Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor – August 11, 2024
Initial Euro-Med Monitor investigation finds no evidence of military
presence at site of Tab’een School massacre in Gaza
by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Palestinian Territory – Initial investigations by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found no proof or indication of any military operations or combatants at the Tab’een School in Gaza City, whose prayer hall Israel targeted in a brutal massacre that claimed the lives of over 100 Palestinians.
Quite the contrary, the location turned out to be a series of narrow buildings, with sections open to each other and lacking any equipment, where dozens of Palestinian families had taken refuge after being forcibly displaced from their homes, some of which have since been completely erased from the civil registry.
The Euro-Med Monitor field and legal team carried out a survey and preliminary investigation at the Tab’een School, which was providing shelter to over 2,500 displaced people in Gaza City. The team gathered data, recorded the statements of witnesses and survivors, and surveyed the location following the attack. According to all available information and testimonies, there were no military gatherings or centers at the school, and it was never used for military objectives. Survivors testified that the school was providing shelter to hundreds of children whose families felt safe there.
Furthermore, the narrow layout of the school and the lack of launch pads and shelters would make it impossible for the site to be used for military operations. The building’s cramped layout and tight spaces make it unsuitable for military operations that call for planning and logistical assistance. The school was used as an emergency shelter for civilians fleeing demolished areas, not for military activities or equipment, according to testimony gathered from displaced civilians there. As a result, the attack on the school was unjustified and blatantly violated international humanitarian law.
The Israeli bombing specifically targeted the prayer hall where displaced people were praying at dawn, as well as the upper prayer hall used for housing women and children. Preliminary reports indicate that the Israeli army detonated three US-made bombs in the attack, which had a tremendous capacity to burn, melt, and destroy bodies. As a result, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including several families, and prominent academic figures at the universities of Gaza, among them Professor Youssef Al-Kahlout, an Arabic language professor.
Owing to the bombs’ immense destructive power, the victims’ bodies were reduced to shredded pieces and burned parts, along with numerous serious injuries. Some of the bombs used against the school crowded with displaced people weighed approximately two thousand pounds, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza.
The Israeli army’s defence of the massacre, on the grounds that the army was targeting a military site, is unfounded, and in any case, cannot justify the killing of so many civilians. Israel continues to murder, burn, and injure hundreds of civilians every day and then claim that the targeted areas contained military installations or leaders, without offering concrete proof or permitting independent international entities to confirm the veracity of these claims.
Israel must be bound by the principles of international humanitarian law, particularly those regarding distinction, proportionality, military necessity, taking necessary precautions, and the duty to protect civilians. This requires deciding on the best course of action for military operations and the kind of weaponry to employ with the express consideration of reducing civilian casualties and losses.
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, any breach of these rules of international humanitarian law is regarded as a war crime. The attack on the Tab’een School is a flagrant breach of these rules and is just one of the military attacks that Israel has carried out against civilians directly and indiscriminately, which is an essential component of the crime of genocide that Israel has committed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
Mohammed Al-Kahlout, a displaced person and victim of the attack at the school, affirmed to the Euro-Med Monitor team that he did not see any combatants or military presence in the school while he was there. “I was getting ready to go pray, and I could have been with them in a few moments,” he continued. “Three missiles or large bombs fired by Israeli planes caused the massacre. I felt extremely afraid. The bodies and limbs were mutilated and burned when I arrived; there were mounds of burnt flesh. After several weeks at the school, I had not witnessed any armed militants or manifestations. I always pray in the prayer hall, and everyone there is a civilian. Both my relative, Professor Youssef Al-Kahlout, and numerous civilians were killed in the attack. Above the prayer hall was the women’s prayer hall, which was designated to accommodate women, and everyone in it was killed.”
