Hasan Iqbal

[Pedro Sánchez @sanchezcastejon]

The world, Europe, and Spain have faced this critical moment before. In 2003, a few irresponsible leaders dragged us into an illegal war in the Middle East that brought nothing but insecurity and pain.

Our response then must be our response now:

NO to violations of international law.

NO to the illusion that we can solve the world’s problems with bombs.

NO to repeating the mistakes of the past.

NO TO WAR.
https://t.co/KpRjBfwY4B

[dylan saba @shaabiranks]

"I felt like, like, like a Nazi ... it looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and they were the Jews."

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Having destroyed Al Jazeera's office in Gaza, and killed much of its staff there,

having outlawed Al Jazeera from broadcasting in Israel,

having admitted executing Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh (after lying that Palestinians did it),

Israeli troops have now invaded Al Jazeera's office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and shuttered the channel's operations.

This is the latest attack on journalism by Israel: over the past year, it has killed more than 170 journalists, most of them Palestinians, and barred all foreign correspondents from reporting from Gaza.

When will the US and UK proscribe Israel as a terrorist state?

When will western media organisations and western journalists speak up in solidarity with their terrorised colleagues in occupied Palestine?

More here: https://t.co/m4sTNbF2uY

[Ahmede Hussain @AhmedeHussain]

My piece for @thewire_in

South Block has to find new friends in #Bangladesh, and it has to realise that its old policy has failed and its old friends in Bangladesh are despised by the public. #India #SheikhHasina

https://t.co/VrMimE8JBF

[The Road to Democracy @RTD_BD]

The Bangladesh regime is using UN vehicles to kill protesters. We demand a UN investigation.
#StepDownHasina

[DOAM @doamuslims]

🚨 Chhatra League goons, the student wing of ruling Awami League, firing on student protesters.

#QuotaReform #QuotaProtest #StepDownHasina #Bangladesh #SaveBangladeshiStudents #Dhaka #QuotaReformMovement #Bangladesh

[Netra News @NetraNews]

NEW — A sneak peek into a besieged country cut off from the rest of the world:

Sunday front pages of four major Dhaka newspapers, which halted online operations due to an Internet blackout but continued their print editions.

[Susan Sarandon @SusanSarandon]

Free Palestine

[Greta Thunberg @GretaThunberg]

Week 299. Malmö says NO to genocide! People from all over Sweden are gathering in Malmö this week, where Eurovision is taking place, to protest against Israel’s participation in the competition and to demand a #FreePalestine and #CeasefireNow ! Yesterday we were tens of thousands people flooding the streets of Malmö. We will not accept that a country currently committing genocide is allowed a platform to artwash themselves. The world cannot remain silent in a genocide. Everyone who can must use their voice and speak up against Israel’s crimes and occupation.
#AllEyesOnRafah #StandWithGaza #StandWithPalestine #ClimateJusticeNow #BoycottEurovision

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

UNRWA is separate from the UN’s main refugee agency, the UNHCR, and deals only with Palestinian refugees.

Although Israel does not want you to know it, the reason for there being two UN refugee agencies is because Israel and its western backers insisted on the division back in 1948.

Why? Because Israel was afraid of the Palestinians falling under the responsibility of the UNHCR’s forerunner, the International Refugee Organisation. The IRO was established in the immediate wake of the Second World War in large part to cope with the millions of European Jews fleeing Nazi atrocities.

Israel did not want the two cases treated as comparable, because it was pushing hard for Jewish refugees to be settled on lands from which it had just expelled Palestinians. Part of the IRO’s mission was to seek the repatriation of European Jews. Israel was worried that very principle might be used both to deny it the Jews it wanted to colonise Palestinian land and to force it to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes.

So in a real sense, UNRWA is Israel’s creature: it was set up to keep the Palestinians a case apart, an anomaly...

Israel’s efforts to get rid of UNRWA are not new. They date back many years. For a number of reasons, the UN refugee agency is a thorn in Israel’s side – and all the more so in Gaza.

