Mashhour Abudaka

[Hamza Yusuf @Hamza_a96]

The British Museum has removed references to Palestine from its displays because of complaints and pressure from UK Lawyers for Israel.

Outrageous.

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

The crossing between West Bank and Jordan is still closed despite Israel declaration that the crossing is opened

[Dr. Ezzideen @ezzingaza]

They came at dusk: a woman and two children.
Not walking, exactly. Drifting, as if carried not by their own will but by a force more ancient and merciless than gravity. The kind of force that drives insects toward flame or the lost toward confession.

One of the children pulled a basket behind, its wheels scraping over the stones like bones. Neither spoke. Their silence was not shy, but inherited. The kind passed from womb to womb in times of war.

The woman looked at me, not as one human to another, but as someone standing trial on Judgment Day, stripped of all defense.

“Is this a clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have medicine?”
“Yes.”
“Is it free?”
“Yes.”

She entered, as if even the floor needed permission to bear her weight.

She sat before me. Her presence was not loud, but unbearable. She did not look tired, but ancient, like someone who had traveled not just for days but through time itself, through the centuries of betrayal that humanity has inflicted upon itself.

I said nothing. She said nothing. The silence held.

Then she whispered, “My feet and back hurt.”

What a simple phrase. And yet it carried the weight of exile.
My feet and back hurt.
Of course they did.
She had been carrying two children, a basket, and the unspoken grief of the earth.

“Is this new?” I asked.

“No, habibi. It’s from walking. We’ve been walking a long time.”

Walking. Such a gentle word for such a violent act. She had walked over corpses and rubble, over forgotten treaties and abandoned neighborhoods. She had walked across the graves of promises.

And I, me, a doctor. What could I do? Open a drawer? Offer a pill? I could not suture history. I could not anesthetize the world’s cruelty.

So I gave her painkillers. Like a priest sprinkling water on a burning house. And vitamins, why not? A placebo for the soul, perhaps more for mine than hers.

She stood, nodded, and left.

I should have returned to my notes, to the work. But I sat there, staring at my hands. Those impotent, trembling hands. I wondered if I had just witnessed something sacred or something obscene.

Then she returned.

In her hands was a bundle of arugula. Earth still clung to the roots.

“This is for you,” she said.

I refused. My pride would not allow it. But pride dies in the presence of grace.

She insisted. “It’s from my heart,” she said. “We’re farmers. From Beit Lahia. We picked it before we left. I still have some.”

And in that moment, I saw her. Not the woman, but the truth.

So I took it. Not for the leaves, but to protect what little dignity remained in the world.

She left again.

But she had left something behind. A scream without sound. A sermon without words.

And in that clinic, surrounded by antiseptics and broken instruments, I, the doctor, broke.

Not from pity. But from the unbearable truth that someone who had nothing still found a way to give everything.

#GazaGenocide‌

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

ليس فقط المجر التي خالفت قرار الجنائية الدولية لكن مرور طائرته في المجال الجوي لمعظم الدول الاروبية ابتداء من قبرص حتي بريطانيا (بعد المجر واصل نتنياهو رحلته لأمريكا) هذا المرور اوضح عمليا أن قرارات المحكمة مجرد حبر على ورق.

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

Actually you deserve this treatment from you close friend

[The National @ScotNational]

NEW: A furious Emily Thornberry has asked the UK Government to intervene after an Israeli foreign minister secretly videoed their private conversation and shared it online

[Ali Abunimah @AliAbunimah]

I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police. This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family. On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges. As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.” On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell. During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home. I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being. All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it. I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit. But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care. And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant. That is the perverse, unjust world we live in. This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor. More than ever I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus. The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world. I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an @intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism. Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime! Say it with me:

From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! ❤️🇵🇸✌️

[Middle East Eye @MiddleEastEye]

David Hearst, the editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye, discusses the alliance between Israel and the far-right in Europe. He highlights how these parties demonise Muslims in the same way that far-right groups historically nurtured hatred for Jews.

Hearst discusses the recent success of far-right groups in the European elections, noting that Israel views this as retribution for countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway and Slovenia recognising a Palestinian state. This success offers Israel a golden opportunity to plant informers at the highest levels of future European governments.