Ms. Susan Mohammed Al-Barawi, a refugee at the Tab’een School, provided the following testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor team: “We were sleeping. We woke up to the sound of an explosion and a fire. We left our classrooms to find a fire burning near the prayer hall. The Tab’een School’s women’s prayer hall is situated directly above the men’s prayer hall. After their homes were targeted, many families were forced to evacuate. At least twenty families with children and elderly women were in the school. The missiles were dropped among them, killing many of them. Those who made it through were either severely burned or had their limbs amputated. I saw injured people with their intestines coming out. Young girls, the oldest of whom was 13 years old, another 10 years old, and some as young as two years old, were among the victims.”
Mahmoud Nidal Al-Basyouni, a child who lost his father in the prayer hall explosion, gave the following testimony: “Today at dawn, my father went to pray Fajr in the school prayer hall. While my family was asleep, I woke up. When I watched the missile fall, I knew that there would be casualties and that a massacre was going to occur, but I had no idea that my father would be one of them. I witnessed the fire that resulted from the intentional targeting. I cried for my father, my grandfather, my uncle, and many of the fathers of the children who were targeted during Fajr prayer in the prayer hall and who we were unable to say goodbye to. In the prayer hall, I saw mutilated bodies and bits of flesh. The bombing occurred unexpectedly and with no notice or warning beforehand.”
The Israeli army is increasingly targeting schools that provide shelter for the forcibly displaced population in Gaza City, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians in the process. It has also issued orders for the illegal forced displacement of Gaza from the north to the south, in a systematic effort to uproot the Palestinian people from their homes and places of displacement, robbing them of any stability. The ultimate goal is to empty Gaza City, eliminate as many of its elites as possible, and render the city uninhabitable, regardless of military necessity.
The Israeli army is deliberately destroying the remaining shelter centres to deny Palestinians what few places remain where they may seek refuge after the systematic and widespread destruction of homes and shelters, including schools and public facilities, over the past ten months.
By continuing to bomb the entire Gaza Strip and targeting shelters, such as those housed in UNRWA schools, the Israeli bombing strategy clearly indicates the intent to destroy the Palestinians’ lives and deprive them of security and stability, if only temporarily.
Civilians in the Gaza Strip are paying the price for Israeli military attacks that violate with impunity the rules of international humanitarian law, especially the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity.
Accordingly, all countries must fulfil their international obligations by putting an end to Israel’s crime of genocide and other serious offenses in the Gaza Strip. They must safeguard the civilians of the Gaza Strip, compel Israel to abide by international law and the rulings of the International Court of Justice, impose strong sanctions on Israel, and cut off all other forms of political, financial, and military assistance or collaboration. This includes an immediate stop to all arms sales, exports, and transfers to Israel, including export licenses and military aid, as well as guaranteeing accountability for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
Furthermore, countries that aid and abet Israel in carrying out these crimes, including aid and contractual relationships in the military, intelligence, political, legal, financial, media, and other domains that facilitate the perpetuation of these crimes, must be held responsible. Of these countries, the United States is the most prominent accomplice.
Decision-makers and relevant officials in these states must be held responsible since they collaborated and were complicit in the crimes, including the crime of genocide, Israel has carried out in the Gaza Strip.
As part of their international legal obligations to ensure that those who commit international crimes are held accountable, tried, and prevented from going unpunished, as well as to arrest and prosecute them in compliance with applicable national and international laws, all nations are required to begin criminal investigations and trials before their national courts. This requirement is based on universal jurisdiction.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6432/Initial-Euro-Med-Monitor-investigation-finds-no-evidence-of-military-presence-at-site-of-Tab%E2%80%99een-School-massacre-in-Gaza
How to Unmask the Insanity of War on Gaza and Arab-Muslim Leadership Complicity?
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.