Not least, it has provided a lifeline to Palestinians there, keeping them fed and cared for, and providing jobs to many thousands of local people in a place where unemployment rates are among the highest in the world.

It has invested in infrastructure like hospitals and schools that make life in Gaza more bearable, when Israel’s goal has long been to make the enclave uninhabitable.

UNRWA’s well-run schools, staffed by local Palestinians, teach the children their own history, about where their grandparents once lived, and of Israel’s campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing against them. That runs directly counter to the infamous Zionist slogan about the Palestinians’ identity-less future: “The old will die and the young forget.”

But UNRWA’s role is bigger than that. Uniquely, it is the sole agency unifying Palestinians wherever they live, even when they are separated by national borders and Israel’s fragmentation of the territory it controls.

UNRWA brings Palestinians together even when their own political leaders have been manipulated into endless factionalism by Israel’s divide and rule policies: Hamas is nominally in charge in Gaza, while Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah pretends to run the West Bank.

In addition, UNRWA keeps alive the moral case for a Palestinian right of return – a principle recognised in international law but long ago abandoned by western states.

Even before October 7, UNRWA had become an obstable that needed removing if Israel was ever to ethnically cleanse Gaza. That is why Israel has repeatedly lobbied to stop the biggest donors, especially the US, funding UNRWA.

Back in 2018, for example, the refugee agency was plunged into an existential crisis when President Donald Trump acquiesced to Israeli pressure and cut all its funding. Even after the decision was reversed, the agency has been limping along financially.

You can read more from my latest article In waging war on the UN refugee agency, the West is openly siding with Israeli genocide here:
https://t.co/31iUb2ZLUd

[Sami @ZulkarnainSaer]

Can anyone guess the number of buses that will be burned down?

The tally will most likely be around 120 Why do I say so? Do you remember BIRAP (Bangladesh Institute of Research, Advocacy and Planning) , the fake NGO that conducted voter mapping for the Awami League with 3,000 NSI (National Security Intelligence) field agents? Well, that pseudo-organisation is up to no good again.

Some 120 old buses were bought in the last few months from different parts of Bangladesh by….NSI officials in the name of BIRAP. Colonel Mesbah Uddin Chowdhury, NSI’s director of special affairs, is overseeing this special project, I’ve been told.

Curiously, the buses, which were bought with upfront cash, are yet to be registered in BIRAP’s name. My trusted sources at NSI tell me that these old buses are the ones that are being set on fire by arsonists and many times, in front of the police. Curiously, those buses that have been set on fire are yet to claim insurance and rarely any one is claiming ownership!

I’d like to think this sneaky act of arson was done in previous years to great success. But the problem is it’s 2023, not 2014 or 2018, and the common people’s collective intelligence and reasoning capacity is way more than theirs.

The common people can easily see through these manufactured incidents of violence.

[Netra News @NetraNews]

2,597 killed in 13 years — data captures the staggering scale of extrajudicial executions, fatal shootings and custodial torture across Bangladesh.

➡️ https://t.co/877RO5Y4KA

[Hasan Iqbal @hasaniqbal]

*Piers Morgan

[Hasan Iqbal @hasaniqbal]

Absolutely brilliant! Egyptian comedian/satirist Bassem Youssef destroys every Israeli/Zionist talking point in an interview with Pierce Morgan.

[Bassem Youssef @Byoussef]

Full interview :

https://t.co/KOQZFAYsrF

[Amer Mirza @amerxmirza]

BBC doing what they do best: push Israel's narrative. However, @hzomlot did a brilliant job of challenging the hypocrisy of the BBC👍👍. One of the best interviews I’ve seen.

Please watch the video below 👇

Some key points made my Husam.

▪️Do not under-estimate people's will and desire to end occupation

▪️Israel was meant to do one thing: end its occupation settlement expansion
International Governments were meant to provide accountability - they never did

Anchor: do you condemn Hamas?

▪️Don't equate the occupier and the occupied.  This is not a war of equals.
From its establishment, Israel has ONE military doctrine: to go and fight civilians
When it fights, it fights civilians.
The real conversation is how do we stop this vicious deadly cycle.