He further explains how Hitler’s sentiments about Jews are echoed in Israeli talk show debates and social media discussions about Palestinians. Israeli politicians employ rhetoric similar to Hitler's and even invoke him in these debates. Hearst calls this “fascism pure and simple”, which explains why Europe's fascists are so readily accepted as soulmates in Israel.

Hearst emphasises that the greatest threat to the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East stems from the actions of its leaders today. Similarly, the greatest threat to Jews worldwide is the resurgence of fascists in Europe.

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

@PalBint 👍

[PalMedia @PalMediaOrg]

It used to be the case even falsely accusing a person of antisemitism was a career killer. Not any more as UK Barrister fights back and wins:

[سكاي نيوز عربية @skynewsarabia]

"فى ستين داهية".. #باسم_يوسف يعلّق على موقف الإعلامي البريطاني #بيرس_مورجان من القضية الفلسطينية

#سوشال_سكاي

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

There is one thing we should all be able to agree with Netanyahu on: Any comparison between Israel's war crimes and those of Hamas is, as the Israeli prime minister put it, "absurd and false" and a "distortion of reality".

Here's why:

* Israeli war crimes have been ongoing for more than seven decades, long predating Hamas' creation.

* Israel has kept the Palestinians of Gaza caged into a concentration camp for the past 17 years, denying them connection to the outside world and the essentials of life. Hamas managed to besiege a small part of Israel for one day, on October 7.

* For every Israeli killed by Hamas on October 7, Israel has slaughtered at least 35 times that number of Palestinians. Similar kill-ratios grossly skewed in Israel's favour have been true for decades.

* Israel has killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children since October – and many tens of thousands more Palestinian children are missing under rubble, maimed or orphaned. By early April, Israel had killed a further 114 children in the West Bank and injured 725 more. Hamas killed a total of 33 Israeli children on October 7.

* Israel has laid waste to Gaza's entire health sector. It has bombed its hospitals, and killed, beaten and kidnapped many hundreds of medical personnel. Hamas has not attacked one Israeli hospital.

* Israel has killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza and more than 250 aid workers. It has also kidnapped a further 40 journalists. Most are presumed to have been taken to a secret detention facility where torture is rife. Hamas is reported to have killed one Israeli journalist on October 7, and no known aid workers.

* Israel is actively starving Gaza's population by denying it food, water and aid. That is a power – a genocidal one – Hamas could only ever dream of.

* Israel has been forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands for more than 76 years to build illegal Jewish settlements in their place. Hamas has not been able to ethnically cleanse a single Israeli, nor build a single Palestinian settlement on Israeli land.

* Some 750,000 Palestinians are reported to have been taken hostage and jailed by Israel since 1967 – an unwelcome rite of passage for Palestinian men and boys and one in which torture is routine and military trials ensure a near-100% conviction rate. Until October 7, Hamas had only ever managed to take hostage a handful of the Israeli soldiers whose job is to oppress Palestinians.

* And, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by western states, those same western states laud Israel, fund and arm it, and provide it with diplomatic cover, even as the World Court rules that a plausible case has been made it is committing a genocide in Gaza.

Yes, Netanyahu is right. There is no comparison.

[David Miller @Tracking_Power]

Two key Zionist family firms (note, not firms that support the Zionist entity in one way or another like the big US conglomerates) are those associated with the Wolfson and Lewis families. they both directly support the genocide in Gaza via sending money to the occupation forces, settlements and/or Jewish Supremacist groups.

I will post information about each below in a thread. 🧵

The headline is that they own/control

1. Next (and Reiss) - The Wolfson family;

2. River Island - The Lewis family;

We can #DismantleZionism by boycotting these firms and shutting them down (amongst other means).

#BoycottNext
#BoycottRiverIsland

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

7 easy steps to outlawing marches that call for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza:

1. Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, an aggressively pro-Israel organisation which led a smear campaign against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – one enthusiastically amplified by the establishment media – is back in action.

A week ago he decided to bring a film crew to record his efforts to cross a London street where another enormous march was taking place calling for a ceasefire to end the bloodletting and starvation of the 2.3 million people in Gaza. The march, we should note, is prominently attended every week by Jewish groups to show their solidarity with Palestinian civilians Israel has been slaughtering in their tens of thousands for more than six months, in what the World Court calls a “plausible” genocide. Israel has been ably assisted in its genocidal actions by western governments, including Britain’s. None of the Jewish groups that attend these marches has ever faced a problem for being Jewish.

