SANA – June 29, 2024
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 267: Gaza Death toll rises to 37,834
Occupied Jerusalem, Syrian News Agency (SANA)- Following are the latest developments of Operation “al-Aqsa Flood” launched by the Palestinian resistance on October 7:
-Palestinian Ministry of Health: The number of victims of the ongoing occupation aggression on the Gaza Strip, for the 267th day, had risen to 37,834 martyrs and 86,858 wounded
-Palestinian media: Three martyrs, including a child, as a result of the Israeli occupation bombing of Zarqa area in Gaza City.
-Palestinian media: four martyrs as a result of bombing the Israeli occupation of a home in Sidra area, central Gaza strip.
– As the aggression enters its 267th day, the occupation intensifies its bombardment on the Strip, leaving more martyrs and wounded
-Palestinian media: two martyrs and 5 wounded in the Israeli occupation shelling of a house in Yarmouk area , Gaza
-Palestinian media: 5 martyrs in bombing the Israeli enemy of al-shakoush region northwestern Rafah
https://sana.sy/en/?p=333360
Israel’s leaked plan for annexing the West Bank, explained
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s plan to annex the West Bank would see over 60% of the territory becoming a part of Israel. But Palestinian experts say it is “already happening.”
By Qassam Muaddi
The issue of Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank has resurfaced in recent days after a leaked recording of Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich revealed a “dramatic” plan to impose permanent Israeli control over the West Bank “without the government being accused of annexing it,” as Smotrich was recorded saying.
Smotrich’s statements, recorded by the Peace Now Israeli NGO and published by CNN and the New York Times, were made during a speech he gave to settler leaders earlier in June. Smotrich was recorded saying that he had elaborated a plan in the past year and a half and exposed it to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was “fully onboard.”
The plan centers around transferring administrative authorities in the West Bank from the Israeli army to the civil authorities of the Israeli government. Smotrich said that he oversaw the creation of an entire administrative body directly linked to the government and that members of this body were already embedded in the Israeli army’s Civil Administration.
In 1967, Israel began administering the West Bank and Gaza under a military administrative body, the Military Government, and in 1981, the Civil Administration was established in its place. Following Netanyahu’s formation of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history in 2022, Smotrich was put in charge of the Civil Administration. Since October 7, Smotrich’s hardline policies pushing for settlement expansion have reached new heights, with the recently leaked annexation plan raising fears about the intentions of the self-described fascist toward the Palestinians living in the West Bank.
According to Smotrich, the administrative changes he wishes to implement represent a “dramatic change” equivalent to “changing the DNA of the system.”
Smotrich said that large budgets were allocated to infrastructure projects for settlement expansion and for “security measures” for the settlements, adding that the aim of such a plan is “to avoid the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state.”
Smotrich plan ‘already happening’
Smotrich’s leak comes at a time when the West Bank has witnessed a dramatic increase in violent settler rampages against Palestinian villages since October 7. Back in the early days of the current Israeli assault on Gaza, Israeli settlers launched a series of attacks on Palestinian rural communities, completely expelling at least 20 communities in the Jordan Valley, the adjacent eastern slopes (the Mu’arrajat area), and in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. Smotrich’s ally and Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, personally oversaw the distribution of firearms to settlers, who continue to attack Palestinian villages and roads in the West Bank.
Smotrich’s plan “is a description of what is already happening on the ground,” Khalil Tafakji, a Palestinian expert on Israeli settlements and formerly the director of the maps unit in Jerusalem’s Orient House, told Mondoweiss.
“This is what we have been describing and warning against for years; a de-facto annexation of the West Bank in stages, which goes hand in hand with settlers’ violence to ethnically cleanse Area C from Palestinians.”
Khalil Tafakji
“This is what we have been describing and warning against for years; a de-facto annexation of the West Bank in stages, which goes hand in hand with settlers’ violence to ethnically cleanse Area C from Palestinians,” he pointed out.