Global Leadership Failure to Stop the Insanity of War
For over ten months, ferocious conceptions of good and evil push mankind to a tragic abnormality of human suffering being witnessed across Gaza and the West Bank, Palestine. American and Western European leaders use violent assumptions and vivid language to reflect on catastrophic humanitarian cataclysm happening in Gaza, plagued with delusional ideas to spearhead a warmongering culture across the Middle East. They installed modern puppets across the Arab world to follow their dictums. They no longer supply weapons but export full fledged war as the US is doing to support Israel. They know the truth of war and peace but offer paper-based condemnation when massacres of civilians are carried out by Israel. The US and few West European leaders masked their evil-mongering not knowing the consequences of their own viciousness against humanity. When life and human survival faces critical challenges, the thinking people and global institutions should respond with collective will to stop the insanity of war. Not so, in-waiting are the Arab-Muslim leaders to see if anything would happen out of nowhere to stop the Israeli carnage of planned killing and destruction of Gaza and the rest of Palestine. Please see: “How Arab Leaders Betray Islam and Defy the Logice of Political Change, Peace and Security.” https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2023/10/07/how-did-arab-leaders-betrayed-islam-and-defied-the-logic-of-political-change-peace-and-security.php
For millions of people nowhere to go, nowhere to find a place of safety and life protection. Even the so-called designated “Safe Zones” are the regular bombing zones under the false pretext of hitting terrorists but essentially targeting the civilians. Israeli forces scorched even Gaza’s cemeteries to dishonor dead bodies. Pretending to be smart leaders like smart opportunists across the globe - be it the Western world or Arab-Muslim authoritarian regimes contend with issuing fake statements of condemnation when reality on the ground warrants swift action to prevent human casualties and safeguard life and the innocents. Tonight, the Al Tabin School was hit by Israeli missiles at dawn prayer to massacre 100 or so children and women taking shelter in its compound. The UNO, global leaders become silent spectators as if the people of Gaza are not human beings but something else to be bombed and killed by Israeli war machines.
Why did the UNO or the EU or the Arab-Muslim world fail to devise a plan to protect the civilians in the war zones? If the UNO is a living entity to “save the succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, its primary and Charter’s based obligation was to have organized a civilian force to ensure the safety of civilian population of Gaza and Palestine.The war scenario emboldens Netanyahu‘s political absolutism - an egoistic leader with controversial profile will do utmost to regain unbridled ambition either by manipulation, violence or new conflicts. The current paradigm links directly to PM Netanyahu affiliated with extreme Jewish Ultra Nationalists to deny the Palestinian people their rights of existence as an independent State and to dismantle the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Please see: “Al-Aqsa Mosque Waiting for the Arab Leaders” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57491.htm
Arab-Muslim Leaders are the Puppets of America and Complicit in Israeli War on Gaza
There are no Arab leaders having moral and political integrity to represent the masses and no Arab armies to defend Islam. Simply put, they are puppets and hired agents of the Western imperialism. Israel bulldozed and occupied Egyptian Rafah crossing to Gaza but Egyptian leaders failed to act in defense. The Saudi, the UAE and others stooges kept silent profile while massacres of innocent embolden Israel to put finishing end on Gaza. The foreign mercenaries protect their palaces, not the people. Several thousand of Israeli citizens regularly protest against the Netanyhau Government in Tel Aviv’s military defense complex calling for an immediate ceasefire and return of the 120 hostages and peace talks. Are the historic Israelities (progeny of Jacob) and the followers of Moses versus the Zionists, the same? Avigail Abanenail, a Jewish Peace Activist spells out the problem and looks at peaceful means to a better future. Jews for Peace (USA) organization questions Israel's motives for war against Gaza and calls for an immediate ceasefire and recognition of equal rights of Palestinians to an independent State.
Why do Israeli Leaders want Perpetuated Animosities as the End Game?
Those bombing and causing catastrophic events to destroy the planet Earth and mankind and all of its treasures and enrichments are not normal human beings. The followers of Moses - the generations of Israelite are reminded by God (Quran 2: 84-85 ):
And remember, We took a Covenant from the Children of Israel (progeny of Jacob), Worship none but God; ….shed no blood amongst you, Nor displace people from homes: and Ye solemnly ratified, And to this ye can bear witness…. It was not lawful for you to banish another party, then it is only a part of the Book that ye believe in…. And on the Day of Judgment they shall be consigned to the most grievous penalty,For God is not unmindful what ye do.
