Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Muslim World

NATO airstrike kills seven civilians in Southern Afghanistan

by

NATO labels all slain ‘enemy combatants’.

– by Jason Ditz, AntiWar.com

Protests erupted in the Paktia Province of Afghanistan today after an overnight NATO airstrike killed seven civilians, including a nine-year-old child. Deputy Governor Abdul Walisahl confirmed the incident.

The provincial government has announced a thorough investigation, and says that the slain were gathering firewood on a mountainside for the approaching winter at the time of the attack.

NATO, as usual, dismissed the allegations as untrue, but offered no explanation for the seven civilian bodies obviously killed in airstrikes. They insisted the attack on the mountainside killed eight “enemy combatants.”

As the first major civilian killings since the inauguration, there has been a conspicuous lack of comment from President Ashraf Ghani. His predecessor, Hamid Karzai, regularly condemned such killings, despite the fact that such criticism made him unpopular with NATO.

Israeli minister threatens to close Al-Aqsa, forces raid mosque compound

by

Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich's words the first such threat to be made by a high-profile Israeli official since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich’s words the first such threat to be made by a high-profile Israeli official since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

– by OnIslam & News Agencies

Jerusalem: Escalating tension in the world’s third holiest site for Muslims, deputy Knesset speaker along with dozens of Jewish settlers have broken into Al-Aqsa mosque compound, as Israeli Public Security Minister threatened to close the holy site to Muslim worshippers.

“The Israeli police allowed [Moshe] Feiglin to storm the mosque’s courtyards under their protection,” Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, head of the Jordan-run Organization for Muslim Endowments and Al-Aqsa Affairs, told Anadolu Agency on Monday, October 13.

The attack occurred as Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich threatened on Monday to close the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound to Muslim worshippers in the first such threat since 1967.

The serious desecrations of holy site by the Knesset member and settlers followed Monday’s morning clashes between Muslim worshippers and the Israeli police.

Firing teargases and stun grenades against Muslims, the Israeli police tried to forcibly evict Palestinians from the area, leaving at least 10 worshippers with temporary asphyxiation.

“The Israeli police are still besieging an unspecified number of worshippers inside al-Qibali Mosque [inside the compound] amid firing of stun grenades and teargas at the worshippers within,” al-Khatib added as sounds of teargas firing resounded in the background.

While all gates were closed to prevent Palestinian employees and Muslim religious students from entering Al-Aqsa, about 60 Jewish settlers forced their way into the holy site, according to the Palestinian NGO Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowments and Heritage.

“The occupation forces are besieging al-Qibali Mosque and firing a shower of teargas canisters and stun grenades at the worshippers who took refuge in the mosque following the dawn prayers when the Israeli forces stormed the site,” the foundation said in a statement.

“The military intrusion in such an early hour is a dangerous escalation,” the NGO added.

Al-Aqsa is the Muslims’ first Qiblah [direction Muslims take during prayers] and it is the third holiest shrine after Al Ka`bah in Makkah and Prophet Muhammad’s Mosque in Madinah, Saudi Arabia.

Its significance has been reinforced by the incident of Al Isra’a and Al Mi’raj — the night journey from Makkah to Al-Quds and the ascent to the Heavens by Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings be Upon Him).

Jordan has been supervising Al-Aqsa Mosque and other endowments in Al-Quds since 1948.

A 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel recognizes Jordan’s special supervisory role over holy sites in Al-Quds.

Condemnations

Monday’s clashes in the holy site were condemned by UN chief Ban Ki-moon who was “deeply concerned by repeated provocations at the holy sites in Jerusalem”.

Urging both side to revive the stalled peace talks, Ban said: “The situation can only be resolved as part of a broader political horizon that ends a nearly half century of [Israeli] occupation and leads towards a two-state solution with the state of Palestine coexisting with Israel in peace and security.

“Time is not on the side of peace. We need to act immediately to prevent a deepening of an already unsustainable status quo.”

Last week’s aggressions on Al-Aqsa mosques by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have sparked anger among World Muslims who condemned the attacks, calling to prosecute the assailants.

The clashes left dozens of Palestinians injured, while several suffered a teargas inhalation.

According to eyewitnesses, dozens of Jewish settlers could make their way through the holy site to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, also known as “Harvest Feast”.

Ban made his remarks during his visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, October 13, which comes a day after the international donor conference of Gaza that made a pledge of $5.4 billion to rebuild Gaza after last summer’s war.

As the UN chief described reconstructing Gaza an “important” step, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah urged the international community to “pressure” Israel not to hamper the construction process.

“The Gaza reconstruction program will be useless if the crossings are not open,” the Palestinian premier said.

“The Palestinian government will be in charge of the process.”

Israel has launched relentless airstrikes against Gaza on July 8 where more than 2,100 have been killed and thousands injured.

Out of 2,131 Palestinians who died in the latest fighting, 501 were children, said the United Nations. About 70% of the children killed were under 12, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.