Area C comprises the West Bank territories where Palestinians aren’t allowed to have any kind of sovereignty or authority under the Oslo Accords. It covers 61% of the West Bank and includes the territory’s borders, the Jordan Valley, and the space between Palestinian towns and cities.
“But the plan is, in fact, a major change to the way the West Bank is dealt with in the Israeli system,” Tafakji said. “As it will be under the civil control of the Israeli government, which would facilitate settlement building and expansion in such a way that Area C will become a direct extension of Israel.”
“The next stage,” Tafakji continued. “Would be taking authority on building and urbanization in Area B from the Palestinian Authority, at the same time that pressure increases on Palestinians to force them to leave,” he explained.
Area B includes the urban areas outside the main city centers where Palestinians can exercise limited civil authority without security control, which is held by the Israeli army.
“Currently, in Area B, Palestinians ask for building permits from their local municipalities, who can give them within their urban plans,” Tafakji detailed. “This would remain unchanged, but the urban plans would no longer be defined by the municipalities and the Palestinian Authority’s planning departments, but rather by the Israeli government itself, turning Palestinian towns and cities into actual reserves controlled by Israel.”
“It is not a major revelation of Israel’s intentions or strategy in the West Bank, but it shows how Israel is doing it and plans to do it in the future,” Tafakji clarified.
Middle East Eye - June 25, 2024
War on Gaza:
Hunger ‘Worse Than Bombings’ for Starving Palestinians
Food is scarce, spoilt and often non-existent in besieged enclave, leaving people dizzy and weak
By Lubna Masarwa and Rayhan Uddin
Ali, in northern Gaza, goes out every day, in the midst of persistent Israeli bombs and shelling, looking for food for his family.
“My family, the kids, all of them wait for me to come and say ‘there is food’ or ‘I brought vegetables’,” the Palestinian man tells Middle East Eye.
But most days, he says, he comes back empty-handed and despondent.
“We stopped talking about ‘When will the war be over?’ and started talking about ‘When will the food come in?’” he added.
Ali and all Gaza residents MEE spoke to about the worsening starvation crisis, caused by the ongoing Israeli siege blocking the delivery of basic life-saving food and medical items, preferred not to use their real names.
Rania, in Gaza City, also goes to the market daily in search for food. What she finds is either unaffordable or extremely limited in range.
“There are no vegetables, fruits or milk in the markets. Nothing that has any nutritional value,” she tells MEE.
Rania says she received a food basket from the World Food Programme (WFP) over a month ago, containing halva, beans, hummus, peas and cold cuts. She’s still holding on to those items now.
“I’ve been rationing them because if I run out I will have nothing to eat,” she says. “I feel dizzy and weak. My face is pale and I’ve lost a lot of weight.”
Rania’s and Ali’s experiences are similar to those of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, particularly in the north.
For over eight months, the Israeli military has imposed a tight siege on the Gaza Strip, severely limiting the flow of life-saving essential food and medical items.
The siege has been even tighter on northern Gaza, an area Israel attempted to empty of its more than one million residents at the start of the war in October.
Along with the relentless bombardments and deliberate targeting of hospitals, and as part of a policy that amounts to collective punishment of civilians, the Israeli military has used starvation of the population as a weapon of war, according to independent UN investigators.
War on Gaza: Famine Threat Persists as Half a Million Starving, Monitor Finds
The hunger crisis peaked in March, with dozens of children dying of malnutrition and residents being forced to eat grass as Israeli forces repeatedly killed aid-seeking people.
Under mounting international pressure, Israel “slightly” improved food access in some areas after its forces killed several foreign aid workers and a UN-backed report warned famine was imminent.
However, residents say Israeli authorities are now severely restricting life-saving food deliveries again, bringing back the extreme conditions experienced in March, leading to the death of at least four children from malnutrition just last week.
Looming Famine
The UN’s hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), released another report on Tuesday showing that a “high risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip”.
The report said more than 20 percent of the Palestinian enclave’s population, over 495,000, are now facing “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” involving “an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion”.