The Israeli leaders and the US Biden administration have ignored the ICJ demands for a ceasefire and to stop crimes against humanity. They plan to conquer the whole Arab Middle East after Gaza. By the Divine injunctions, Israelities and Arabs had more things in common than political animosities. “We have revealed for you (O men!) a book in which is a Message for you, Will ye not then understand?” (Quran: 21: 10). Was the animosity built-in to the Israeli extreme political psyche and ideology to expel Palestinains from their homeland? Are the Israeli leaders driven by the lust of American weapons and economic power to commit genocide? Those doing so are not conscious of their own end game. PM Netanyahu and his extremist regime would try to put an end to the freedom of Palestine. Gaza is the experimental lab for that end game. We, the People of knowledge speak logically about the Nature of Things affecting lives and our hopes for future to inspirations from the Divine Revelations – the truth and nothing but truth (Quran: 11: 116-117):
Why were there not,
Among the generations before you,
Persons possessed of balanced good sense, prohibiting (men)
Form mischief in the earth
Except a few among them
Whom We saved (from harm),
But the wrong-doers pursued the enjoyment of good things
Of life which were given them and persisted in sin.
Nor would thy Lord be the One to destroy communities for a single wrongdoing; If its members were likely to mend.
Caitlin Johnstone (“Opposing The Gaza Genocide While Supporting Biden Is A Dishonest” 04/29/24), sharpens the human intellect of rational thinking: https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/opposing-the-gaza-genocide-while-supporting-biden-is-a-dishonest-nonsensical-position-bc874a7fd71d
You really couldn’t put together a more incoherent position if you tried. You can’t acknowledge that Israel is committing genocide without also acknowledging that the Biden administration has been actively participating in that genocide. If you acknowledge that Biden is guilty of genocide, then you are acknowledging that he is guilty of the most horrific crime a state leader can possibly commit short of initiating a nuclear exchange…..Those who are supporting Biden while opposing the destruction of Gaza do not have any kind of integrity. They’re just wearing whatever mask is politically convenient based on the way the winds are blowing on a given moment, while continuing to support the US-centralized empire which cannot be sustained without nonstop tyranny and bloodshed.
Animals live and do not reflect on the imperatives of life whereas, we, the human beings cannot act like animals as we are supposed to be intelligent and responsible species on this Earth. At the edge of reason, the notion of evil leads to realization of evil and tyranny of war must be stopped by all means and those responsible for the genocide and crimes against humanity must be held accountable to restore the manifestation of a sustainable human future.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Lambert Academic Publications, Germany, 12/2019
President Erdoğan receives sons of late Hamas leader Haniyeh
Two sons of Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’ political bureau who was recently assassinated in Iran, met President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday.
Abdusselam and Hammam Haniyeh were Erdoğan’s first guests as the president arrived in Istanbul from the southern province of Adana where he attended an event.
Erdoğan extended his condolences for Haniyeh during the meeting which was also attended by Ibrahim Kal�n, head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and president’s chief adviser Sefer Turan.
The late Palestinian leader, a father of 13, lost three sons earlier this month in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Haniyeh, who frequently traveled due to threats on his life and extensive work for diplomatic efforts to end Israeli attacks, was killed in Tehran on July 31 where he attended an inauguration ceremony for the country’s president-elect. Haniyeh’s assassination renewed concerns of a spillover of the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict but also triggered a new wave of rallies in solidarity with Palestine as the late leader called before his death. Türkiye hosted nationwide solidarity rallies following Haniyeh’s assassination.
Though Erdoğan did not attend Haniyeh’s funeral in Qatar, Türkiye was represented by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan while Erdoğan heaped praise on Haniyeh. "Anyone who knew Ismail Haniyeh or had worked with him even a little would know very well what a courageous advocate he was,” the president recently said in a speech.
Hamas is recognized as a liberation movement by Türkiye and Ankara often decries the West for portraying them as "terrorists" and siding with Israel’s indiscriminate attacks in the Gaza Strip. In his first message upon Haniyeh’s killing, Erdoğan condemned the “perfidious assassination of a brother by the Zionist barbarity.”
