Daily Sabah – April 21, 2024
Israeli strikes on Rafah kill 22, mostly children as US pushes aid
Overnight airstrikes by Israel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah claimed the lives of 22 people, including 18 children, according to health officials on Sunday.
Concurrently, the U.S. approved billions of dollars in additional military aid to its ally.
Rafah has been a frequent target of Israeli air raids, with over half of Gaza's 2.3 million residents seeking shelter there from ongoing conflicts elsewhere.
Despite global appeals for restraint, including from the U.S., Israel has expressed intentions to escalate its ground operations into the border city adjacent to Egypt.
On Saturday, the House of Representatives passed a $26 billion aid package, earmarking approximately $9 billion for humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
The first strike killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies.
The woman was pregnant, and doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.
The second strike killed eight children and two women, all from the same family, according to hospital records.
An airstrike in Rafah the night before killed nine people, including six children.
The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest, pitting Israel and the U.S. against Iran and allied groups across the Middle East.
Israel and Iran traded fire directly earlier this month, raising fears of all-out war between the longtime foes.
Tensions have also spiked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military claimed to have killed two Palestinians near the southern West Bank town of Hebron early Sunday.
At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Most have been killed during Israeli military arrest raids, which often trigger violent protests.
The latest Gaza conflict was sparked by an Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel, in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people and abducted around 250 hostages.
Israel says Hamas is still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call for new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a deal with Hamas to release the hostages.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned.
The war has killed at least 34,049 Palestinians and wounded another 76,901, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, of whom at least two-thirds are children and women.
It also says the real toll is likely higher as many bodies are stuck beneath the rubble left by airstrikes or are in areas that are unreachable for medics.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, but the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The military says it has killed over 13,000 Hamas members without providing evidence.
https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/israeli-strikes-on-rafah-kill-22-mostly-children-as-us-pushes-aid
Yeni Safak, Daily Sabah – April 21, 2024
President Erdogan meets with Hamas leader Haniyeh
Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Saturday received Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismail Haniyaﾠin Istanbul to discuss Israel's attacks on Palestinian lands, especially besieged Gaza.
During the meeting, the leaders discussed measures for ensuring adequate and uninterrupted delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and how to achieve a fair and lasting peace process in the region.
Erdogan stressed that Ankara is tirelessly continuing diplomatic efforts to draw international attention to the oppression of the Palestinians, and emphasises the need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire at every opportunity.
Meeting with the head of Hamas, the Turkish president on Saturday stressed the need to prevent recent developments in Israel's tension with Iran from benefiting Tel Aviv and to instead keep the focus on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “assessing tensions between Israel and Iran, emphasized the need to prevent events from bolstering Israel and stressed the importance of refocusing attention on Gaza” so the West continues to question Israel's attacks on Gaza, said the Turkish Communications Directorate on X.
Meeting in Istanbul, Erdogan and Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh discussed Israel's months-long continuing offensive on Palestinian territories, especially the Gaza Strip, the directorate added.
Erdogan said Israel will eventually and inevitably pay the price for its oppression of Palestinians, adding that Türkiye will continue to expose Israel's massacres in Gaza on all platforms.
Erdogan added that all Türkiye's efforts are dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, calling this the key to lasting peace in the region.
“President Erdogan said in the meeting that Türkiye continues its humanitarian aid to Palestine to alleviate some of its suffering,” the directorate said. “He noted that over 45,000 tons of humanitarian aid have been sent to the region so far (since last October), and a series of sanctions have been implemented against Israel, including restrictions on trade,” it added.
Unity, solidarity stressed
Erdogan said Ankara continues its diplomatic efforts to draw the attention of the international community to the oppression faced by Palestinians.
He underlined the urgent need for an immediate and lasting cease-fire to end the violence, highlighting it at every opportunity.
Stating that the strongest response and path to victory against Israel lies in unity and solidarity, Erdogan underscored the vital importance of unity among Palestinians during this process.
He also highlighted the need for further explanation of Palestine's just cause and truths against Israel, which is working to mislead the international public.
During the meeting, Erdogan also extended his condolences to Haniyeh for the loss of his children and grandchildren in an Israeli attack in Gaza 10 days ago, during the recent Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
At the meeting, Erdogan was accompanied by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, National Intelligence Organization head Ibrahim Kalin, Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, and his top advisors Akif Cagatay Kilic and Safer Turan.
Flouting an International Court of Justice provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 77,000 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas which killed some 1,200 people.
The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
Killing of his children
Haniyeh said the attack in which his sons and grandchildren were killed reflected Israel's "failure to achieve military targets for seven months, except for killing civilians, thousands of children, women and the elderly."