The large scale of mass destruction in Gaza has left about 5,510 homes completely destroyed and about 31,000 partially damaged, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes that were caught up in the Israeli air strikes.

Islamic State now controls half of Syrian border town and intensifies attacks in Iraq

by

Smoke rises from parts of Kobane bombed by US and Saudi warplanes. Photo: Getty Images

Smoke rises from parts of Kobane bombed by US and Saudi warplanes. Photo: Getty Images

– by The Age

Mursitpinar: Jihadists have fought their way into  the centre of the Syrian border town Kobane, while in Iraq more than 180,000 have fled fighting in Anbar province.

The breakthrough on Monday, nearly a month after the assault on the town on the Turkish frontier began, gave Islamic State half of Kobane, despite the desperate efforts of its Kurdish defenders, backed byUS-led air strikes.

US and Saudi warplanes targeted seven sites around Kobane, the US military said.

Fighting spread to less than a kilometre from the barbed wire frontier fence, with the jihadists carrying out three suicide car bomb attacks in the border zone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Kobane has become a highly visible symbol of resistance to IS and its fall would give the jihadists control of a long stretch of the Turkey-Syria border. But concern has also been growing over Iraq, where IS fighters have been threatening to seize more territory.

Fighting in Iraq’s western Anbar province has forced up to 180,000 people to flee since the city of Hit fell to Islamic State militants earlier this month, the United Nations said on Monday.

IS fighters extended that advance by overrunning a military base the Iraqi army had abandoned eight kilometres west of Hit earlier on Monday, according to an army officer and members of a government-backed Sunni militia.

In Baghdad, three bombs exploded in Shiite parts of the capital on Monday, killing 30 people, police and medical officials said, continuing a wave of attacks targeting Iraq’s majority religious group.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but IS fighters earlier claimed a string of attacks in Baghdad on Sunday that left 45 dead.

As a result of the fighting and air strikes in Anbar, carried out by the Iraqi government and a US-led military coalition, up to 30,000 families or 180,000 individuals had fled Hit, the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In Kobane, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported more heavy fighting on Monday inside the city.

Rami Abderahman, of the Observatory, said IS militants had taken about half of the town.

“They now control the cultural centre, which means they have advanced further inside the town,” he said.

In a blow to US hopes, Turkey denied it had agreed to let the United States use its Incirlik air base in the fight against IS and sources at the Turkish Prime Minister’s office said talks on the subject were continuing.

The comments come after US national security adviser Susan Rice said Turkey had agreed to let forces from a US-led military coalition use its bases for activities inside Iraq and Syria and to train moderate Syrian rebels.

Syria’s air force, meanwhile, carried out strikes against rebels at more than double its usual rate on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The intensified air strikes by President Bashar al-Assad’s government will add to the fear among Dr Assad’s opponents that he is taking advantage of the US strikes to crush other foes, including the “moderate opposition” that Washington backs.

The Observatory said the Syrian air force had struck 40 times on Monday in areas in Idlib and Hama provinces, including dropping oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel. Typically, Damascus has carried out no more than 12 to 20 raids a day.

AFP, Reuters

Israel jailed influential Palestinian writer "to remove him from society"

by

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh for The Electronic Intifada

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh for The Electronic Intifada

– by Patrick O. Strickland, The Electronic Intifada

Prominent Palestinian professor and writer Ahmad Qatamesh spent a total of eight and a half years in Israeli prison without being charged or brought to trial.

During two separate stints in Israeli lockup, Qatamesh was held in administrative detention, a draconian practice in which Israel imprisons Palestinians for infinitely renewable six-month terms without charge or trial, using “secret evidence” against them.

“Administrative detention is one of the most difficult of Israel’s tactics because prisoners have nothing but uncertainty,” Qatamesh told The Electronic Intifada. “They never know when or if they will go home, and neither do their families.”

Sitting in the living room of his home in al-Bireh, a central West Bank city near Ramallah, the veteran prisoner explained the Israeli occupation’s use of administrative detention as a method of targeting influential Palestinians — resistance and civil society figures alike.

As one of those who has been targeted multiple times, Qatamesh rejects Israel’s claim that administrative detention is used solely as a security measure.

Indeed, it was used to collectively punish Palestinians in the West Bank after three Israeli teens, later found slain, went missing there in June.

Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and present-day Israel were arrested during the popular demonstrations that followed the nationalist-motivated 2 July kidnapping and brutal murder of Muhammad Abu Khudair, a sixteen-year-old Palestinian from Jerusalem.

As of 7 August, that arrest campaign had resulted in the number of prisoners held in administrative detention soaring to an estimated 450, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

Though arrests have continued since then, these are the latest available statistics.

There have been numerous hunger strikes in Israeli jails undertaken by Palestinian detainees in recent years in a bid to demand their freedom. Dozens of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails across the occupied West Bank and Israel agreed in June to end a mass hunger strike against administrative detention.

