Al Mayadeen – July 26, 2024
Unofficial death toll may be over 90,000: US medics in Gaza
Surgeons, physicians, and nurses recount their experiences volunteering in Gaza amid 'Israel's' ongoing genocide in a letter addressed to US President Joe Biden
Some 45 physicians and nurses who volunteered in Gaza have written a letter addressed to the Biden administration, which arrived on Thursday, stating that "Israel" claimed the lives of over 90,000 Palestinians during its ongoing genocide in the Strip and highlighting the occupation's war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.
"President Biden and Vice-President Harris, any solution to this problem must begin with an immediate and permanent ceasefire," the eight-page letter said, demanding the United States impose an arms embargo against the occupation regime, as well as withdraw its diplomatic, economic, and military support until a ceasefire is implemented.
The 92,000 death toll
"It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza's population," the medics wrote, claiming the real death toll was significantly higher than the Palestinian Health Ministry's, which shows over 39,000 people have been killed.
"With only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both," the medics stated, referring to national aid workers, international volunteers, and civilians.
Israeli occupation snipers were intentionally targeting civilians, the health volunteers told The Guardian, stressing in their letter that the majority of Palestinians are women and children.
"We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves," they added in the letter.
Millions march in Yemen for Gaza on 40th consecutive Friday
The morning demonstrations included the governorates of Saadah, Raymah, and Marib, and several directorates in the governorates of Taiz, Amran, Ibb, Hajjah, and Al-Mahwit.
More than a million people demonstrated in Yemen on Friday in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and in condemnation of the continued Israeli genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip.
Under the slogan "Victory for Gaza... We are proceeding with the fifth phase of escalation", million-man marches took place this afternoon in Al-Sabeen Square in the capital Sanaa and more than 200 central and sub-squares in the governorates of Al-Hodeidah, Taiz, Ibb, Amran, Hajjah, Al-Mahwit, Al-Jawf, Dhamar, Al-Dhale'e and Lahj for the 40th Friday in solidarity with Gaza and in support of the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) and their operations.
The morning demonstrations included the governorates of Saada, Raymah, and Marib, and a number of directorates in the governorates of Taiz, Amran, Ibb, Hajjah, and Al-Mahwit.
Demonstrators reiterated their supportive stance towards Gaza and continued commitment to do so, saluting Palestinians and their steadfastness in the face of Israeli aggression praising their united efforts.
The Yemeni people also supported the operations of the YAF against "Israel", calling for even more operations in the fifth phase of the escalation.
In response to the Israeli aggression on Hodeidah, they denounced the US reception of Benjamin Netanyahu, asking "Why do not the Arab and Muslim countries receive the leaders of the resistance as Washington receives the war criminal Netanyahu?"
Between occasional standing ovations and routine applauses, US Congress gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an excessively warm welcome that was reiterated almost 40 times in less than an hour.
In a related context, the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Mr. Abdul Malik al-Houthi, announced that the Yemeni support front has launched the fifth phase of escalation through the "Yafa to Occupied Yafa" operation, in which the Yemeni armed forces targeted Tel Aviv with a Yafa drone last week.
In a speech delivered on Thursday, Sayyed al-Houthi confirmed that the Israeli occupation "was astonished by the operation and shocked due to the importance of the target that was hit and the long distance the Yemeni-made drone traveled."
He stated that the distance crossed by Yafa exceeded 2,200 km and that it managed to "penetrate all the barriers and defense that the occupation relies on, provided by" countries protecting it.
The Ansar Allah chief emphasized that targeting Tel Aviv, which includes the occupation's most vital facilities, represents "a critical point" that pains the occupation and strikes its "arrogance, and presumption," asserting that hitting it means "there is no safe place left for Israelis in occupied Palestine."
The drone operation "terrified the Israeli occupiers" residing in the area of the strike, Sayyed al-Houthi said.
Israeli police prevent hundreds from praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque
Israel's war on Gaza, now in its 294th day, has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians — the majority of them women and children –– and wounded 90,403 others, with 10,000+ estimated to be buried under the debris.
Israeli police prevented hundreds of Palestinian youths from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem for Friday prayers, witnesses told Anadolu.
Police officers stationed at the mosque's outer gates turned away hundreds of youths seeking to pray, the witnesses said, adding that the police assaulted some of them.
The witnesses said that police beat one young man near Lion's Gate, injuring his head. They also said that a member of the Turkish television network TRT was assaulted by police in the same area without any reason.