"That such a massacre reaching my home, my children and grandchildren will exert pressure on the leader and the leadership of the movement to make concessions in the ongoing negotiations is misleading too," Haniyeh said.
He also expressed gratitude to the Turkish people for holding funeral prayers in absentia for his children and grandchildren in more than 30 cities.
Zionism must be exposed and discredited
Zionism threatens political freedom in the United States and international order. There is only one way to fight this ideology. Those who oppose it must explain the truth to Americans: Zionism is racist.
By Philip Weiss
You could not get a better picture of Zionism than from two recent events. Israel bombed a consulate in a foreign country – Syria – killing top Iranian military officers, among others, and Israel supporters in the U.S. forced the cancelation of the valedictorian address at the University of Southern California because the speaker opposes Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Today Zionism threatens political freedom in the United States and international order.
These actions are consistent. They are expressions of a maximalist ideology that operates on a global level to support the Israeli regime. That ideology, of course, is Zionism, the belief that Jews need a state in order to be safe. Today Zionism threatens political freedom in the United States and international order. It threatens the political tradition of liberalism in the United States by compelling Democratic politicians to pay for more bombs to advance a genocide.
After 150 years of struggle and practice, it is plain that Zionism is dedicated to the neverending subjugation of Palestinians, who resist their persecution.
There is only one way to fight this ideology. Those who oppose it must explain the truth to Americans: Zionism is racist. Its supporters must be called out and cornered and discredited—as adherents of a Jim Crow ideology.
There is only one way to fight this ideology. Those who oppose it must explain the truth to Americans: Zionism is racist.
I have always said that I might have been a Zionist in an earlier age. Zionism was a perfectly understandable ideology in light of European oppression of Jews. Jews left Europe as refugees, not supremacists. If Zionism had focused only on Jewish safety it might be a tolerable ideology today.
But from the beginning maximalist Zionists won out. They wanted more land with fewer Palestinians. For at least 75 years now this is the Zionist credo, and they repeatedly used terrorism to achieve that goal.
–In the 1920s the socialist leader Chaim Arlosoroff sought to advance ideas of national coexistence with Palestinians. He was murdered on the beach in Tel Aviv in 1933 by Zionist militias that later produced the highest officials in Israel.
–In 1949 a U.N. diplomat, Folke Bernadotte, who had saved thousands of Jews from Nazis during the war, sought to advance plans to keep Jerusalem an international city, as designated by the UN Partition plan. He was assassinated in Jerusalem by a Zionist gang that – again – later produced the highest officials in Israel.
–In the 1990s a Labor Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, declared that Israel would only have peace if it returned land to Palestinians so as to allow them to have sovereignty. Rabin was murdered by a rightwinger who enjoys deep political support to this day.
These murders arose from a consistent program: Israeli leaders have again and again told us that they will not accept a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state.
Because of Israel’s defiance on that score and because of Israel’s consecration of higher Jewish rights in the nation-state law in 2018, human rights groups worldwide have stated that Israel is an apartheid state.
Zionists have one answer to those charges — it’s antisemitism, you just hate Jews. (No, we hate segregationists.)
Israel has used overwhelming violence to quash resistance. It has repeatedly massacred Palestinians, and in Gaza, in the last six months has indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of women and children, and aid workers. Any sensible person understands that this onslaught will only foster radical resistance.
I don’t support violence against civilians. It is why I have been outspoken against Hamas’s October 7 attacks, and the dehumanization that occurs on both sides in a war.
But clearly Zionism is the root problem. Zionism destroys every good thing in its path. It is an ideology that treats Palestinians as lesser, in their own land. It brought religious nationalism to the Middle East and destabilized a region long before ISIS. It attacks villages so as to solidify “the Jewish majority,” and even the liberal wing rationalizes its actions. (“My father…. was a terrorist,” says Jeremy Ben Ami of J Street – an organization started to oppose Zionist settlements that has achieved nothing for that agenda in 15 years.)
Today Zionism is undermining American freedom. Zionists and sympathizers in the U.S. government pushed the Iraq war that destroyed Arab cities and the American image too. Zionist sympathizers are today justifying a genocide and denying the famine in Gaza– and getting Biden to sign off. The Zionist lobby has corrupted our elections, canceled free speech on a routine basis, wrecked the American Jewish community, and compromised some of the best minds of my generation (including Jewish writers in whom I have observed the tragic loss).
There is only one way to defeat Zionism. It must be indicted and described, as the racist antithesis of everything the American experiment has achieved. Its support must be harried, hectored, and starved. It must be defeated in the United States, in Congress, and at the University of Southern California. We will win, because we must.
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/zionism-must-be-exposed-and-discredited/
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