“Secret evidence”

Qatamesh, who has spent a total of thirteen years in Israeli prison, was first arrested and locked up for four and a half years in the 1970s for charges related to activism with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a secular Marxist political party deemed illegal by Israel.

“These years were easier than later on,” he recalled. “We still had the hope to liberate the homeland.”

When he was rearrested in 1992, he was accused of “illegal activities” as an organizer and leader in the PFLP, a charge he denies until today. Rather than bring charges against him, Israel instead put him in administrative detention and barred him and his lawyer from seeing the secret evidence against him.

Israeli intelligence were apparently unable to prove his involvement in any illegal activities despite three months of interrogation, during which Qatamesh says he was tortured. Though a military judge decided that he ought to be released shortly after the interrogation period ended, it would be six and a half years before that order was carried out.

During his more than six years of detention in the 1990s, Qatamesh says that “Israeli interrogators and secret intelligence used very specific types of torture — not punching, but psychological pressure, [such as] isolation and sleep deprivation,” among other techniques.

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh done while the cartoonist was imprisoned by Israel last year.

In those years, Qatamesh would regularly participate in collective hunger strikes with other administrative detainees and prisoners. “It wasn’t like today,” he said. “There wasn’t the same attention [in the media] at that time.”

“But times had also changed,” he remembered. “Many of us were older and others had been in and out prison. We were starting to get tired. There was still hope as the intifada took place outside, but we wanted to get out of prison and be a part of it.”

Leading up to his 1998 release, Qatamesh says Israel was facing mounting pressure and calls for his release as he received regular visits from European Union politicians, as well as Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations and left-wing groups.

After six years and seven months of imprisonment without charge or trial, Qatamesh returned to his home in al-Bireh.

Following that release, Qatamesh says he abstained from all political activity, including involvement with the PFLP. For several years, he taught at Birzeit University, where he lectured on philosophy, history and politics.

“Bigger than I am”

Upon his release, Qatamesh wrote about his experience being tortured in his first book, I Shall Not Wear Your Tarboosh. He wrote two more books, one titled A History of the Secret Revolution, and another about the one-state solution in Palestine.

After he was rearrested yet again in 2011, he says that Israeli interrogators repeatedly asked him about the ideas expressed in his writing. “They accused me of being PFLP, then Hamas, and finally they told me I was a threat to their state,” he recalled.

“I hadn’t been a part of any political group for years. It was harder than when I was younger. I just wanted to go home and be with my family,” he said, referring to his wife, Suha, and his daughter, who was 21 years old when he was arrested the last time. Israeli soldiers pointed guns at her and forced her to call her father to demand his surrender.

Qatamesh says Israeli authorities “made me into something bigger than I am. That’s why they used administrative detention.”

For two and a half years, Israeli military courts continually rubber-stamped the intelligence establishment’s requests to extend Qatamesh’s administrative detention order. His health declined during this time and he suffered from regular fainting and chronic debilitating headaches.

In April 2013, the international human rights group Amnesty International called for Israel to unconditionally release Qatamesh.

“Ahmad Qatamesh is a prisoner of conscience who is being detained solely for expressing nonviolent political beliefs,” stated Amnesty International’s Ann Harrison, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program.

During his third stint in prison, however, it took the military judges longer to recognize the lack of evidence against the aging writer.

It wasn’t until August 2013 that an Israeli military court ruled that it would only extend Qatamesh’s administrative detention order for one more six-month interval unless Israeli intelligence or the military could bring provide evidence demonstrating his involvement in resistance activities banned by Israel.

After seven consecutive administrative detention orders, he was released on 28 December 2013 and returned home to his family.

“Clearest case”

Gavan Kelly, an advocacy officer for Addameer, a Ramallah-based group that monitors Israel’s arrests of Palestinians and advocates for prisoners’ rights, said that “Qatamesh is the clearest case of Israel using administrative detention to remove influential people from Palestinian society.”

International law permits the use of administrative detention in exceptional cases, but Israeli policy flies in the face of international law, according to Kelly, who said the number of Palestinians locked up without trial has “hovered between 200 and 300 over the last couple years.”

According to the Israeli legislation titled Emergency Powers Law Detention (also known as the 1979 Emergency Law), the defense minister can order the detention of a citizen for indefinitely renewable six-month periods. Though it is only supposed to be applicable during a state of emergency, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has considered the country in a state of emergency since its establishment in 1948.

In practice, the law targets Palestinian citizens of Israel and has rarely been used against their Jewish compatriots.

Artwork by Mohammad Saba’aneh done while the cartoonist was imprisoned by Israel last year.

For Palestinians in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and in the Gaza Strip, military order 1651.56 authorizes military commanders to detain individuals if there are “reasonable grounds to presume that the security of the area or public security require the detention,” according to Addameer’s website.

Because the military order does not limit the number of times an administrative detention order can be renewed and the terms are vague, the fate of imprisoned Palestinians is often left to military commanders.