Ismail Haniyeh briefly stayed in Türkiye long before a new round of conflict began between Palestine and Israel in October 2023 and last visited the country in April where he was received by Erdoğan. It was also Erdoğan who brought together Haniyeh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a bid to mend ties between rival Palestinian factions.
https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/president-erdogan-receives-sons-of-late-hamas-leader-haniyeh/news
‘We have the right to demand better’:
Arab Americans wrestle with the 2024 presidential election
Arab Americans are viewing the U.S. presidential race with anger and disillusionment. “I just feel like our voices aren’t being heard,” says Palestinian American Mervat Saudi. Both parties “are not in the best interest for my own people.”
By Samaa Khullar
Since the American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza began, Arab Americans have grown more disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and the lack of change in policy toward sending more weapons to Israel. Despite Op-Eds and social media buzz about how the new Democratic pick for president Kamala Harris will be different, many Arab Americans have already been disappointed.
In aﾠpress conference after meeting withﾠaccused war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Harris doubled down on her “unwavering commitment to the existence of the state of Israel” and said she would “always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself.” As for Gaza, she briefly touched on “the death of far too many innocent civilians.” A few weeks before Biden officially dropped out of the race, former presidentﾠDonald Trump used the Palestinian identity as a slur of sorts. “He’s a very bad Palestinian,” Trump said of Biden, who he accused of not wanting to help Israel “finish the job.”
And just last night, when pro-Palestinian protesters attempted to disrupt Harris’ rally in Michigan — the state with the highest Muslim population in the United States — instead of listening to them, or pausing to give them space to air out their grievances, she immediately snapped back, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking” with roaring applause from the crowd. This came days after Democrats boasted a supposed ﾓtone shiftﾔ that she would have when it comes to Gaza.
These are the choices Arab Americans have been given for president this year.
Arab Americans have already been expressing their frustration with the election for months, but it has reached a boiling point in the last few weeks — they feel unheard, disappointed, and most of all, angry with the current two-party system.
Mervat Saudi, a Palestinian-American mother who lived in Palestine for ten years, says she will “not be voting at all” this November.
“Everything that’s been happening, it hits a little too close to home for me,” she says. “I just feel like our voices aren’t being heard, and both parties, whether Democratic or Republican, are not in the best interest for my own people.”
Saudi, who is registered to vote in Michigan, says she did consider voting for a third-party candidate at one point, but cannot bring herself to the ballot box at all this year. The first time she ever voted was in 2020 for Biden because she didn’t want Trump’s Islamophobic policies to continue. Now, she says, “I don’t know if I’ll ever vote again.”
Saudi aligns with most Arab Americans in her swing state. Back in February, when Biden was still the nominee, at least 100,000 registered Democrats in Michigan voted for ﾓuncommitted,ﾔ a protest vote in response to his support for the genocide in Gaza. The movement was most popular in the predominantly Muslim city of Dearborn, where “uncommitted” actually defeated Biden 56 percent to 40 percent.
Many of those voters felt overlooked by the electoral establishment in America. Saudi says she’s fed up with the outward racism of the Republican party, and the empty promises from Democrats. “You’re calling for a ceasefire and then you’re sending millions of dollars that next weekend? It doesn’t make sense to me,” she says.
Other Arab Americans are looking to third-party candidates for hope. Aicha Belabbes, whose father is from Algeria, says she might vote for Jill Stein this November.
According to a poll commissioned by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein is polling strong in the Arab American community at 45 percent due to her support for Palestine. Harris is trailing behind at nearly 28 percent, which is almost equal to the percentage of respondents (25%) who said they are either undecided, or will not vote at all.
Belabbes is registered to vote in Massachusetts, a blue state, but has historically voted for the Green Party because of their support for universal health care and student debt forgiveness. She doesn’t believe the Green Party is perfect, but doesn’t have much hope that Harris is different from Biden.
“If she really was against the genocide she would have resigned or made a vocal statement, but she hasn’t,” Belabbes says of Harris. “She’s made statements very recently that indicate that she wants to continue what’s going on.”