Almost everyone else faces “high levels of acute food insecurity” or worse.
The IPC found that while aid deliveries to northern Gaza increased in March and April, and found their way to the south too, the situation had deteriorated in recent weeks.
Israel’s ground invasion on Rafah, in southern Gaza, including its seizure of the Rafah crossing, have choked off the few routes into the enclave for humanitarian aid trucks.
The report found that over half of households in Gaza reported that they often have no food to eat in the house, and over 20 percent go entire days and nights without eating.
“The humanitarian space in the Gaza Strip continues to shrink and the ability to safely deliver assistance to populations is dwindling,” the report said.
“The recent trajectory is negative and highly unstable.”
‘Hunger Is Worse Than Bombings’
For Ali, there are no words to describe the hunger that people are enduring in Gaza.
“It is worse than all of the bombing and the noise and the horror we live through, and it is even worse than the famine that we’ve lived through the first time,” he said, referring to the March starvation crises.
Ali explains that at the beginning of the war, when people in northern Gaza were forcibly ejected by Israeli authorities to the south, those who remained were left in conditions akin to famine due to a complete blockade on food and resources.
“But some people had stored some food or legumes from before. Also, then, the atmosphere and temperature would help grow some herbs or plants which we would use as alternatives to food.”
Now, he says, with soaring temperatures in Gaza, it has become increasingly difficult to store food.
Some canned foods that have made it to northern Gaza via aid trucks are inedible. Exposure to the sun during the journey has meant much of the stock is spoilt before it reaches starving Palestinians.
“We have witnessed in Gaza City more than one case of poisoning due to the spoilage of this canned food,” says Ali.
According to the Gaza-based government media office, there have been many cases of food poisoning from eating expired canned food in recent days, espeically among children.
Many Palestinians in Gaza are now attempting to plant food in their homes to circumvent their hunger. They attempt to plant things that might grow quickly, such as zucchinis, cucumbers and tomatoes.
But plants require water – something that is also in immensely short supply in Gaza.
Before Israel’s war on Gaza began on 7 October, 96 per cent of the enclave’s water was already unfit for human consumption due to 17 years of Israeli blockade.
Now the situation is worse, with water, sanitation and hygiene systems entirely defunct, according to a UN report last week on the environmental impact of Israel’s war.
“We don’t know how much more can we endure of this,” says Ali.
“Every day we fall apart and break down. Every day is worse than the day before it.”*
https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-gaza-hunger-worse-bombings/5860997
Arab League says it no longer considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization
The change comes amid heightened tensions in southern Lebanon due to Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.
The Arab League's assistant secretary-general has announced that the league has ceased referring to Hezbollah as a "terrorist organisation."
In a televised statement on the Egyptian Al Qahera News channel the day after he concluded his visit to Beirut, Hossam Zaki said: "In previous Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organisation, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions, leading to the severing of communication based on these decisions."
"The member states of the League agreed that the label of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation should no longer be employed," Zaki said.
The official attributed this decision to the fact that "the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation no longer applies," emphasising that "the Arab League does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner."
On March 11, 2016, the Arab League classified Hezbollah as a "terrorist organisation," with reservations from Lebanon and Iraq, and called for it to "cease promoting extremism and sectarianism, refrain from meddling in the internal affairs of countries, and withhold any support for terrorism and terrorists in the region."
The classification occurred shortly after the Gulf Cooperation Council countries designated the Lebanese Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation on March 2, 2016.
On Friday, the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar reported that Zaki visited Beirut and held a meeting with Muhammad Raad, the head of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc affiliated with Hezbollah. This marks the first contact between the Arab League and Hezbollah in over a decade.
According to a statement by the Arab League on Friday, Zaki, during his visit that began on Tuesday, held meetings with Lebanese officials, as well as various political and parliamentary leaders representing Lebanon's diverse political spectrum.
The discussions focused on de-escalating tensions in southern Lebanon since the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza, as well as addressing Lebanon's prolonged presidential vacancy, which has persisted for over 19 months.