During his last two and a half years in prison, Qatamesh says the only explanation he was ever given by interrogators or intelligence officers was that he “is a threat to their state.”

Abusive detention practices

“The last couple years have seen historically low numbers [of administrative detainees],” Addameer’s Kelly said.

According to Addameer data, the number of administrative detainees peaked at more than 1,050 Palestinians in March 2003, during the second intifada.

That came after a mass arrest campaign in which Israeli occupation forces rounded up more than 15,000 Palestinians, mostly males 15 to 45 years old, between March 2002 and and October 2002.

But even after the intifada tapered off a few years later, the use of administrative detention remained widespread. Israel held a monthly average of 830 administrative detainees in 2007.

Other Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups agree with Addameer’s assessment that Israel’s use of administrative exceeds “exceptional cases.”

In February 2013, Human Rights Watch called on Israel to “end abusive detention practices” while four Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike were gaining international attention.

“Israel’s international legal obligations require it to inform those arrested of the reasons for the arrest at the time, to promptly inform them of any charges against them, and to bring them before a judge, and in criminal cases, to provide a fair and public trial in which the defendant may challenge any witnesses against them,” the international rights group observed.

“Administrative detainees are stuck in prison while the world changes outside,” Qatamesh said. “The prisoners are always thinking about their cities, villages, refugee camps.”

Moazzam Begg’s letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

by

Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Moazzam Begg, who was recently released from prison after new evidence exonerated him from terrorism charges, wrote the following appeal to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi for the release of British citizen Alan Henning .

Begg wrote the letter whilst still detained in Belmarsh jail. He approached the Foreign Office to facilitate this appeal but they refused to assist and thus the letter never publicly went out.

Henning was subsequently beheaded.



War against Isis: U.S strategy in tatters as Militants march on

by

World View: American-led air attacks are failing. Jihadis are close to taking Kobani, in Syria – and in Iraq western Baghdad is now under serious threat.

Islamic State Kobane

– by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent

America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

Today, only the city of Haditha and two bases, Al-Assad military base near Hit, and Camp Mazrah outside Fallujah, are still in Iraqi government hands. Joel Wing, in his study –”Iraq’s Security Forces Collapse as The Islamic State Takes Control of Most of Anbar Province” – concludes: “This was a huge victory as it gives the insurgents virtual control over Anbar and poses a serious threat to western Baghdad”.

The battle for Anbar, which was at the heart of the Sunni rebellion against the US occupation after 2003, is almost over and has ended with a decisive victory for Isis. It took large parts of Anbar in January and government counter-attacks failed dismally with some 5,000 casualties in the first six months of the year. About half the province’s 1.5 million population has fled and become refugees. The next Isis target may be the Sunni enclaves in western Baghdad, starting with Abu Ghraib on the outskirts but leading right to the centre of the capital.

The Iraqi government and its foreign allies are drawing comfort, there having been some advances against Isis in the centre and north of the country. But north and north-east of Baghdad the successes have not been won by the Iraqi army but by highly sectarian Shia militias which do not distinguish between Isis and the rest of the Sunni population. They speak openly of getting rid of Sunni in mixed provinces such as Diyala where they have advanced. The result is that Sunni in Iraq have no alternative but to stick with Isis or flee, if they want to survive. The same is true north-west of Mosul on the border with Syria, where Iraqi Kurdish forces, aided by US air attacks, have retaken the important border crossing of Rabia, but only one Sunni Arab remained in the town. Ethnic and sectarian cleansing has become the norm in the war in both Iraq and Syria.

The US’s failure to save Kobani, if it falls, will be a political as well as military disaster. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding the loss of the beleaguered town are even more significant than the inability so far of air strikes to stop Isis taking 40 per cent of it. At the start of the bombing in Syria, President Obama boasted of putting together a coalition of Sunni powers such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to oppose Isis, but these all have different agendas to the US in which destroying IS is not the first priority. The Sunni Arab monarchies may not like Isis, which threatens the political status quo, but, as one Iraqi observer put it, “they like the fact that Isis creates more problems for the Shia than it does for them”.

Of the countries supposedly uniting against Isis, by the far most important is Turkey because it shares a 510-mile border with Syria across which rebels of all sorts, including Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, have previously passed with ease. This year the Turks have tightened border security, but since its successes in the summer Isis no longer needs sanctuary, supplies and volunteers from outside to the degree it once did.

In the course of the past week it has become clear that Turkey considers the Syrian Kurd political and military organisations, the PYD and YPG, as posing a greater threat to it than the Islamic fundamentalists. Moreover, the PYD is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey since 1984.

Ever since Syrian government forces withdrew from the Syrian Kurdish enclaves or cantons on the border with Turkey in July 2012, Ankara has feared the impact of self-governing Syrian Kurds on its own 15 million-strong Kurdish population.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would prefer Isis to control Kobani, not the PYD. When five PYD members, who had been fighting Isis at Kobani, were picked up by the Turkish army as they crossed the border last week they were denounced as “separatist terrorists”.

