Middle East

Thousands rally in London in solidarity with Palestinians amid Israeli strikes on Gaza

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Thousands of people have poured into the streets of central London to show their support for Palestinians amid Israel’s ongoing airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, calling for an end to the occupying regime’s crimes and the liberation of Palestine.

The pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in front of the BBC News headquarters amid strict security on Saturday, as they waved Palestinian flags and carried placards reading “freedom for Palestine”, “end the massacre” and “sanctions for Israel”.

The demonstrators then marched toward the parliament building and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street office, as they planned a series of speeches.

The protest rally was held despite government warnings that anyone who shows support for the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas could face arrest. According to local authorities, over 1,000 police officers were present to monitor the demonstration.

Ismail Patel, chairman of the Friends of Al-Aqsa campaign told AFP that “all just people around the world, not just in Britain, must stand up and call for this madness (to end)… Otherwise, in the next few days, (we) might see a catastrophe unfolding.”

Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain also said he has attended the rally to send a message of solidarity to the Palestinian people, particularly those in Gaza, who are under bombardment and blockade.

He also noted that those present were also conveying a message to UK political leaders, who he accused of “giving permission for Israel to commit acts of war crime”.

Saturday’s rally is the second protest in London since Hamas launched its large-scale operation against Israeli-occupied territories last weekend.

Similar anti-Israeli protest rallies were also held in a number of European capitals, including Madrid and Rome.

The latest protest in London comes as the British authorities have sided entirely with Israel even as bombs rain down on civilian populated areas in the besieged Gaza region.

The popular resistance movement of Hamas was designated as a “terrorist” organization by the UK government in 2021.

Sunak accused Hamas of “barbaric acts of terrorism” on Wednesday, saying anyone in the UK supporting the resistance group would be held accountable.

Israel launched deadly strikes on the coastal area on Saturday after the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement waged a surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying regime.

Hamas said that its operation came in response to Israel’s violations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East al-Quds and growing settler violence.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 950 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes so far. More than 260,000 people have also been displaced in Gaza, with over 175,000 taking shelter in 88 UN schools.

The Western governments, namely the US, Britain, Germany, and France, have offered “steadfast support” to Israel amid the regime’s incessant bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip over the past few days.

Middle East

Lebanon's Hezbollah strikes Israeli military posts in occupied Shebaa Farms

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Fighters from Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah have attacked Israeli military positions on the border, a day after the group’s chief highlighted what he labeled the current robust state of resistance.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language and Hezbollah-linked al-Manar television network reported on Saturday that the fighters launched barrages of rockets, mortar shells and anti-tank guided missiles at the military sites in the occupied Shebaa Farms and Kfarchouba Hills.

Initial reports indicate at least 10 Israeli troops sustained critical injuries as a result of the Hezbollah attacks. They were transported to Galilee Medical Center in the city of Nahariya.

Local sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said Hezbollah mortar shells are falling on the Braniat barracks – the command center of the Galilee Brigade.

The Israeli military said in a statement it is returning fire and shelling nearby border areas.

Palestinian fighters have also launched attacks on Israeli-occupied lands from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah expounded on the current situation in Palestine during a meeting with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian of Iran in Beirut on Friday.

“Today, the state of resistance is strong, and all scenarios are fully prepared,” he stated.

The high-level meeting also addressed the readiness of Palestinian resistance groups to counter Israel.

Both sides unequivocally condemned the one-sided support of the United States and certain Western countries for the Israeli onslaught against the besieged Gaza Strip and the tragic loss of innocent Palestinian lives.

They also emphasized the paramount importance of unity among Muslim states and freedom-loving people worldwide, underscoring the necessity for concerted action to put an end to Israeli crimes.

Earlier on Friday, a Reuters journalist of the Lebanese nationality was killed when an Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon. Six other journalists were wounded.

Reuters news agency said two of its journalists, identified as Thaer al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, were wounded in the shelling in the border area.

Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television news network also said two of its employees, Elie Brakhya and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, were among the wounded.

Middle East

MSNBC Muslim anchors get snubbed despite being Israeli apologists

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By Mohammad Hashim

In an interesting revelation, a report on Saturday that three high-profile Muslim anchors of the American news television channel MSNBC, owned by NBC Universal, have been sidelined.

The Semafor report said Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have been “quietly taken out of the anchor’s chair” amid the Israeli regime’s no-holds-barred bombing of the besieged Gaza Strip.

The network reportedly did not air the Thursday night episode of The Mehdi Hasan Show on its streaming platform Peacock and also reversed its plan to replace Joy Reid with Mohyeldin this week for the channel’s 7 p.m. show.

