@JohnCleese You are woefully ignorant of the religion. Sufi Muslims ARE Orthodox Muslims. You cannot participate in tasawwuf without a strong grounding in theology. Come and speak to the Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College Dr Timothy Winter or take a course in Islam at SOAS.
As they should. Nobody should be asked to stand for this song.
1) Read the words. “As long as in the heart, within, a Jewish soul still yearns.” The anthem is about a Jewish soul and nothing else. An Arab citizen cannot sing it without erasing himself.
2) It ends with the hope “to be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” The people it means is the Jewish people. Palestinian citizens are not in it.
3) The state made this official in 2018. The Nation-State Law says the right to national self-determination in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.” The anthem says the same thing set to music.
4) Mansour Abbas stayed in the room and got nothing for it. The same people heckling the walkout spent the day calling every Arab-backed government illegitimate.
If you want Arab citizens to stand for the anthem, write one that includes them. Until then, sitting it out is the honest response. And Palestinian citizens will continue to be treated like second-class citizens no matter how much they demean themselves. So why do it?
@RmSalih Why are you using a Muslim news platform to report on Muslim leaders around the world who wish their consituents well on their holy days? Don't claim to report on British Muslim issues any more. These are nonsense stories and 5 Pillars is a joke.
This is a map of voting sites in Jerusalem. As you can see, they are completely absent from most of East Jerusalem, where the majority is Palestinian. This is how apartheid works. You give a small and harmless minority of Palestinians the right to vote, take pictures of them and talk about how you have democracy. Then you don't let them into the coalition and make sure only Jews have power.
The cognate of Palestine, "Peleset" is recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphics in the 12th century BC referring to the Philistines who inhabited the Southern Levant, i.e. historic Palestine. This is 1,000 years before Roman presence.
His mother was born in the land of Israel. Ashkenazi DNA is 60% Levantine (meaning from the land of Israel). We were conquered by the Romans colonisers who drove us out of our land, and renamed it from Judea to Palestine.
The most common last name in the Palestinian authority is Al Masri - which mean Egyptian. Also common last names there - halabi - from Aleppo Syria , Hijazi (area in Saudi Arabia ) and so on. Mark Twain visited the holy land in the middle of the 19 century and described a completely empty land. Most of the “Palestinians” came as labour immigrants from the neighbouring lands during the late ottoman time and British Mandate. Palestinians can’t event pronounce “Palestine” because there’s no P in Arabic. The only people who called themselves “Palestinian” before 1948 were Jews - “Palestine post” and “Palestine airways” were Jewish Zionist owned during the British mandate . The Arabs of the land simply called themselves Arabs , and referred to that region as southern Syria. The British named that land Palestine after they took it from the ottomans , because that was the roman colonial name of the land. Before the PLO was invented by the Soviets in 1964 (when Gaza and Judea & Samaria were in Arab hands ) there was no Arab / Islamic association to that name.
We are called Jews because we are from Judea , and Arabs are allied that way because they are from Arabia.
One of the highlights of my time in Jordan was visiting UNWRA archives and examining the index cards and other records of the 750,000 Palestinians kicked off their land at the Nakba in 1948. They used to be kept in Gaza and were airlifted out at the beginning of the genocide- Israel has destroyed all the archives that remained. They form the best evidence for some form of reparations in the future and are now being scanned and digitalised
This is what the Israeli Minister of National Security and member of the Security Cabinet tweets. In June 2026 a UN commission of inquiry concludes Israel is committing a genocide and yet according to the @BoardofDeputies, @TheGreenParty is the problem.
המחבלים בכלא לביא ישבו ואגרו מהמעט מזון שיש להם. כף ריבה ועוד כף ריבה, פרוסת לחם ועוד פרוסת לחם, כך במשך כמה ימים, הכל כדי להכין עוגה מאולתרת ולחגוג ביום שלישי, במידה ולא אבחר.
אלא שנציב שב״ס המצוין ואנשיו איתרו את העוגה, והאסירים הועמדו לדין משמעתי, והועברו לצינוק.
הם כבר תכננו את החגיגות, אבל אצלנו נגמרה החגיגה. ביום שלישי אסור לתת להם לחגוג, מצביעים ב׳ בקלפי!
Palestinian Culture must and will survive. Its natural beauty is indestructible, as is the spirit.
Sliman Mansour was a leading Palestinian artist whose work captured the Palestinian people’s culture of steadfastness in the face of their ongoing struggles for recognition, rights, and freedom.
Israel has imposed a full closure on the occupied West Bank after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a shooting attack at a military checkpoint in Hebron.
Palestinian political activist Mustafa Barghouti says incitement from far-right Israeli ministers is worsening things.
One of the most brutal scenes in human history has been leaked.
The Israeli military changing the landscape of Gaza in Rafah and removing the traces of genocide.
A video that the world must never forget.
Dear @ShabanaMahmood
Ex Israeli soldiers should not be coming to the UK, harassing & abusing British Jews in this way.
1. "Self hating Jew" is a slur. This is a hate crime
2. As a former soldier, this bigot enforced a brutal & illegal occupation of Palestine.
Arrest & deport
Let's turn this around for the BBC's Nick Robinson.
"Do you think the state of Israel – as a state illegally occupying and oppressing Palestinians, as determined by the world's highest court, and one deemed to be committing genocide according to legal and academic authorities – has a right to exist?"
Is that a difficult or easy question to answer, Nick?
@wesstreeting Wes, Zionism is a political ideology, as the UK Employment Appeal Tribunal confirmed in August 2026. Anti-Zionism therefore qualifies as a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010. Also, there are at least 10 times more Christian Zionists worldwide than Jewish Zionists.