The Israeli police did not provide reasons for barring the large number of youths from entering the mosque or for the assaults. However, restrictions on youths entering the mosque have been tightening over the past few weeks.
Israeli forces target TRT crew covering attacks on Palestinians at Al Aqsa
"As we continue to show and tell the world about Israel's barbarities and massacres, Israel's persecution of journalists, whose duty it is to pursue the truth, increases even more," asserts Türkiye's communications director.
Israeli forces have once again targeted a TRT crew, keeping up the regime's unfounded attacks against journalists on the ground.
"Encouraged by the applause of its patrons, Israel once again targeted Palestinians who wanted to perform Friday prayers in the Al Aqsa Mosque and our TRT Haber team," TRT Director-General Mehmet Zahid Sobaci wrote on X following the attack.
"As TRT, we will never refrain from publicising the unlawful acts of occupying Israel that trample all human values," he added.
'Vile and cowardly'
The attack came as the team from Türkiye's public broadcaster TRT was covering violations of Israeli forces against innocent Palestinians who gathered for Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.
The forces then targeted the TRT Haber team.
Cameraman Omar Awwad was injured in the attack, while reporter Mucahit Aydemir's phone was forcibly confiscated and the images on his phone were deleted.
Israeli forces then removed the TRT Haber crew from the area and did not allow them to continue their broadcast.
The Head of Communications of the Republic of Türkiye, Fahrettin Altun, strongly condemned the "vile and cowardly attack" against the TRT Haber team.
"As we continue to show and tell the world about Israel's barbarities and massacres, Israel's persecution of journalists, whose duty it is to pursue the truth, increases even more," he wrote on X.
Why BJP’s election upset failed to halt the persecution of Muslims in India?
Rather than engaging in introspect, authorities in BJP-governed states responded to the electoral setback by inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims.
By Appoevanand
Muslims continue to be persecuted in India despite the weakening of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the fountainhead of anti-Muslim hate and violence, in the recently held elections.
The BJP failed to secure a majority and was only able to form a government with support from a number of regional parties which claim to be secular. It was hoped that having a smaller number of MPs in the Parliament of India would chasten the BJP and its new “secular” allies would act as a brake on the party’s anti-Muslim policies.
Just over a month after the formation of the new government, those hopes have already been belied. Authorities in BJP-led states, including the police and civil administration, have started inventing novel methods to harass, humiliate and attack Muslims following the election.
The most recent example is from Uttar Pradesh, the BJP-ruled state that sends the largest number of MPs to Parliament.
Earlier this month, the state police issued orders requiring restaurants and even roadside food carts along a route taken each year by thousands of Hindu pilgrims to put the names of their owners and employees on display boards.
The police claimed the order was given to “help pilgrims” who travel on foot to sacred sites during the holy month of Shravan to avoid buying food from establishments that may be serving items that do not conform with the holy conduct that they have to follow in their pilgrimage.
The states of Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh quickly followed suit and issued similar orders, making it compulsory for all their business establishments to display the names of their owners and their employees prominently. The authorities in the city of Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, an important Hindu pilgrimage destination, went as far as to say that those who fail to implement the order would be penalised with hefty fines.
This, of course, is not just an innocent policy “helping” Hindu pilgrims keep to their vegetarian diet, but a clever way of identifying establishments owned by Muslims and ensuring that Hindus do not give them their business.
The authorities deny that the policy is discriminatory towards Muslim businesses, claiming that it is “religion neutral”. They say the new requirement does not target any particular religious group, but fail to explain how knowing the names of a restaurant’s owners and employees helps Hindu devotees decide whether it serves food that is in line with their dietary requirements.
The authorities say past instances of restaurant owners “hiding their identities” led to “confusion” in the minds of the Hindu devotees, which in turn caused “law and order problems”. What the police mean by this is that some Muslim business owners gave their eateries Hindu-sounding names, and when some of the pilgrims eventually learned that the owners or employees were actually Muslim, they indulged in violence. The police’s argument is that making all business owners and restaurant employees announce their names up front would prevent disorder and violence.
This is a strange argument. If it is the Hindus who cause disorder, over their perception of the identity of a shop’s owner and employees, why should Muslims be the ones to take action to prevent further aggression? And how would the revelation of the identities of the owners and employees of a given eatery remove confusion from the minds of the Hindus?
For example, McDonald’s gives franchises to both Muslims and Hindus all across India, but every branch serves exactly the same food. Is there a difference, from the point of view of customers, between a McDonald’s branch owned by someone called Ram and one that is owned by another called Rahim Ali? Does the identity of the owner or the servers in any particular branch impact in any way the content of the food on offer?