Laith Kayat, an Iraqi American who grew up in Michigan, says that he will also be voting for Stein. “I think at this point I’m quite skeptical and mistrusting of the Democratic Party,” he says. “Especially when it comes to their foreign policy. They have not shown that they care about the people in the Middle East or creating lasting peace. Instead, they continue to fund wars.”
Kayat argues that the two-party system “has to go,” and points to the lasting effects of the war on terror, which was started by Republican president George W. Bush, but intensified throughout Barack Obama’s presidency.
“It’s taken me too long to wake up to the fact that Obama continued the war on terror through drone strikes on civilians in the Middle East,” Kayat says. Obama embraced the U.S. drone program, and in his first year in office, oversaw more strikes (536 drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen) — than Bush did during his entire presidency (57). “And it was Obama that signed the $38 billion aid package to Israel.”
“Biden’s Israel policy has led to a genocide in Gaza and he continues to provide support diplomatically, militarily and financially to Israel. Because of this, I am completely turned off to the Democrats,” he says. “If you want a president who is anti-Israel or anti-war, the two-party system will leave you with zero options.”
Moné Makkawi, whose family hails from Tripoli in Northern Lebanon, says she will be withholding her vote this November. “I do not support either party,” she says, “because the idea of two separate parties is a fallacy.”
“They’re the same singular ruling class with shared interest and they’re fueled by racism, by capitalism, by neocolonialism and imperial interests abroad, so there is no difference between them in my eyes,” Makkawi says.
Ending the genocide is a priority for most Arab Americans, a stance that gets them called “selfish” online, where they are branded as “single issue voters.”
“The assumption is that we’re voting only on Palestine but the point to be made there is that Palestine is the lynchpin for American imperialist ambitions in the Middle East and therefore globally,” Makkawi explains. “Palestine is a climate issue, it’s an LGBTQ issue, it’s a gender issue, it’s a race issue, it’s a religious issue, it’s obviously a colonial issue. And that doesn’t even address the genocide.”
“But let’s say someone is only voting on the issue of Palestine,” Makkawi continues. “They’re still voting on a whole host of issues that Palestine encompasses. The mass murder and systemic erasure of a people isn’t just murder; it’s famine, it’s infanticide, it’s scholasticide, it’s the denial of entry of sanitary materials, it’s forcing women to give birth in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. It’s a whole list of things.”
Kayat agrees. “To call genocide a single issue is simply ignorant,” he says. “It is a profound mischaracterization to isolate Israelﾒs bulldozing of international law, with U.S. support, as a standalone concern when it is intrinsically linked to broader patterns of systemic oppression and violence. Genocide represents the most extreme form of human rights violation, and its repercussions are far-reaching.”
“When a state engages in a war against human rights, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” Kayat explains. He says Americans are already witnessing the reverberations of this dehumanizing foreign policy in their own backyard. “Police crackdowns on student protesters, mass arrests, and the ever-growing issue of mass incarceration are clear indicators of the parallels between foreign and domestic policies. The same structures of oppression that justify the detention and mistreatment of individuals overseas also support the disproportionate imprisonment of marginalized communities here at home.”
“I’m not not voting in this election just because of Palestine,” Makkawi says. “But if someone wants to accuse me of being a single issue voter, I think that genocide and ethnic cleansing is a righteous single issue to make your decision on regardless.”
Many Democrats on social media have repeated the statement that has been served to dissatisfied Arab Americans for decades: you need to pick the lesser of two evils. Makkawi has a simple answer: “the lesser of two evils is still evil.” Belabbes agrees. “I don’t know how you can say that Harris is the lesser of two evils when she has been part of the administration that has openly committed a genocide. It doesn’t get any more evil than that.”
“I find that there’s this weird rhetoric where people say ‘Well, if Trump were elected, he would genocide harder.’ And I’m like, that’s not how that works,” Belabbes says.
Kayat agrees and is unhappy with the accusatory rhetoric coming from Democrats. “There’s almost this tone of ‘You need to be grateful for what we’ve given you and that we don’t impose Muslim bans,’ but they’ve dropped more drone strikes on our countries than any other administration.”