Turkey is demanding a high price from the US for its co-operation in attacking Isis, such as a Turkish-controlled buffer zone inside Syria where Syrian refugees are to live and anti-Assad rebels are to be trained. Mr Erdogan would like a no-fly zone which will also be directed against the government in Damascus since Isis has no air force. If implemented the plan would mean Turkey, backed by the US, would enter the Syrian civil war on the side of the rebels, though the anti-Assad forces are dominated by Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate.

It is worth keeping in mind that Turkey’s actions in Syria since 2011 have been a self-defeating blend of hubris and miscalculation. At the start of the uprising, it could have held the balance between the government and its opponents. Instead, it supported the militarisation of the crisis, backed the jihadis and assumed Assad would soon be defeated. This did not happen and what had been a popular uprising became dominated by sectarian warlords who flourished in conditions created by Turkey. Mr Erdogan is assuming he can disregard the rage of the Turkish Kurds at what they see as his complicity with Isis against the Syrian Kurds. This fury is already deep, with 33 dead, and is likely to get a great deal worse if Kobani falls.

Why doesn’t Ankara worry more about the collapse of the peace process with the PKK that has maintained a ceasefire since 2013? It may believe that the PKK is too heavily involved in fighting Isis in Syria that it cannot go back to war with the government in Turkey. On the other hand, if Turkey does join the civil war in Syria against Assad, a crucial ally of Iran, then Iranian leaders have said that “Turkey will pay a price”. This probably means that Iran will covertly support an armed Kurdish insurgency in Turkey. Saddam Hussein made a somewhat similar mistake to Mr Erdogan when he invaded Iran in 1980, thus leading Iran to reignite the Kurdish rebellion that Baghdad had crushed through an agreement with the Shah in 1975. Turkish military intervention in Syria might not end the war there, but it may well spread the fighting to Turkey.

The ancient mosques of Gaza in ruins: How Israel's war endangered Palestine's cultural heritage

by

The damage done to these sites has undermined the territory's social infrastructure. For the residents of Gaza, many of the targeted mosques provided social, educational and health facilities. Photo: Mohammad Asad

The damage done to these sites has undermined the territory’s social infrastructure. For the residents of Gaza, many of the targeted mosques provided social, educational and health facilities. Photo: Mohammad Asad

– by Ahmad Nafi, Middle East Monitor

In the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s 51 day military assault, the Palestinians in Gaza are faced with the huge task of reconstruction. Most of the shattered civilian infrastructure can be replaced, but Palestine’s cultural heritage in Gaza, built over a thousand years and more, has been damaged irrevocably. Many of Gaza’s most ancient sites have been left in ruins by Israel’s attack on the territory. Houses of worship, tombs, charity offices and cemeteries have all been damaged by the shelling, but Gaza’s historic mosques have been the worst affected. Many of these sites date back to the time of the first Islamic caliphs, the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk Sultanate.

Protective Edge damaged 203 mosques, of which 73 were destroyed completely. Two churches were also damaged, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. The targeting of mosques by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the latest offensive was three times more than in the 2008-2009 attack, the ministry’s report said.

The destruction of Gaza’s ancient mosques has brought the total losses incurred by the religious affairs ministry to an estimated $50 million, said Dr Hassan Al-Saifi, its undersecretary in the Gaza Strip.

“There are a number of ancient mosques that hold memories of the Islamic and Arab history in Gaza,” said Al-Saifi, “and of course, the people are incredibly saddened over the loss of this heritage.” The losses are likely to deny future generations their history as well as the material and economic benefits that might be acquired from these sites.

The most significant of those mosques which were destroyed was the 7th century Al-Omari Mosque in Jabaliya, Gaza’s oldest and largest. Named after the second caliph Umar bin Al-Khattab, it dates back to 649 AD, making it 1,365 years old. It accommodated 2,000 worshippers for the congregational prayers. The portico and minaret were built 500 years ago during the Mamluk period; it was destroyed by Israel on 2 August 2014 and its hallmark minaret and courtyard stands in ruins.

The Great Omari Mosque tells the story of Gaza’s civilisation and cultural history as it is believed to stand on the site of a former Philistine temple and a later 5th Century Byzantine church. It has acted as an important landmark ever since it was built.

Close by, Gaza’s second oldest mosque was also reduced to ruins. Al-Sham’ah Mosque was destroyed on 23 July in Hayy Al-Najjarin in Al-Zaytun Quarter in Gaza’s Old City. It was built 700 years ago, in 1315, by the Mamluk Governor.

Another historic site was razed to the ground on the following day. The Mahkamah Mosque was a fine example of Mamluk architecture located off the main Baghdad Street in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood. It featured a Mamluk minaret and florally-decorated arch at its entrance and was built in 1455 on the orders of Sayf Al-Din Birdibak Al-Ashrafi, a member of the sultan’s staff. Shuja’iyya neighbourhood experienced some of the most intense shelling of the war in July that resulted in thousands of residents being forced to flee their homes.