Zaki's visit and statement coincided with heightened concerns over a potential escalation between Hezbollah and Israel.
Tensions have soared along Lebanon's border with Israel amid cross-border attacks between Hezbollah and Israeli forces as Tel Aviv pressed ahead with its deadly offensive on Gaza, which has killed more than 37,800 people since last October 7.
Hezbollah has linked the cessation of its attacks on Israel to the end of Tel Aviv's onslaught on Gaza.
https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/arab-league-says-it-no-longer-considers-hezbollah-a-terrorist-organisation-18178288
Unpacking fear of an ‘all-out war’ between Israel and Lebanon
Amid war rhetoric, the US warns of “a greater war” in the region as satellite images of Lebanon’s border villages portray a disturbing picture.
As tensions rise between Israel and Lebanon, the Pentagon has sent military ships to prepare for the evacuation of American citizens from the region, according to US defense officials.
NBC News reports that these ships include the USS Wasp, an assault ship, which “will operate in the eastern Mediterranean to be ready for a Military Assisted Departure and other missions.”
The US embassy in Beirut has also issued repeated travel warnings to its citizens, urging them to “strongly reconsider travel to Lebanon”. Meanwhile, White House envoy Amos Hochstein expressed concern about the possibility of “a greater war” during his trip to Lebanon.
"We have seen an escalation over the last few weeks. And what President Biden wants to do is avoid a further escalation to a greater war,” he said.
Since the renewal of hostilities nearly nine months ago, Israel and Hezbollah—which has a strong support base in southern Lebanon—have repeatedly launched attacks against one other. Thousands of people have had to flee their homes along the bordering towns and villages. According to an estimate by Reuters, around 387 people have been killed in Lebanon. Meanwhile, in Israel, 18 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed in attacks by Hezbollah, according to Israeli officials.
The US has expressed concern that Israel might carry out a possible ground offensive in Lebanon, which comes in the wake of worrying statements of an “all-out war” by Israeli officials. “We are very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” wrote Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on X. “In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit,” he warned. Prior to that, on a trip to northern Israel, President Isaac Herzog said the international community should not be surprised if “the situation spirals out of control.”
“No restraint and no rules and no ceilings"
Just last week, the Times of Israel reported that senior Israeli generals had already approved of a ground offensive in southern Lebanon. “Attacking the enemy in its own territory, that is the ultimate solution," said Israeli Air Force Commander Tomer Bar at a military graduation ceremony. "We have the means for it, we have the capabilities, and certainly, we have the patience and fighting spirit," he said. More recently, during his latest trip to Washington on June 24, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said his troops could take Lebanon "back to the Stone Age, but we don't want to do it.”
Satellite images taken from Planet Labs PBC from a Lebanese village on the border with Israel show the scale of destruction over the last nine months. According to an image analysis by Reuters, there were at least 64 strikes on the village of Aita al-Shaab, which is only one kilometer from the border, with some strikes hitting multiple buildings. According to some analysts, speaking to Reuters, the satellite images brought back memories of the 34-day war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, in which fighters at Aita al-Shaab played a significant role in deterring Israeli strikes. For his part, in a recent video speech, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah himself has warned of a war with “no restraint and no rules and no ceilings,” if Israel is to pursue its plans of a ground invasion of Lebanon.
“All what the enemy says and the threats and warnings the mediators bring – and what is being said in the Israeli media – about a war in Lebanon does not scare us,” he said.
A recent op-ed in Haaretz warned that right-wing groups within Israel might use present tensions to push for further expansion of its territory. "Before you dismiss the religious messianists who held a small online conference on Monday with their eyes set on reclaiming 'God's Promised Land,' remember that their plans for West Bank settlement seemed equally outlandish 50 years ago," it read.
US media reports however suggest that Washington is involved in active diplomacy, trying to discourage any further escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border. According to The New York Times, quoting Suzanne Maloney, director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, the four actors involved in this situation – the US, Israel, Hezbollah and Iran – view each other with utmost suspicion.