Trump is not a popular candidate among Arab Americans either, due to his racist and Islamophobic rhetoric, but Makkawi makes the point that Harris’ past is not much different.
“Just look at her record as the Attorney General in California,” Makkawi says. “She failed to give transgender inmates gender-affirming care or put them in housing that aligned with their gender. She was someone who wanted to lock up the parents of truant kids rather than address the problems behind why kids were truant or late to school. So when we’re talking about racism and corporate greed, it’s also the same with Harris; the differences between her and Trump are insignificant for me.”
Kayat also says that Harris’ track record as a prosecutor, especially when it came to drug possession and incarceration, is what initially turned him off. “But then also throughout these last ten months of what we’ve seen happening in Gaza, she has done nothing to stop it. I don’t know how, as an Arab American, anyone can put that aside and put their vote for [Democrats].”
When asked what someone would have to do to earn his vote for president, Kayat said “they would have to stop sending aid to Israel.”
Makkawi, however, said it would be impossible for anyone to earn her vote. “There’s no way in which a candidate gets to this point in our electoral system without being sanctioned in some way by the system itself. Regardless of their individual personal politics, they are beholden to a system that is carceral, racist, capitalist, extortionary, sexist and deeply violent. It’s just like how there might be a cop who’s a nice person, but the system is the problem: the system is racist.”
Belabbes also believes that electoral politics will not guarantee people’s rights in this country. “Whether it’s reproductive or immigrant rights, any kind of civil liberties, these are things that we have to organize on a community level for,” she says.
“A lot of the people who I’m seeing say ‘Vote blue, no matter who,’ are not donating to their local abortion fund, are not organizing unions or supporting local harm reduction initiatives, are not donating to mutual aid,” Belabbes continues.
In addition to my conversations with Saudi, Belabbes, Kayat, and Makkawi, I also spoke to many more Arab Americans, whose families are from everywhere between Syria to Sudan. Almost everyone expressed that they had lost faith in the electoral system as a means for liberation. They said that whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican signing off on it, the bombs will still fall. And yet, they feel belittled when they demand more from leaders, or when they ask for the slightest bit of accountability.
After 10 months of genocide, and more than twenty years of America aiding the wars in Iraq, Palestine, Yemen, and more, most of the Arab Americans I spoke to repeated the same sentiment over and over again: ‘we have the right to demand better.’
“I don’t ever see myself voting for another president again,” Makkawi says. “The solution, as they say, is revolution. The whole system has to be changed and rebuilt and I think that there’s no other way.”
Bangladesh coup was US revenge for military base refusal says Sheikh Hasina
Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was forced to resign and flee the country amid mass protests earlier this week, has accused the US of involvement in her ouster.
In a message on Sunday cited by the Economic Times, Hasina signaled that she could have retained power if she had agreed to host a US military base in Bangladesh.
“I resigned, so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it, I resigned from premiership,” Hasina was cited as saying.
“I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal. I beseech the people of my land, please do not be manipulated by radicals.”
Hasina was referring to Bangladesh’s coral reef island in the northeastern part of the Bay of Bengal and Washington’s alleged attempts to seize control over it. A number of Bangladeshi officials claimed over the past months that the US had proposed leasing the island on several occasions, but was refused. Hasina said that “white men” – her term for US officials – met with her before the previous election and sought her support in building an air base on Saint Martin.
The 76-year-old politician, who held office for 15 years, fled to neighboring India following her resignation on August 5. She pledged to return to Dhaka “soon... with the grace of almighty Allah.”
Hasina’s ouster came after weeks of nationwide student-led demonstrations against a quota system for government jobs, which was criticized for favoring people with connections to the ruling party. Starting off peacefully, the protests quickly turned violent, reportedly resulting in over 400 deaths and around 11,000 arrests.
Shortly after Hasina resigned, the chief of army staff, General Waker-uz-Zaman, announced that he would form an interim government. Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner known for pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance, was sworn in as head of the interim government on August 8.
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