The large Omar Ibn Abd al-Aziz Mosque in the Strip’s northern city of Beit Hanoun is a modern building but is a central mosque that serves a large segment of the town. It was destroyed by shelling on 25 August. Other destroyed mosques of cultural significance include the centuries-old Al-Montar Mosque and tomb, hit on 11 July.

Gaza’s only 3 churches also fell victim to the conflict. The Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius is the oldest church in Gaza, dating to the 1150s, in Al-Zaytun Quarter of the Old City. The church’s cemetery was damaged when the area was shelled in July in another attack on Gaza’s rich religious heritage. Gaza Baptist Church received major damage from the shelling of a police station nearby and Gaza’s Latin Church had damage to peripheral buildings owned by the parish.

These sites have historical importance and provided irreplaceable material evidence of Palestinian culture and history. Al-Saifi believes that by destroying mosques, “the occupation was erasing the historical proof and evidence of our presence in Palestine.”

The devastation of hundreds of years of Gaza’s Islamic history would be expected to have done harm to Gaza’s identity, but Al-Saifi insists that Israel could not erase the Palestinian memory and the peoples’ right to exist. “I believe that the Israelis will not succeed in this because to us, mosques are not merely stones, but hold great and holy value to all of the Muslim generations.”

The damage to these irreplaceable landmarks has led Israel to claim that it targeted mosques and civilian buildings used for military purposes, such as the stockpiling of weapons and as meeting points for the fighters of the Qassam Brigades. The IDF alleged that Hamas “cruelly abused mosques by using them for terror activities” in a statement to the Associated Press.

Hamas has denied the accusation and many in Gaza feel that the allegation is an attack on their way of life. “Every citizen in Gaza is proud of these fighters,” Dr Al-Saifi said, “and mosques are completely open places; they do not contain any shelters or secret rooms, they are open houses of worship.” He went on to say that Israel knowingly targets civilian sites. “There is no doubt that the Israeli intelligence agencies have their eyes and ears in Gaza, and they are certain that these are fabrications.”

The damage done to these sites has undermined the territory’s social infrastructure. For the residents of Gaza, many of the targeted mosques provided social, educational and health facilities.

The Palestinians are of the opinion that Israel does not distinguish between military and civilian targets in their aggression against Gaza. Their suspicions appear to be validated by UN OCHA figures released in a recent report. They suggest that at least 80 per cent of those killed were civilians. These figures indicate that Israel has found little difficulty in treating civilian infrastructure as legitimate military targets considering that it has targeted churches and other buildings not accused of being used by Qassam fighters.

Many have noted Israel’s disproportionate use of force in areas that it associates with enemy fighters. It is an army that is used to inflicting widespread devastation on the civilian population, which is supposed to serve as a deterrent.

For Al-Saifi, this strategy is abhorrent: “Honestly, the targeting of mosques on such an unprecedented large-scale reflects the barbaric and brutal nature of the Israeli occupation, and the army’s frustration and sense of failure, as it reached an impasse. It resorted to targeting civilians and places of worship, which have been guaranteed protection and immunity under all international conventions.”

The pursuit of collective punishment is an international war crime and it appears that these violations by Israel have been observed clearly by international institutions. The retiring UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, condemned the operations in Gaza. In a statement to Britain’s Guardian newspaper she said, “There seems to be a strong possibility that international law has been violated.”

In a similar incident, despite being given the coordinates of UNRWA schools they were bombed under the pretext of the presence of missiles. “Even though the Arab and foreign UNRWA spokesperson stressed and confirmed that the occupation’s claims were fabricated,” complained Al-Saifi. The UN has condemned the bombing of these schools and notified the IDF of their locations repeatedly. It was alleged by Israel that mosques and UNRWA schools all facilitated the activities of the Palestinian resistance groups.

Because of this, Al-Saifi has questioned Israel over its accusations of “terror” activities in historic mosques; he believes that the world has seen through Israel’s empty justifications of war crimes. “All of the international community organisations and international observers know that these are lies.”

Indeed, the targeting of religious and cultural sites as civilian sites constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law; it is covered by Article 4 of the Hague Convention of 1954 for the Protection of Cultural Property. Under this convention, all feasible precautions must be taken to avoid damage of cultural property in cases of war. It is also designated a criminal act under Article 8 of the ICC Statute which stipulates that “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion…[and] historic monuments… constitutes a war crime.”

In recent months, the destruction of historic monuments and houses of worship has usually been associated with radical groups like Islamic State (ISIS) rather than state actors like Israel. In July, ISIS destroyed the mosque of Prophet Younis (Jonah) in Mosul and several Shiite Mosques in Iraq. ISIS’s presence has warranted considerable responses from the international community. Yet Israel’s attack on Gaza’s heritage of the same nature has created little response.