“There is a possibility of pulling this latest escalation and expansion of the conflict back from the brink,” Maloney is quoted in the Times as saying. “But there are four actors engaged in a dangerous game of chicken and the prospect for miscalculation is high.”
For his part, while ensuring continuedﾠaid to Israel, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “underscored the importance of avoiding further escalation of the conflict and reaching a diplomatic resolution.”
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/unpacking-fear-of-an-all-out-war-between-israel-and-lebanon-18178064
Mideast Discourse June 24, 2024
The Middle East is sitting on a powder keg
Canada, the U.S., Great Britain and Kuwait have all warned its citizens in Lebanon to evacuate.
The impending war is caused because Israel refuses to a ceasefire in Gaza. Hezbollah says they will continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza as the continuing genocide is perpetrated by Israel, but as soon as a ceasefire begins, Hezbollah’s response will cease.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance group which is heavily armed. Most experts agree that the military might of Hezbollah and Israel are quite comparable on many levels, but Israel has air superiority.
Israel has a sophisticated air defense system, the ‘Iron Dome’. However, this system can be overwhelmed by Hezbollah if they were to launch a massive amount of missiles at Israel, and all agree that Hezbollah has a huge arsenal of missiles.
If the ‘Iron Dome’ was inundated by missiles launched from Lebanon, the effectiveness of the Israeli defenses would stop, and Israel could suffer destruction on a scale it has never experienced before. We have witnessed the destruction of Israeli missiles on Gaza, and homes and buildings across Israel could face a similar disaster.
Hezbollah demonstrated it has an air defense system, but it has been secretive in showing the capabilities of its defense from Israeli jets; however, on at least one occasion Hezbollah utilized their air defenses to repel an Israeli jet flying over Lebanon.
Amos Hochstein, the U.S. special envoy dispatched recently to Israel and Lebanon in hopes of averting a war between Israel and Hezbollah, came back empty-handed. Hochstein had been successful in a negotiation between Israel and Lebanon in 2022 over the maritime borders, but this time he was not negotiating with the Lebanese government alone, but with the most powerful resistance group in the Middle East.
Bidenﾒs Last Ditch Effort to Avoid Full-scale Middle East War
The root cause of all conflicts in the Middle East emanate from the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine, which has stripped away all human rights, and civil rights, from about six million Palestinians, while the six million Jews in Israel live in a quasi-democracy with human rights and civil rights comparable to most western democracies.
U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly told Israeli officials the U.S. does not want to see a wider war in the Middle East, where other nations could be involved should Lebanon face destruction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel would “turn Beirut into Gaza” in the event of a war.
Experts agree that Biden would continue to support Israel even in the face of a war on Hezbollah. The international community has come out against Israel and its genocide on Gaza, but Biden continues to support war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel.
Biden has sponsored a ceasefire plan, but Israel refused it, and experts suggest that the Biden plan was not designed by Washington to succeed, but was drafted only as an exercise in buying time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli public and military are divided on the war on Gaza. Many are demanding Israel stop the war and get the hostages out after almost 9 months of captivity. Others support the war on Gaza as part of the Zionist plan to eliminate all non-Jews and create one Jewish nation from the ‘river to the sea’.
Netanyahu firmly demands the continuation of the war on Gaza and demands that Hamas be destroyed, but his military leaders have said that is an impossible task, as Hamas is an ideology, that of resistance to occupation, which is guaranteed to all people through the Geneva Convention.
On June 18, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said plans for an attack in southern Lebanon had been approved and steps had been taken to “accelerate readiness in the field.” The statement came from Major General Ori Gordin, the head of IDF Northern Command, and Major General Oded Basiuk, who heads the IDF’s Operations Division.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz threatened Hezbollah that they faced “destruction” amid “all-out war” at the Israel-Lebanon border.
