank from working in any of the 15 Christian schools in Jerusalem in a move that threatens to weaken the two-millennia presence of Christians in the Holy City.

School principals in Jerusalem recently received letters from the Israeli Ministry of Education stipulating that beginning in September they are required to only hire teachers who reside in the city and hold Israeli-issued qualifications.

The March 10 directive comes in the wake of a bill approved last July by the Education Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) aimed at prohibiting Palestinian teachers who earned their degrees at institutions in the West Bank from teaching in Israel or the occupied East Jerusalem.

Therefore, work permits for Christian Palestinian teachers living in the West Bank will no longer be granted despite their possessing a green card that allows individual Palestinians to work and travel within Israeli-controlled areas.

According to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), this restriction will affect almost 230 Christian teachers at 15 schools in Jerusalem, relegating them to the financial hardship of unemployment.

A representative of the General Secretariat of Christian Schools (GSCS) in the Holy Land told ACN that the new policy threatens the future of Christian education in the Holy City.

Additionally, he said, “If this decision is truly implemented, our Christian schools will find themselves in a very difficult position, which will jeopardize their sustainability and cause them to lose their Christian mission.”

The GSCS representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained, “There are not enough Christian teachers in Jerusalem to take over. In the long term, these restrictions risk permanently affecting the Christian character of our institutions and weakening the Christian faith and presence in the city.”

With most of these Christian schools having been founded in the late 19th century, they have educated hundreds of thousands of students, both Christian and Muslim, throughout the decades.

According to ACN, they were established “to promote Christian education and to preserve the Faith and the Christian presence in Jerusalem,” and “have played an essential role at national and interreligious levels.”

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Jewish settler gangs rampage through West Bank villages for three consecutive days

Illegal Israeli settlers continued their violent attacks across the occupied West Bank on 23 March, after several destructive pogroms targeted Palestinian villages over the weekend.

Palestinian farmers and shepherds in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, came under attack by settlers on Monday. 

“Muhammad Yahya Abu Aram, 35, and Elias Saeed al-Amour suffered from suffocation and fainting after colonists sprayed them with pepper spray following an attack on shepherds and farmers in the western part of Al-Rakeez village in Masafer Yatta,” anti-settlement activist Osama Makhameh told WAFA news agency. 

Groups of settlers also uprooted scores of olive trees in Beita, south of Nablus, on Monday, while also raiding a school in Huwara – spray painting graffiti on the walls and replacing the Palestinian flag with an Israeli one.

Overnight, a health clinic in Burqa, east of Ramallah, was torched by settlers. 

As the war on Iran rages and Tehran continues its large-scale retaliatory campaign against Israel, extremist settler violence against Palestinians – which was already at an all-time high – is now surging. 

Israeli settlers rampaged through multiple Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank overnight on 21 March, smashing cars, burning homes, and attacking and injuring Palestinians who were defending their homes.

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NYC’s First Lady Exposed Approving of Suicide Attack Propaganda, Plane Hijackers, and Outrageous Attacks on US Troops

New York City’s First Lady and wife of Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, has a history of glorifying terrorism, as evidenced by her past social media posts.

The Washington Free Beacon investigated Duwaji’s accounts on platforms Tumblr and X, finding posts she made in her teens and 20s that may raise an eyebrow with anyone thinking the Muslim couple now residing in Gracie Mansion are moderate in their politics.

In September 2017, she posted an image on Tumblr of Leila Khaled, captioned, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.”

Khaled is famous for her role as a militant who took part in two plane hijackings. She is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

In 1970, according to The Washington Free Beacon, Khaled threatened to set off a grenade during one of those hijackings if she was not allowed in the cockpit of the plane.

In another post from March 2015, Duwaji praised another terrorist, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, on International Women’s Day. Her post on X read “shadia abu ghazaleh, first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation #InternationalWomensDay.”

Ghazaleh died in 1968 after a bomb that she was making to use on a building in Tel Aviv, Israel, accidentally blew up in her home. She had previously bombed a bus and committed other acts of terrorism.

In June 2015, she reposted an attack on the U.S. military, commenting, “*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom. They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*”

After video sharing platform Snapchat added Tel Aviv to a live story feature allowing users to share footage from the city, Duwaji reposted an account that reacted to the decision in July 2015. “But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. Fuck #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them.”

Another post said, “And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.”

Some are chastising an investigation into Duwaji’s past, noting that it’s a page right out of the left’s playbook.