The international community and Israel itself will be reluctant to label the assault on Gaza an act of terror. Domestically, it is believed that Israel’s agenda of eliminating the people of the Gaza Strip in the name of “security” stands above criticism from anyone and everyone. “Israel wanted to give itself an excuse” to commit acts of brutality, claims Al-Saifi.

In Palestine, there has been considerable pressure to get the international community to hold Israel to account for its actions. “The Palestinian Authority,” insists Al-Saifi, “must go to the ICC in The Hague… in order for us to witness the occupation being prosecuted, just as the criminals in Yugoslavia and Bosnia were prosecuted.”

Israel’s occupation is more complex than a Genocide

by

Israel-Genocide

– by Jonathan Cook

Israeli officials were caught in a revealing lie late last month as the country celebrated the Jewish New Year. Shortly after declaring the most popular boy’s name in Israel to be “Yosef”, the interior ministry was forced to concede that the top slot was actually filled by “Mohammed”.

That small deceit coincided with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the United Nations. He outraged Israelis by referring to Israel’s slaughter of more than 2,100 Palestinians – most of them civilians – in Gaza over the summer as “genocide”.

Both incidents served as a reminder of the tremendous power of a single word.

Most Israelis are barely able to contemplate the possibility that their Jewish state could be producing more Mohammeds than Moshes. At the same time, and paradoxically, Israel can point to the sheer number of “Mohammeds” to demonstrate that at worst it is eradicating the visibility of a Muslim name, certainly not its bearers.

As distressing as it is, hundreds of dead in Gaza is far from the industrial-scale murder of the Nazi Holocaust.

But the idea that Israel is committing genocide may not be quite as hyperbolic as is assumed. Last month a “jury” featuring international law experts at a people’s court, known as the Russell Tribunal, into Israel’s recent attack on Gaza concluded that Israel was guilty of “incitement to genocide”. The panel argued that Israel’s long-term collective punishment of Palestinians was designed to “inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group”.

The tribunal’s language intentionally echoed that of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew and lawyer who after fleeing Nazi Europe succeeded in introducing the term “genocide” into international law.

Lemkin and the UN convention’s drafters understood that genocide did not require death camps; it could also be achieved gradually through intentional and systematic abuse and neglect. Their definition raises troubling questions about Israel’s treatment of Gaza, aside from military attacks. Does, for example, forcing the enclave’s two million inhabitants to depend on acquifers polluted with seawater constitute genocide?

The real problem with Mr Abbas’s use of the term – given that it conflicts with popular notions of genocide – is that it made him an easy target for critics. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the Palestinian leader of “incitement”. The Israeli left, meanwhile, decried his wild and unhelpful exaggeration.

But the critics themselves have contributed more heat than light.

Not only do experts like Richard Falk and John Dugard view Israel’s actions in genocide-like terms, but notable Israeli scholars have done so too. The late Baruch Kimmerling invented a word, “politicide”, to convey more safely the idea of an Israeli genocide against Palestinians.

Israel has nonetheless successfully ring-fenced itself from the critical lexicon applied to comparable situations around the globe.

In conflicts where a mass expulsion of an ethnic or national group occurs, it is rightly identified as ethnic cleansing. In Israel’s case, however, respectable historians still equivocate over the events of 1948, even though more than 80 per cent of Palestinians were forced out by Israel as it established a Jewish state on their homeland.

Similarly with “apartheid”. For decades anyone who used the word about Israel was dismissed as an extremist or anti-Semite. Only in the last few years – and chiefly because of former US president Jimmy Carter – has the word gained a tentative foothold.

Even then, its main use is as a warning rather than a description of Israel’s behaviour: diehard adherents of two states aver that Israel is in danger of becoming an apartheid state at some indefinable moment if it does not separate from the Palestinians.

Instead, we are told to suffice with the label “occupation”. But that implies a temporary state of affairs, a transition before normality is restored – precisely the opposite of what is happening in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, where the occupation is entrenching, morphing and metastasising.

Those guarding the critical lexicon strip us of a terminology to convey the appalling reality faced by Palestinians, not just as individuals but as a national group. In truth, Israel’s strategy incorporates variants of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.

Observers, including the European Union, concede that Israel continues with incremental ethnic cleansing – though they prefer the more obscure “forcible transfer” – of Palestinians from so-called Area C, nearly two-thirds of the West Bank.

Israel has mastered, too, a sophisticated apartheid – partly veiled by its avoidance of the more visual aspects of segregation associated with South Africa – that grabs resources, just like its famous cousin, for one ethnic-national group, Jews, at the expense of another, Palestinians.

But unlike South African apartheid, whose fixed legal and institutional systems of separation gradually became torpid and unwieldy, Israel’s remains dynamic and responsive. Few observers know, for example, that almost all residential land in Israel is off-limits to Palestinian citizens, enforced through vetting committees recently given sanction by the Israeli courts.