The report, citing “two network sources with knowledge of the plans”, said Velshi will also be replaced by Alicia Menendez this weekend. Menendez hosts American Coices on Saturdays and Sundays.

Hasan is a British-American television journalist of Indian descent who has anchored the popular The Mehdi Hasan Show on Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC since February 2021.

Mohyeldin is an Egypt-born, New York-based journalist for NBC News and MSNBC who currently hosts the weekly prime-time show ‘Ayman’ on MSNBC.

Velshi is a US-based Canadian journalist, who has been reporting for NBC News since October 2016 and also serves as a news host for MSNBC channel. 

NBC has termed the schedule changes as “coincidental,” refuting claims that the high-profile Muslim broadcasters are being snubbed amid the cessation of Israeli hostilities against Palestinians.

However, the Semafor report stressed that staff members at MSNBC have been “concerned by the moves”, feeling all three hosts have “some of the deepest knowledge of the conflict.”

It said the move to sideline the three anchors comes as the MSNBC network, which is aligned closely with the Democratic Party, has “swung into intense solidarity” with the Israeli regime.

“That shift has come with heated internal and external objections to anything that breaks with that solidarity, and has come with social media criticism of Hasan, Mohyeldin, and Velshi,” the report stated.

Following the Hamas operation, US politicians, including President Joe Biden, quickly jumped in defense of the occupying regime and peddled blatant lies about children beheaded and women raped.

Interestingly, the three MSNBC journalists, including Hasan, have been vocal against the operation launched by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas on the occupied territories last week.

Hasan, who has a massive social media following and is known for his argumentative style of on-air debating, took to his X handle (formerly Twitter) on October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, lecturing his 1.3 million followers on “morality” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

“This conflict for me has always been about morality. Morally, you cannot justify the killing of Palestinian civilians, even if you say it’s fighting terrorism. But morally, you also cannot justify the killing of Israeli civilians, even if you say you’re fighting occupation,” he wrote.

It was a conscious and concerted attempt on the part of the British-American journalist to play both sides, to advocate the case of Palestinians, and also to be apologetic for the Israeli occupation.

He somehow tried to question the legitimacy of the Palestinian resistance group to launch the Al-Aqsa Storm operation even if they were occupied, subjugated, humiliated and mercilessly killed every day.

Hasan also fell for the hoax that hundreds of people were “massacred” at a music festival.

“Israel says 260 dead at music festival attacked by Hamas. I cannot imagine how horrific a massacre this must have been. 260 people gunned down. To put that in context, that’s the equivalent of more than five Pulse nightclub shootings. Heartbreaking,” he wrote on X.

It was part of the bigger misinformation campaign against the Palestinian resistance movement, which took the music festival participants as prisoners and treated them in a dignified manner as seen in videos circulating widely online.

To put his case as a neutral journalist who cares for Israelis, the MSNBC anchor reacted strangely to a photo of a demonstration by pro-Palestine activists outside the Israeli regime’s consulate in New York.

“These people are an embarrassment and their cheering is reprehensible,” Hasan wrote.

Mohyeldin, much like his MSNBC colleague, has been very consciously trying to appease his employers by being soft on the Israeli apartheid regime and amplifying voices against the resistance.

On October 8, a day after the Hamas operation, he shared a series of posts on X that were circulated to vilify the Gaza-based resistance group and to portray Israeli soldiers and settlers as victims.

He even shared an article that claimed Iran helped in plotting the attack on the Israeli regime.

Velsh, like the other two, has also used his social media platforms, including X, to make a case for himself as someone who despises the Palestinian resistance movement.

On October 10, he shared an article about Hamas, calling it an” important read to understand what you need to know about the group behind the deadly terror attack in Israel.”

He clearly sees the Hamas operation as a “terror attack”, not a legitimate military action against the occupying regime. He also conveniently dismissed the fact that the attack targeted occupiers.

On Saturday, he posted on X that he was leaving the occupied territories, adding to speculation that he has been sidelined from his job despite extra effort to take the hypocritical position on the conflict.

All three of them – Hasan, Mohyeldin and Velshi – despite trying to present themselves as “good boys” have received a bad report card from their bosses. That’s how much Americans value free speech.

Mohammad Hashim is a political and media analyst with a focus on West Asia

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV

Middle East

Iran: UN must swiftly act to stop Israel’s brutal bombardment of Palestinians

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says the United Nations must put an immediate end to Israel’s brutal aggression against the Palestinians “before it is too late.”