But there’s a distinction. Destroying someone’s life for calling their friends edgy insults on Facebook does not equate to revealing that the wife of a prominent public official has a love affair with a terrorist organization and downplays the sacrifice of American service members.

Duwaji is Syrian, moving with her family to Dubai in 2006, where she attended Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring to the campus in Richmond, Virginia. She was living in the Middle East, praising Middle Eastern terrorists.

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Israeli settlements will spell ‘end’ for Holy Land Christians – ‘America First’

Unabated settler violence, along with Israel’s continued settlement policy, could spell doom for the remaining Christian communities in the Holy Land, Jason Jones, founder of the Vulnerable People Project, has told RT’s America First.

Israel has allegedly approved the demolition of thousands of homes in the West Bank belonging to Christian communities and is encroaching on the territory of some of the oldest Christian populations in the area, particularly around Bethlehem, as well as villages such as Taybeh, Jones claimed.

The settlement of Shtema located at the site of a former Israel military base just east of the town of Bethlehem “will be the end of the Christian community in the Holy Land,” Jones said. “It will be the end of the oldest Christian community in the world,” he added, referring to a settlement legalized by West Jerusalem last year.

The NGO founder, whose organization operates in the West Bank and other territories, warned that local Christian communities are being attacked by settlers. “There is direct physical violence. There is separating the communities,” Jones added.

Neither West Jerusalem nor Washington is willing to act, with the US choosing to be “on the side of the oppressor,” Jones believes. Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, is “just ignoring it,” according to Jones. Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, “was not man enough to rise to the occasion and speak truth,” Jones said.

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Israel systematically destroyed over 93 per cent of Gaza Strip cemeteries amid ongoing genocide

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented that the Israeli army has destroyed 93.5 per cent of cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, either completely or partially, in the context of the ongoing genocide since October 2023.

The systematic targeting of graves through demolition and bulldozing constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and reflects a deliberate pattern of erasure. These actions violate the sanctity of the dead, erase physical traces, inflict severe psychological and spiritual harm on the living, and ultimately undermine collective memory, severing historical ties between the population, their ancestors, and their land.

The Euro-Med Monitor team analyzed data from 62 official cemeteries across the Gaza Strip’s five governorates. It found that the Israeli army completely bulldozed and destroyed graves in 39 cemeteries (approximately 62.9 per cent of the total) and partially damaged 19 others (approximately 30.6 per cent). Only four cemeteries, or 6.4 per cent, remain intact.

These findings show that the widespread, direct destruction of cemeteries in the Gaza Strip was neither incidental to military operations nor justified by “military necessity.” Rather, it was a deliberate, planned effort to obstruct the identification and documentation of remains and to disrupt any subsequent procedures for identification, examination, or lawful exhumation. This constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law, which requires the respectful treatment of the dead, the protection and maintenance of graves, the recording of identity data, and the clear marking of burial sites to enable later identification.

The bulldozing and vandalism have led to the mixing of remains and the destruction of graves, markers, and headstones, making identification of the deceased nearly impossible, given Gaza’s limited resources. This deliberately deprives families of their humanitarian and religious right to know the fate and burial sites of their loved ones and to visit them, causing profound and lasting psychological and spiritual harm.

These acts, beyond constituting grave violations of the rules protecting the dead and cemeteries, fall within the scope of international criminalization when committed as outrages upon human dignity. This includes “outrages upon personal dignity,” a term which extends to the treatment of the deceased.

This pattern goes beyond violating the sanctity of the dead; it strikes at the foundations of collective memory, historical continuity, and connection to the land by removing the physical markers of Palestinian generational continuity, in line with systematic policies of erasure and removal.

The geographical distribution of the attacks indicates a widespread strategy of spatial erasure. In Rafah governorate, all official cemeteries have been completely destroyed. In Khan Yunis, all 24 official cemeteries were targeted, with 83.3 per cent completely destroyed and 16.7 per cent partially destroyed. In North Gaza, all ten cemeteries have been destroyed, with half completely and half partially affected.

Similarly, all 11 cemeteries in the Gaza governorate were damaged, with 45.5 per cent completely destroyed and 54.5 per cent partially destroyed. In Central Gaza, four of the eight cemeteries were partially damaged, while the other four remained undamaged.