(Anchor again tries to get him to condemn)

▪️You have interviewed hundreds of Israeli officials; how many times have you shown Israel committing war crimes live on your cameras - do you start by asking them to condemn themselves?  Have you? ..You don't.  I'll answer for you - you DON'T.

▪️I refuse to answer your question because I refuse the premise of it.
At the heart of your question is misrepresentation.
▪️It's always the Palestinians who are expected to condemn themselves.
This is a political conflict and we have been denied our rights for a long time
The right starting point is to focus on the root causes.
▪️You call me here when Israelis are killed - did you call me here when many Palestinians are killed - 200 over the last few months?
▪️Do you invite me when there are provocations from Israelis elsewhere?
2M have been taken hostage by Israel (Gaza)
▪️We need to stop this rhetoric and give the people some ugly truths sometimes.

Anchor: What is the solution?

▪️Equal application if international law and resolutions - like you did with Ukraine. 
▪️Full apply the rules of the League of Nations and the UN.  Israel has been the exception for the last 75 years.
▪️Israel is an occupying force - it is mean to provide protection for the people under its occupation.

[Hasan Iqbal @hasaniqbal]

Hundreds of articles praising Bangladeshi govt. policies apparently by independent experts have appeared in national and international media but the authors have questionable credentials, fake photos, and may not even exist, an AFP investigation reveals.

https://t.co/3w7ic5NYhu

[Hasan Iqbal @hasaniqbal]

“About half of the five million members of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, are embroiled in politically motivated court cases, the group estimates. The most active leaders and organizers face dozens, even hundreds, of cases.”
https://t.co/v9YhBVUgRI

[Rana Ayyub @RanaAyyub]

So many of us expressing shock and anger over the video of the child being beaten for his ‘Muslim-ness’. Many are asking on the internet, how did we get here. How did we get here ? We got here when you were celebrating music festivals through love Jihad rallies in the city. We got here when you where what-abouting through the lynching of Muslims on the streets. We got here when you changed your display picture to the national flag but refused to silence your bigoted family members on Whats App groups. We got here when you demonised and vilified us in popular culture, we got here when you cheered for ‘Kashmir Files’ getting the National Award for best film on national integration. We got here when you clicked selfies with the Prime Minister but lost your voice when Muslim students, activists were being thrown behind bars. We got here when a railway police officer went on a shooting spree in a train identifying and killing Muslims invoking Modi and Yogi but none of our public figures expressed their disgust. 

We got here when you started distancing yourself from those dissenting against the government, being careful not to be seen in public with them. 

A few weeks ago an acquaintance said “I have two Muslim’ friends and neither feel unsafe in the country’. We got here because you continue to gaslight us and the ongoing apartheid calls against us. We got here because you and your family members flock to theatres to watch films like Kerala Story and act naive when we remind you that you are enabling Islamophobia. So please for heavens sake, spare me your shock and horror

Sent from my iPhone

[David Bergman @TheDavidBergman]

This has been brought to my attention. Five leaders/activists of the student league of the BNP (Bangladesh main opposition party) were allegedly picked up by the Detective Branch of the police outside the house of one of the men in Azimupur, Dhaka. The police are not acknowledging that they detained the them - and their whereabouts are unknown. with the families fearing that they have been "disappeared" - though it is a little two early to say if that is the case. Under Bangladesh law, detainees must be brought before the court within 24 hours of their detention, and it is possible that this may still happen. The police should acknowledge their detention and either bring them to court for legitimate reasons or release them. https://t.co/mH11D1vEeX

[Bangladesh Nationalist Party-BNP @bdbnp78]

#Bangladesh @albd1971 minister made misogynist remarks on female @bdbnp78 leader for having a meeting with diplomats. This party is full of misogynist perverts who rape women for casting votes against them. @usembassydhaka @UKinBangladesh @MarieMasdupuy @LillyNichollsL @SwedenAmbBD FYI.