Katz’s threat came after Hezbollah published a surveillance video that it took by a drone over various Israeli military, infrastructure and civilian installations, including some in the Israeli port city of Haifa.
“In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit,” Katz wrote on X.
On June 21, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon that Israel said killed one of the group’s operatives. Hezbollah also claimed several other attacks on Israeli troops and positions over the course of the day.
In a meeting with visiting Israeli officials in Washington, Blinken underscored “the importance of avoiding further escalation in Lebanon and reaching a diplomatic resolution that allows Israeli and Lebanese families to return to their homes”, according to a statement.
Hezbollah chiefﾠHassan Nasrallah had warned “no place” in Israel would “be spared our rockets” if a wider war began, in a TV address on Wednesday. He also threatened Cyprus if it opened its airports or bases to Israel “to target Lebanon”. Cyprus houses two British bases, including an airbase.
Israel invaded and brutally occupied Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. Its withdrawal was a victory for Hezbollah. In 2006, Israel launched a second war on Hezbollah which saw Israel prevented from invading by the might of Hezbollah, and in the following years the resistance group has gotten much stronger militarily.
Dozens of Israeli towns are now deserted, with around 60,000 Israelis evacuated to temporary accommodation, while about 90,000 have also fled from southern Lebanon.
Israel has launched roughly four times as many attacks as Hezbollah over the course of the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a Wisconsin-based research group specializing in conflict data analysis. Last week, Israel made its deepest attack yet into Lebanon, striking 75 miles north of the border.
Israeli troops have also deployed white phosphorus in Lebanon, a substance that burns at high temperature and can be used to create smokescreens to obscure troop movements, but can cause respiratory damage and deadly burns. Its use near civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law.
“It’s not a question of if it will happen but when it will happen,” Avichai Stern, the mayor of Kiryat Shmona, the largest town in Israel’s north, said in an interview, and added, “We have to wipe them out.”
The war between Israel and Lebanon can be avoided if Israel will stop the unrelenting attacks on Gaza, which have resulted in over 36,000 deaths, mostly women and children.
https://mideastdiscourse.com/2024/06/24/israel-and-hezbollah-on-the-brink-of-war/
Latimer defeats Jamaal Bowman with $15 million worth of help from AIPAC
George Latimer used $15 million from AIPAC to defeat Jamaal Bowman in New York's 16th district. "We should be outraged when a super PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people into believing something that isn’t true," Bowman said.
BY MICHAEL ARRIA
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) lost his primary to Westchester County Executive and pro-Israel centrist George Latimer in New York’s 16th district.
Latimer is currently up by almost 17 points with about 90% of the vote in.
It was the most expensive House race in U.S. history, with some $23 million spent in support of Latimer. $14.5 million of that came from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) super PAC. Dozens of Latimer’s donors were Republicans.
“We should be outraged when a super PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people into believing something that isn’t true,” said Bowman during his concession speech.
“I would like to make a public apology for sometimes using foul language,” he added. “But we should not be well adjusted to a sick society.”
Bowman had been a target of AIPAC since he ousted Eliot Engel from the seat in 2020, but he’s faced increased scrutiny from the lobbying group over his growing criticisms of Israel. In addition to calling for a permanent ceasefire, Bowman has referred to Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide and even questioned the official narrative around the Hamas attack of October 7th before walking most of those statements back.
“Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!,” declared AIPAC after the race was called.
However, the group only mentioned the country in one of the many ads it bankrolled, and poll after poll shows that Democratic voters are increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
In actuality, AIPAC stays out of many primaries involving lawmakers who have defended Palestine. For instance, it refrained from spending on Summer Lee’s primary in Pennsylvania earlier this year despite the fact that her positions on the issue are very similar to Bowman’s.
AIPAC did not see a path to victory in Lee’s contest, but they have been eyeing Bowman as a potentially assailable candidate for years.