This new rule is obviously designed not to help Hindu pilgrims avoid consuming food that is in foul of the holy conduct they are expected to follow in some inexplicable confusion, but to encourage them to not visit Muslim-owned establishments with the implicit assumption that any food they consume in such a place could somehow pollute their bodies.
To strengthen their arguments, some in favour of the new rule recirculated with renewed vigour old propaganda that Muslims “sell food items after spitting on them” and that they “deliberately mix impure things in the food to defile Hindus”. They tried to justify the police orders by saying Muslims can simply not be trusted to keep to food hygiene standards and thus Hindus have the right to know if an eatery is owned by one of them.
These rules ordering restaurant and food cart owners to reveal their identities, at their core, are nothing but a state-sponsored instigation to Hindus to boycott Muslim shops, or even the Hindu-owned ones that dare to employ Muslim workers.
The order understandably caused an uproar, but the Uttar Pradesh government doubled down and said that it would apply the requirement not only to the businesses on the pilgrimage route, but to all establishments across the state. Other states later followed Uttar Pradesh’s lead and also expanded the scope of their orders.
The matter was soon taken to the Supreme Court. The bench tried to make sense of the police order . The justices wondered if the authorities would also like to know the identity of the farmer who had grown the crop of wheat or rice used to make the food items sold on pilgrimage routes. After all Ramsharan, a Hindu, can very well sell vegetables that were grown by Rahmat Ali, a Muslim! How far can one go in ensuring the sanctity of food?One of the judges went so far as to share his experience of choosing an eatery owned by a Muslim over a Hindu owned eatery as he ensured international standards of hygiene.
In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that restaurants cannot be forced to display the names of their owners, and stayed the controversial police orders. The justices said that while restaurants could be expected to state the type of food they serve, including whether it is vegetarian, they “must not be forced” to display the names and identities of their owners or employees.
Despite being suspended, at least for the time being, the police orders directed at restaurant owners and employees sent a clear message to India’s Muslims: the authorities in this country will never miss an opportunity to persecute you because of your identity.
Indeed, the BJP’s power and authority is tied to the continued persecution of Muslims. If they cannot kill Muslims in large numbers, they will push them into destitution through attacks on their livelihoods – all to communicate to their Hindu supporters that they are fighting to protect their supremacy in society.
This is why as they forced businesses to reveal the identity of their owners the authorities simultaneously banned halal certification. Observant Muslims need to know whether the things they are using which contain animal products – cosmetics, for example – are halal or not. It is important for observant Muslims to know whether alcohol or material related to prohibited animals has been used in the manufacture or processing of medicine or cosmetics that they use.
What objection can one have to Halal certification? It does not interfere with the religious practices of non-Muslims. It does not in any way affect the lives of Hindus. Does the sight of halal certification defile the BJP’s supporters?
What can be the reason for banning halal certification and forcing Muslim shop owners to reveal their identities other than making the lives of Muslims more difficult?
This new cycle of violence against and persecution of Muslims in India has baffled many analysts. They had thought that the reduced strength of the BJP in Parliament would force it to introspect and discipline itself Instead, it has become more brazen and more violent.
This is believed to be the result of an inner power struggle within the BJP. Some claim Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to shift responsibility for electoral losses to state leaders like Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. By dialling up the persecution of Muslims in his state, the argument goes, Adityanat is communicating that he is actually more cruel and committed to the cause than Modi, and therefore deserving of his position. There is likely some truth to this line of argument. Not only in Uttar Pradesh but all across BJP-led states, it appears the authorities are racing each other to increase the pressure on Muslims to prove their Hindu nationalist credentials and cement their positions within the party. Regrettably, when it comes to the BJP, even major electoral upsets and internal power struggles appear to translate into further violence against Muslims rather than more thoughtful governance.
Today, we are witnessing a renewed attack on Muslims in India because the ideology of the BJP is essentially anti-Muslim and anti-Christian and cannot survive without inflicting violence on these minority groups. The Muslims and other minorities will remain under attack in India as long as the BJP remains in a position of power – alone or within a coalition government. What is more concerning today, beyond the party’s continued instigation of violence against Muslims, however, is the newfound willingness of all state institutions like the police and civil administration to execute these ideologically motivated attacks. Completely aligned with BJP positions, they are now proactively harassing and persecuting Muslims and discriminating against them without being forced to do so by the political leadership. This means Muslims will be facing more immediate and serious threats in their daily lives in this new era in India.
Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. He writes literary and cultural criticism.
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