“The opportunity for a political approach is just for today and tomorrow is too late,” Amir-Abdollahian said in a meeting with the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Saturday.

He said the UN should take a swift action at the current juncture as the regime plans to relocate citizens in Gaza.

In a statement released on Friday, Israel’s military ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate the area within 24 hours, in what is viewed as a precursor to a ground invasion by the occupiers.

 

 

It called on all people living north of the Gaza Strip, which amount to more than one million, to relocate south, saying the military would operate “significantly” in the city in the coming days and civilians would only be able to return when another announcement was made. 

Israel started its onslaught on October 7 after resistance groups launched multi-pronged Operation al-Aqsa Storm, the largest military operation against the occupying regime in decades.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has killed well over 2,200 people, including more than 700 children, and injured more than 9,800.

Amir-Abdollahian said Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was the outcome of the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Pointing to the United States’ contradictory behavior, the Iranian minister said the US called on all countries to exercise self-restraint while it is now supporting the regime in its brutal attacks.

The top Iranian diplomat said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) must act immediately to send humanitarian aid to Gaza.

He also said the UN and the ICRC must push for the opening of a humanitarian corridor into Gaza.

Pointing to reports that the regime has used white phosphorus munitions against desperate people in the tightly-besieged Strip, Amir-Abdollahian urged the UN to set up an investigative team to examine the issue. He voiced Iran’s readiness to support the UN’s political initiatives in this regard.

 

 

In a post on X on Thursday, Maha Hussaini, director of strategies at the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor in Geneva, said the regime was “using internationally-prohibited white phosphorus in Gaza.”

The UN coordinator, Wennesland, for his part, pointed to the tragic situation in Gaza and voiced concern over the possibility of spread of war to the region and deterioration of the crisis. The coordinator raised the alarm about the increase in civilian casualties and called for efforts to stop or limit the war in order to send humanitarian aid immediately.

 

Middle East

Hezbollah attacks all Israeli outposts in Shebaa Farms

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The Lebanese Hezbollah movement said in its statement that the targeted sites were Al-Radar, Ruwaisat Al-Alam, Zibdin, Al-Sammaqa, and Ramtha.

The Resistance fighters fired precision missiles and mortar shells, hitting the Zionist outposts directly and precisely, according to the statement.

The Hezbollah attack came in response to the Zionist regime bombardment of the suburbs of a number of Lebanese border towns.

MNA

Middle East

Shooting the messenger: Palestinian journos targeted, killed in Israeli blitz

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By Syed Zafar Mehdi

A Reuters journalist was killed and six others were wounded in indiscriminate artillery shelling by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon on Friday amid unrelenting aggression and unprecedented escalation.

The slain videographer was identified as Issam Abdallah. Four journalists who were injured in the targeted attack worked for Reuters and Al Jazeera, according to media reports.

“We are deeply saddened to learn that our videographer, Issam Abdallah, has been killed,” the Reuters management said in a statement late on Friday, avoiding the mention of who killed him.

“We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region, and supporting Issam’s family and colleagues.”

Qatar-based Al Jazeera said the network’s cameraperson Elie Brakhia and reporter Carmen Joukhadar were among those wounded in the Israeli attack.

“The tank shell hit them directly. It was horrible. The situation over there was – I can’t explain, I can’t describe it,” Al Jazeera correspondent Ali Hashem was quoted as saying, adding that the team of journalists at the scene sported vests marked as press.

Lebanon’s Press Editors’ Syndicate condemned what it called the “targeting” of journalists and described the killing of a Reuters videojournalist as a “deliberate crime”.

At least 11 journalists have been killed as a result of indiscriminate Israeli bombardment of densely-populated civilian areas in the besieged Gaza Strip in the past week, and many are reported injured or missing, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“Journalists in Gaza face particularly high risks as they try to cover the conflict in the face of a ground assault by Israeli troops, devastating Israeli airstrikes, disrupted communications, and extensive power outages,” the CPJ said in a statement on Friday.

Apart from Abdallah, many other Palestinian journalists have been killed since Saturday, when the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas launched the Al Aqsa Storm operation, taking Tel Aviv and its Western allies by complete surprise.

The operation was a response to months of unending atrocities against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank as well as the repeated desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

On October 12, a journalist for Sowt Al-Asra Radio (Radio Voice of the Prisoners), identified as Shehab, was killed along with his wife and three children at his home in the northern Gaza Strip.

According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, he and his family were killed after the Israeli airstrike ripped through their home in Jabalia, 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) north of Gaza City.