“With Bowman I think they just see vulnerability. Frankly, Bowman won his last race, but he was running against divided opposition and he scored 54.4%,” political consultant Peter Feld told Mondoweiss earlier this month. That’s a pretty good warning sign for an incumbent if you’re that close to 50. It wouldn’t take that many negatives to drive you under 50, which means that you’re losing a two-way race.”
Last September Bowman made headlines for pulling a fire alarm in a congressional office building while lawmakers were preparing for a vote. Bowman insisted it was an accident, but Republicans said he was trying to stop the vote from happening and ultimately censured him over the incident.
Latimer declared his candidacy a few months later. AIPAC had recruited Latimer to run and ran a series of attack ads against Bowman leading to the announcement.
Bowman also received little help from his own party. As Akela Lacy pointed out at The Intercept, Democratic leadership has historically taken serious measures to protect incumbents but did not show up for Bowman in the same way.
“Another difference from the time when Democrats would rally aggressively around incumbents is that this time, the group funding the primary challenge is also funding and endorsing Democratic leaders who have endorsed Bowman,” wrote Lacy. “Democrats, especially the party’s heavy hitters, have long had close relationships with AIPAC, speaking at its annual conferences and leading its sponsored junkets to Israel. Since AIPAC started giving directly to candidates last cycle, Jeffries has received more than $1.5 million from its PAC and been endorsed by the group.”
In recent days Latimer was endorsed by former presidential candidate Hilary Clinton and disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The campaign was also marked by a number of inflammatory racial statements. In a televised debate Latimer claimed that Bowman’s “constituency is Dearborn, Michigan,” a majority Arab-American city with a large Muslim population. In a recent interview with Punchbowl News, Latimer said Bowman, who is the first black man to represent the 16th district, enjoyed “an obvious ethnic benefit” in the race.
Progressive organizations and leaders criticized AIPAC’s tactics Tuesday night.
“Support for Palestinian rights is so popular among Democratic voters that it took AIPAC more than $17 million to unseat Congressman Bowman,” said Jewish Voice for Peace Action Political Director Beth Miller. “Extremist, far-right groups like AIPAC are spending at historic levels to scare members of Congress into ongoing support for military funding and weapons to the Israeli government. Congressman Bowman’s positions are popular among voters, and we will continue organizing to overcome anti-democratic dark money and to build a government that is governed that actually serves our communities.”
“This should provoke a crisis in the Democratic Party,” said said IfNotNow National Spokesperson Eva Borgwardt. “AIPAC’s MAGA billionaires just spent nearly $20 million trashing the reputation of a courageous, beloved Black educator to replace him with a mediocre white candidate with a history of racist remarks and governance. This is a wake up call to anyone who believes in democracy, equal rights, and an end to the slaughter in Gaza. AIPAC is going to keep going back to the same playbook against anyone who believes in the humanity of Palestinians. Democrats wouldn’t tolerate this from the NRA, and it should be equally unacceptable from AIPAC.”
Latimer is expected to easily win November’s general election in the solidly blue district.
Tent mosque in Gaza:
Palestinian women hold on to their faith amid war
From gathering daily in their local mosques, displaced women in central Gaza now meet in a tent mosque, clinging to the Quran as their sole companion.
SENA SERIM
In the sweltering heat of Gaza's summer, a group of girls and women make their way to a tent mosque in Deir Al Balah, passing through streets flooded with sewage water and littered with ruins from Israeli bombings.
On June 4, the tent mosque witnessed a significant event as six women recited the entire Quran from memory in a single sitting. Twenty-year-old Shaymaa Abualatta decided to document the occasion.
“When the girls finished reciting, we all cried and thanked Allah for this great blessing,” Shaymaa says. “I felt incredibly grateful to witness people holding the Quran in their hearts, especially during these tough times. It was very memorable.”
Before the war, Shaymaa was a third-year computer engineering student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Her life revolved around her university, neighbourhood, and family. However, the war turned everything upside down.
Shaymaa’s family home in Shejaiya, one of Gaza's largest neighbourhoods, was destroyed by Israeli shelling and air strikes. The family had to evacuate immediately, each carrying only a single bag.