In many cases, the Israeli army deliberately exhumed graves and converted cemeteries into military barracks under the pretext of searching for the bodies of Israeli detainees. These actions were carried out without documented, verifiable procedures, independent oversight, or a clear chain of custody and handover process. Israeli forces removed hundreds of bodies from their burial sites, mixed remains, failed to return them to their original locations, and provided no identifying or biological data to enable verification or documentation, making the recovery and identification of remains extremely difficult.

In addition to violating the sanctity of the dead, this conduct reflects a pattern of dehumanization, treating Palestinian bodies as objects to be confiscated, mixed, and concealed rather than as remains of human beings with names, dignity, and rights. It constitutes a compounded violation that strips the dead of dignity, reduces them to unidentified corpses, deprives families of their humanitarian and religious right to know the fate of their loved ones and perform mourning and burial rites, and undermines the preservation of historical and civil records linked to identity and burial.

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Trump announces $10B U.S. investment in Board of Peace to rebuild Gaza

President Donald Trump said the United States will contribute $10 billion to the Board of Peace — an international organization he launched in January to help rebuild the Gaza Strip and secure peace in other conflict zones.

At the board’s first meeting in Washington on Thursday, he said other member countries will contribute billions more and send soldiers for Palestinian security.

“The Board of Peace is showing how a better future can be built starting right here,” Trump said at the meeting attended by 17 world leaders who are part of the board, as well as Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff.  

“We will help Gaza,” Trump said. “We will straighten it out. We will make it successful. We will make it peaceful. And we will do that in other spots. The Board of Peace is going to lead the way in Gaza.”

In addition to the U.S., seven other countries, including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, have contributed more than $7 billion to help the Gaza relief effort, Trump announced. The United Nations Office of Humanitarian Assistance is raising $2 billion to support Gaza, and FIFA plans to raise $75 million and to bring World Cup soccer stars to the war-torn territory, he said.

An estimated $70 billion is reportedly needed to rebuild the Palestinian territory decimated after two years of war with Israel.

Approved by the United Nations Security Council last year, the Board of Peace was initiated as part of Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the conflict in Gaza, starting with a ceasefire that began in October. The second stage of the plan, focused on demilitarization and reconstruction, was announced in January.

During Thursday’s meeting, Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco committed to creating an armed International Stabilization Force to keep security and ensure the disarming of the militant Hamas group, a key demand of Israel and a cornerstone of the ceasefire deal. Egypt and Jordan committed to training a police force, U.S. Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, commander of the Gaza International Stabilization Force, said Thursday.

Jeffers said a team of U.S. military experts is already on the ground in Gaza preparing the infrastructure for ISF headquarters to oversee five sectors in Gaza, each of which will receive a brigade of troops. The long-term goal is to have 12,000 police and 20,000 ISF soldiers, he said, starting with Rafah — the border crossing at the southern end of the 140-square-mile coastal territory.

“This is a vision of Gaza as part of the Middle East at peace,” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the meeting.

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‘Of Course’: IDF Drops Case Against Soldiers Accused of Raping Palestinian Prisoner

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday dismissed the indictments of five soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in July 2024 – an attack that sparked worldwide outrage.

The IDF spokesperson’s office said the decision to drop the indictments of five reserve members of Force 100 – a special unit of the military police responsible for guarding and controlling high-risk detainees – “was made following an examination of all the considerations, evidence, and relevant circumstances.”

“Among the factors taken into account were the complexity of the evidentiary basis in the case and the implications of the release of the security detainee to the Gaza Strip, which created significant consequences for the evidentiary aspect of the case,” the office added. “These developments created exceptional circumstances that affect the ability to continue the criminal proceedings while preserving the right of the defendants to a fair trial.”

The dismissal of the indictments, according to The Jerusalem Post, does not mean the soldiers have been exonerated.

The five soldiers were caught on video assaulting a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. Although they used riot shields in a bid to conceal the nearly 15-minute attack, medical reports cited in the case show the victim suffered serious rectal injuries requiring surgery, a ruptured bowel, punctured lung, and fractured ribs. An Israeli medical staffer said that the victim arrived at the hospital in critical condition.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – welcomed the dismissal of the indictments, which he said had “damaged Israel’s reputation in the world in an unprecedented manner.”

Israeli President Israel Katz raised eyebrows by asserting that “the role of the IDF’s legal system is to protect and safeguard IDF soldiers who engage heroically in war against cruel monsters, and not the rights of the terrorists of Hamas.”

Netanyahu and Katz both called the prosecution of the Sde Teiman reservists a “blood libel.”