2. The Metropolitan Police mark off much of the route of the weekly marches with barriers and officers to make it difficult for people to join or leave except at designated points. This is standard practice for big demonstrations nowadays, on the grounds, police argue, that it is their responsibility to maintain public order.

However, the policing of these marches has also occurred in the context of malicious efforts by Zionist groups, and the political and media establishment, to smear those attending the anti-genocide protests as trouble-makers and Jew haters – based on precisely zero evidence. A group of Holocaust survivors that are among the many Jewish groups that attend has stated: “Every major pro-Palestine demonstration in London has included a large Jewish bloc, which has received nothing but support and warmth from their fellow demonstrators. Claims that these protests are no-go zones for Jews are completely untrue.”

3. Filmed by his supporters, Falter made a big show of his desire to cross the march at a location where he knew the police were likely to object. Presumably his skull cap offered an added benefit – in addition to the film crew – that the police were more likely to flag him and try to stop him. Falter, of course, did not actually want to cross the street. He wanted to be filmed being stopped from crossing, so he could protest that he was being victimised as a Jew. The police duly obliged. The whole non-incident was captured on film, which was then hurriedly supplied to the BBC and other media.

4. In the film, an officer is shown providing Falter with two reasons he cannot cross the road at the chosen point. Those reasons were dictated solely by the policeman:

a) The officer calls Falter “openly Jewish”. That does not appear to be what he actually means, though it is exactly what Falter hopes he will say. As noted, lots of Jews – including Jews who are “openly Jewish”, carrying signs declaring their Jewishness – attend the marches every week. What the policeman actually identifies is that Falter is openly Zionist – which, in this context, means that he vocally supports Israel's “right” to massacre Palestinians in Gaza, including Palestinian children.

Such confusion between “Jewish” and “Zionist” has been careful cultivated in the British public, including in police officers. Any Jews critical of Israel – such as the ones on the demonstration – are deemed to be “the wrong sort of Jews”. That is why the Labour party under Sir Keir Starmer has been able to expel and suspend Jews – the wrong sort – in unprecedented large numbers, entirely unremarked. For a police officer like this one, any Jew attending the march against genocide in Gaza does not count as a Jew because they are seen as anti-Zionist. Only Jews like Falter, the ones who have pinned their colours to a genocidal Israel, count as Jews.

b) The officer, while stating that he is not accusing Falter of “anything”, adds that he is “worried about the reaction [of the demonstrators] to your presence”. Again, the policeman isn’t saying precisely that he means. With the film crew on hand, he does not want to be caught telling Falter that he suspects he will try to shout out provocative pro-Israel slogans in the middle of the march, increasing the risk of a public disturbance, exactly what the police are there to stop. Presumably, the officer is worried that such an accusation may be twisted to suggest antisemitic intent: that he believes the “openly Jewish” Falter is a trouble-maker. So he euphemises in way that relates his concerns to the marchers. But the truth is, even for this police officer, it is not Falter’s “presence” as a Jew that is the problem. It is Falter’s likely provocations as a pro-genocidal Zionist at an anti-genocide march that concern him.

This is confirmed by the Met’s initial response to Falter’s complaint about his treatment by the police officer. The Met states: “The fact that those who do this [shout out slogans supporting the slaughter in Gaza] often film themselves while doing so suggests they must know that their presence is provocative.” However, after Falter’s group called the Met’s statement “abject victim-blaming”, the force hurriedly retracted its response and issued a second, apologetic statement that “being Jewish is not a provocation”. This second statement apologises for something that the first statement never proposed. The Met did not accuse Jews of being a provocation. It rightly accused Zionists of acting provocatively at demonstrations protesting Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.

5. One can have a debate about whether it is right for the Met to stop highly charged ideological confrontations in public between groups with opposed political views on grounds of public order. But that is not the debate Falter wants to have, and it is not the one being provoked by his filmed non-incident. One can also debate whether the police officer overstepped his powers. But again that is not the debate the officer’s intervention raised for Falter – or the one being amplified by the political and media class.