Shaymaa says that they had been displaced so many times that she lost count, but vividly recalls three occasions where she survived near-death experiences during airstrikes, with some hitting nearby and shattering their windows.
After arriving in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, and living for more than six months in hastily assembled and overcrowded tent camps without access to electricity, clean water, or protection from the extreme heat, Shaymaa, her family and others in the tent camp felt they “had to do something to preserve their sanity”.
“We needed to regain some essence of our previous lives. Our routine turned into air strikes, bombings, and mourning the loss of loved ones,” she says. Shaymaa lost 70 family members, including her grandmother, cousins, and uncles.
A mosque for all
In their quest to find some normalcy, Shaymaa and others in the camp first turned to studying and teaching kids.
“But something that gave us a lot of strength was the Quran. So we had to return the Quran,” she says.
They initially gathered in Shaymaa’s tent, but as more people joined their circle or halaqa – a religious gathering for studying Islam and the Quran – they needed a larger space. That’s when the idea of a tent mosque came to be, Shaymaa says.
Her aunt, Khadija, who is also their Quran instructor, reached out to organisations for funding, and by late February, they were able to build a tent dedicated to prayers and Quran halaqa. They named it “Prayer Hall of the Circle of the Good Word”.
The tent mosque accommodates both men and women of all ages, from three-year-old children to elderly individuals in their 70s and 80s. Women's sessions are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10.00 AM until the noon call to prayer at around 12.30 PM, with about 100 female students gathering to memorise and recite the Quran.
Shaymaa says that some people were already on their journey of Quran memorisation, but many others started theirs during the war.
“What motivates us is the mindset that we might die at any moment. We want the last thing we do to be memorising the Quran and meet Allah with it in our hearts,” she said.
And many women who lost loved ones find comfort in praying that their recitation and memorisation of the Quran will reward those they have lost.
In the tent mosque, daily recitations of the Quran are common as the community strives to recite the entire Quran in a single sitting and prepare themselves for this significant event.
“We have this day, every month, where we gather to listen to participants recite different portions of the Quran, as much as they can,” Shaymaa says.
For Iman, Afnan, and Aya, June 4 was their big day.
Iman Asem, a 34-year-old with a degree in Islamic Law, was among the six women who recited the Quran in one sitting. Displaced from her home in northern Gaza’s Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood, she now lives in the Abu Ammar Al Zawaida camp, where the tent mosque is located.
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The Quran is a companion and friend to those without a companion.
Although their life is drastically different and conditions are harsh in the tent, where temperatures now reach over 35 degrees. Without comfort, rest and safety amidst bombardment, Iman says she remains thankful for their make-shift mosque.
“God has blessed us with a tent mosque, which is a provision He has granted us to have a place of prayer in a displacement camp, even if it is just a tent. Many camps lack such facilities,” Iman says.
“The Quran is a companion and friend to those without a companion. Whenever our souls and hearts feel weak, we turn to the Holy Quran to provide us with the energy and ability to remain steadfast in the face of this great trial.”
Afnan Heles, a high school student in Gaza City before the war, now spends most of her time in the tent mosque.
“After the war started, all our routine activities, including education, came to a halt. But, Allah compensated us in our camp with a prayer tent”, she says.
“Even though it's just a tent, I spend all my time there memorising, reviewing, reciting, and teaching the Quran to the students."
And for 29-year-old Aya Qalaja, the tent mosque is a guiding light. Having recited the entire Quran from memory twice before, the tent mosque helps her review and solidify her memorisation.
Aya credits their commitment to memorising the Quran to the support of their teacher, Khadija, who encourages them to continue despite adverse circumstances.
Shaymaa adds that Khadija always reminds them to recite sincerely, asking Allah to end the war and alleviate their struggles.
She says: “We believe that the closer we are to the Quran and the more we memorise, the closer we are to ending the war and suffering, God willing.”
Sena Serim is an assistant producer at TRT World.
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Published since July 2008 |
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