On October 11, a freelance Palestinian photojournalist Abu Matar was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah City, southern Gaza Strip, according to The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

WAFA news agency reported that Matar, who worked with international news agencies, was killed while covering the ongoing Israeli aggression on the besieged coastal strip.

On October 9, Saeed Al-Taweel, chief editor of the Al-Khamsa News website, and photojournalist Mohammed Sobih was killed after Israeli warplanes pounded an area in the Rimal district of western Gaza.

According to multiple media reports, the airstrike precisely targeted the Hiji building, which houses many local and international media offices, including that of Taweel and Sobih.

Hisham Alnwajha, a journalist for the “Khabar” news agency, was also killed in the same strike. He initially suffered critical injuries and succumbed at the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza city.

 “Unfortunately, they have sent a warning notice to the Hiji building just now that it will be bombed,” were al-Taweel final words, according to a recording obtained by Al Jazeera. “The area has been evacuated entirely. Women, men, the elderly, kids have all completely fled the area.”

On October 8, Gaza-based freelance journalist Assad Shamlakh was killed along with his nine family members in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the southern Gaza Strip neighborhood of Sheikh Ijlin, according to The Legal Agenda organization.

On October 7, Mohammad Al-Salhi, a photojournalist with the Fourth Authority news agency, was killed near a Palestinian refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Wafa news agency.

The Journalist Support Committee, in a statement, strongly condemned the “targeted attack” on journalists which it noted “represents a flagrant violation of human rights and freedom of the press.”

The same day, two other Palestinian journalists, Mohammad Jarghoun, who worked for Smart Media, and Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi, a photojournalist for Ain Media, were also killed by the Israeli forces.

Jarghoun was shot while reporting in an area east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian press freedom group MADA and the JSC, while Lafi was shot and killed at the Gaza Strip’s Erez Crossing into the occupied territories.

Two Palestinian photojournalists – Nidal Al-Wahidi who works for the Al-Najah channel and Haitham Abdelwahid who works for the Ain Media – have been reported missing, according to a media watchdog body.

According to sources in the Gaza Strip, the death toll of journalists could be much higher as information remains very scarce amid chaos and commotion created by the Israeli bombing campaign.

Hours before Abdallah was killed in southern Lebanon on Friday, he shared a photo of Shireen Abu Akleh on his Instagram page.

Akleh was murdered by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in May last year.

The long-time Al Jazeera Arabic journalist, who shot to fame while covering the second Intifada between 2000 and 2005, was along with a group of local journalists reporting on an Israeli raid when the trigger-happy raiders went berserk, shooting her dead.

Justice was denied to Akleh’s family, as Israeli regime lobbyists managed to push it under the carpet.

 

Middle East

Tehran strongly blasts Palestinians displacement by Israel

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Nasser Kan’ani also considered Zionists’ move to intensify the siege, cutting off water and electricity, and preventing the delivery of food and medicine to Gaza, as a clear example of a war crime and a flagrant violation of international laws and regulations.

He asked international organizations, including the United Nations, to immediately take preventive and effective measures to stop the insane crimes of the Zionist apartheid regime.

Thousands of Palestinians fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Saturday from the path of an expected Israeli ground assault, while Israel pounded the area with more air strikes and said it would keep two roads open to let people escape.

Hamas has told people not to leave and says the two roads Israel has declared open are unsafe. It says dozens of people have been killed in strikes on cars and trucks carrying refugees Friday.

The United Nations says so many people cannot be safely moved inside the besieged enclave without causing a humanitarian disaster. It warned on Saturday of the threat of deadly water-borne disease without urgent deliveries of fuel to power Gaza’s freshwater system.

Hamas has vowed to fight until the last drop of blood and says the order to leave the north of the enclave is a trick to force residents to give up their homes. 

MNA/

Middle East

Russian dep. FM may meet Hamas officials next week

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Bogdanov told RIA he was heading to Qatar and usually met with Hamas every time he was there, the US News website reported.

If they wish, we always maintain contact. Moreover, in this situation, this (meeting) is useful for resolving practical issues, including the release of prisoners, Bogdanov said.

Hamas carried out the Al-Aqsa Storm Operation inside the Occupied Territories last Saturday, killing more than 1,300 Zionist regime soldiers and settlers and taking hundreds more to Gaza as prisoners. Israel has responded with the most intensive air strikes of its 75-year conflict with the Palestinians. Gaza authorities said more than 2,000 people have been martyred as of today.

Russia has drafted a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that an expected Israeli ground assault on Gaza would lead to an “absolutely unacceptable” level of civilian casualties.

MNA/PR