There is no evidential basis whatsoever for the police officer’s suggestion that Jews are in any danger, as Jews, from the protesters. Again, lots of “openly Jewish” people attend the marches. There is not even any evidence that Zionists – even the most obnoxious ones – are in danger from the demonstrators. Had Falter chosen to act provocatively, a reasonable suspicion, the most likely danger he would have faced from the marchers is being drowned out by an increase in the volume of their slogans.

6. Falter secured from the police officer exactly the reaction that he had intended to provoke. With the non-incident recorded, he immediately ran to media like the BBC arguing that he had proof that his rights had been curtailed because he was a Jew. He called for the head of the Met, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign or be sacked. In panic-mode, the Met agreed to meet Falter privately on Sunday night and is due to follow up today by meeting with so-called “Jewish community leaders” to reassure them.

7. But Falter and “Jewish community leaders” don’t want reassurance. That is not what they were trying to achieve by staging and publicising this non-incident. They have two much bigger, far more insidious goals:

a) The first is a re-run of their playbook against Corbyn. “Jewish community leaders” understand that a willing political and media establishment class – opposed to regular marches that expose their complicity in genocide – can be easily manipulated into turning this from an ostensible story about how the Met polices large demonstrations into a giant smear of the many 100,000s of ordinary people appalled at seeing Palestinian children being massacred by Israel, with their own government's assistance, day in, day out.

Predictably, the BBC proved Falter right. In an interview on the evening news, he was allowed to swiftly shift gear from speaking about alleged policing failures to demanding a crackdown on supposedly “lawless mobs” terrifying Jews in the street – another iteration of the supposed growing “antisemitism crisis” that did for Corbyn. In now typical fashion, the real story was, in fact, turned on its head by Falter and the media. While Falter claims he is being accused as a Jew of being a dangerous presence, it is actually Falter and his political and media allies accusing Britons marching against genocide of being the dangerous presence.

Or as Falter said of his efforts to get Rowley sacked: “Racists, extremists and terrorist sympathisers have watched the excuses and inertia of the Met under his command and been emboldened by his inaction at precisely the moment when he should be signalling a renewed determination to crack down on this criminality.”

There is zero evidence either that there has been any significant “criminality” associated with the marches or that the police are inactive about it. Falter’s agenda is exposed by the fact that he classes anyone concerned about Israel killing at least 15,000 Palestinian children as a “racist, extremist or terrorist sympathiser”.

In further comments, Falter makes another claim easily refuted – though it has gone entirely unchallenged by the BBC and other media – that the marches have created “no-go zones for Jews”. Except, that is, for all those many Jews carrying banners on the marches declaring themselves to be Jews.

b) The second goal of Falter and “Jewish community leaders” is to put the police on the back foot as they face a concerted campaign from the media and political establishment to ban the marches as a supposed public menace, as proof of a growing tide of antisemitism that just so happens to coincide with Israel’s growing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The BBC reported that the Met wishes to discuss with Falter “what more the force can do to make Jewish Londoners feel safe”. The BBC’s reporter, Angus Crawford, interpreted this as growing pressure on the Met – pressure the BBC has helped engineer – “to get the balance right between allowing legitimate protest and cracking down on hate speech and intimidation”. Remember, this story has made headlines not because of anything the demonstrators have done but because of the actions of a single police officer.

Falter has created this antisemitism narrative out of thin air, as he and others previously did in claiming that Corbyn was a secret antisemite. In this case, his aim is to outlaw support for a ceasefire and the ending of Israel’s starvation of more than 2 million Palestinians. His earlier aim was to oust from the Labour party a leader, in Corbyn, who would actually have opposed – either as prime minister or as opposition leader – the genocide that currently receives bipartisan support from the British political class.

The goal of Falter and “Jewish community leaders” is, as before, to protect Israel, not to protect Jews from antisemitism. It is to smear Britons of conscience as antisemites and make it easier for Israel to carry out its genocide. And in this goal, Falter and “Jewish community leaders” are once again being all too ably assisted by the overwhelming majority of British politicians and the the entire British media.

The article, with supporting links, can be read here: https://t.co/V18WQwFIdM

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

@RishiSunak @RoyalAirForce Clear hypocrisy, poodle for the Americans

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

@BorisJohnson It will be good if you just shut up for once

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

@FirasBakr He lost it, I avoid reading for him always depressing, good for defending human right but should avoid politics

[Mashhour Abudaka @abudaka]

@pmakhlouf Depressed, I stopped reading for him