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Israel punishes Gaza as it attacks Iran

Israeli forces continued to violate the fraudulent ceasefire in Gaza this week, killing Palestinians and reimposing a total closure of the crossings to humanitarian aid, food, fuel and medicine.

In the town of Bani Suheila near Khan Younis on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinians, Montaser Samour and Maher Samour. According to local news sources, an Israeli military unit abducted the two men and took them across the so-called yellow line, detained them, and shot them.

Reporter Tamer Qeshta captured video footage and eyewitness testimony from residents who said that the Israeli army returned Montaser Samour’s body riddled with bullets, while Maher Samour was shot and killed in what witnesses described as a field execution.

The news agency Anadolu reported that earlier in the day, heavy gunfire from Israeli military vehicles stationed east of the so-called yellow line was reported in those areas near Khan Younis, and that Israeli artillery also targeted neighborhoods east of Gaza City while Israeli gunboats fired toward the coastline.

Last week – early on 27 February – Israeli warplanes targeted a Palestinian police checkpoint at the entrance to the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least one police officer and injuring another, according to the Palestinian interior and national security ministry.

The health ministry in Gaza reported on 4 March that since the so-called ceasefire went into effect nearly five months ago, at least 633 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,700 have been injured.

In the same time period, the health ministry stated that more than 750 bodies of Palestinians have been recovered from underneath the rubble after more than two years of genocide.

The civil defense corps in northern Gaza stated this week that they had finished a nine-day operation that they called the Dignity of Martyrs campaign, in which they recovered 93 bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes and buried beneath collapsed homes.

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Israeli minister calls for widespread Palestinian emigration to West

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” to Western countries on Tuesday in response to an op-ed by Likud MK Danny Danon and Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben Barak that was published in the Wall Street Journal and called on Western countries to accept Gazan refugees.

“I welcome the initiative of voluntary relocation of Gazan Arabs to countries worldwide,” Smotrich wrote. “This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the whole area after 75 years of being poor refugees. The majority of Gaza is fourth and fifth generations to 1948 refugees who, instead of being rehabilitated long ago like hundreds of millions of refugees around the world, were held hostage in Gaza in poverty and overcrowding and were a symbol of the desire to destroy the State of Israel and of the refugees’ return to Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, and Tiberias.”

He went on to say this has bred the hatred for Israel and Jews “upon which the population in Gaza is raised and educated” and led them to believe that the only solution is the destruction of Israel.

“The small area of the Gaza Strip, which doesn’t have any natural resources or independent sources of income, has no chance of independent, economic, and diplomatic existence in such high density long-term,” he went on. “Therefore, the only solution to end the suffering and the pain of Jews and Arabs alike is for countries around the world who truly want what’s good for the refugees to accept them along with support and economic aid from the international community, including the State of Israel.”

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Pro-Palestine Activists in Virginia Paint Watermelon Mural, Angering Black Residents Who Say it’s Racist

Pro-Palestinian activists in Richmond, Virginia have painted a watermelon mural on a local building. The seeds of the fruit are arranged to spell out ‘Free Palestine.’

The watermelon has long been a symbol of Palestinian activism, but it is also seen by many as a black stereotype and some black residents are not cool with the painting as a result.

This is a classic case of woke leftism being aligned with racist tropes and not even realizing it.

WWBT News reports:

Richmond mural supporting Palestine sparks debate over watermelon imagery in Black community

A mural is drawing attention from Black community leaders who say they don’t have a problem with the message, just the watermelon imagery.

The mural, at the intersection of Brookland Boulevard and North Avenue in Richmond’s Northside neighborhood, depicts a darker-skinned Palestinian woman holding a slice of watermelon, with the seeds spelling out “Free Palestine.”

Dr. Faedah Totah with Virginia Commonwealth University said the symbol traces back to 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip and banned the Palestinian flag.

“The Palestinian flag has four colors, red, white, black, and green, which also happens to be the color of a slice of a watermelon,” Totah said. “So, what ends up happening when you ban the flag is that people become creative in finding different ways to express their national identity.”…

The mural is located in a historically Black neighborhood undergoing gentrification. Jonathan Davis, the former president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters and also a former president of the Battery Park Civic Association, said the imagery gave him pause.

“I was taken aback because of the imagery that it represents, a watermelon up to the mouth of a Black woman,” Davis said. “So to me, understanding the history of our people and what happened during the Jim Crow era and how those images were used to demean us and make fun of us and ridicule us and run us out of the business, it really bothered me.”

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