And what to make of a plan just disclosed by the Israeli media indicating that Mr Netanyahu and his allies have been secretly plotting to force many Palestinians into Sinai, with the US arm-twisting the Egyptians into agreement? If true, the bombing campaigns of the past six years may be better understood as softening-up operations before a mass expulsion from Gaza.

Such a policy would certainly satisfy Lemkin’s definition of genocide.

One day doubtless, a historian will coin a word to describe Israel’s unique strategy of incrementally destroying the Palestinian people. Sadly, by then it may be too late to help the Palestinians.

Jonathan Cook is a Nazareth- based journalist and winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

Black flags over Kobane as Islamic State forces move in

by

Islamic State Kobane

– by John Beck, Vice

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that a ground operation would be needed to stop Kobane falling to the Islamic State (IS) after the jihadists overran parts of the Syrian border town in heavy street to street fighting.

Erdogan warned that the series of air strikes launched by a US-led coalition on IS targets around the city would not be enough to halt the militants’ advance and that Kobane could be seized by IS soon. “The terror will not be over… unless we cooperate for a ground operation,” Erdogan said, speaking at a Syrian refugee camp in Gazientep, according to a translation by AFP. “I am telling the West — dropping bombs from the air will not provide a solution.”

He went on to reiterate calls for a no-fly zone above Syria, introduction of a buffer zone for refugees and for more moderate rebel groups battling the Syrian government to be armed and trained for the fight against IS.

IS moved into Kobane on Monday, seizing one neighborhood, the city’s industrial area and part of the countryside east of the city, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The group previously took control of Mistenur Hill, which overlooks Kobane from the south-east.

The observatory, which collects information from a network of local activists, reported on Tuesday morning that a relative quiet had fallen over Kobane, also known by its Arabic name of Ayn al- Arab, after heavy fighting forced IS to pull back somewhat. SOHR also said that five huge explosions had been heard east and south-east of the city, and were thought to be caused by airstrikes. US Central Command confirmed that aircraft from the American-led anti-IS coalition had “destroyed two IS fighting positions” south of Kobane on Monday.

Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also urged action on Tueday to defend Kobane, telling parliament “everything must be done so that the Daesh terrorists are stopped and pushed back,” using the Arabic slang for IS.

Fabius added that he had spoken with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and that French President Francois Hollande would talk with Erdogan on Tuesday.

Turkey has previously said that it would stop Kobane falling to IS and last week, the country’s parliament passed a motion which would allow military action against IS in Iraq and Syria and allow foreign forces to launch missions against the jihadists from Turkish soil. However, no further details have been announced. Ankara is wary of the idea of a powerful Kurdish presence on its doorstep, especially the YPG, which has links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that fought for more than 30 years for greater autonomy within Turkey and is considered by authorities to be a terrorist organization.

IS has effectively surrounded Kobane on three sides for well over a year but launched a large-scale offensive more than three weeks ago. It would be a major prize for IS and allow the extremist group to connect territory held in the Syrian province of Aleppo with its stronghold of Raqqa further east. It would also destroy the threat to their rear posed by the Kurds and give the group full control of a large stretch of the Turkish border, aiding the passage of fighters and oil in and out of the country.

Kurdish activists and military officials in Kobane have been warning that it could fall to IS at any moment, but this now looks closer than ever. Nevertheless, the Kurdish YPG fighters defending the city have remained defiant.

Idris Nassan, a senior official in Kobane, insisted to BBC Radio that Kurdish fighters had the advantage over IS in the city.

He said: “Kobane is not going to fall. Kobane resists and the resisting will be for a long time.

“They know the geography, they know how to fight in the streets and even tanks and other heavy weapons will not work in the small and narrow streets of Kobane,” Nassan said.

However Cahit Storm, a computer engineer who left Kobane for the Turkish border five days ago but remains in close contact with those left behind, said the city was about to fall. He said Turkey needed to allow access to Kobane in order to get provisions such as water, food and ammunition to the Kurdish fighters.

“Now that the city is completely locked by IS in the south and the Turks to the north it’s probably already lost,” he told the BBC. “Kobane right now is about to fall in one, maybe two days. Nothing more.”

Kurdish forces have arguably been the most effective force facing off against IS on the ground. However, the jihadists have modern weapons and armor, much of it looted from the Iraqi army during a shock advance in June. As a result they are hard to stop, especially for the YPG, which is mainly armed with elderly Soviet guns and RPGs and unable to access heavier ordnance.

Security forces in border regions have clashed with Turkish Kurds and refugees who believe that Turkey is backing IS and are infuriated that it has closed the border to those wishing to join the YPG in defending Kobane.

One man was killed and at least two others were reportedly injured during protests on Tuesday. Hakan Buksur, 25, was shot with live ammunition as police moved on demonstrators in the eastern Mu? Province, the English language Hurriyet Daily reported. Authorities declared a curfew at 5 pm in southeastern Mardin and eastern Van.

The fighting in Kobane has been clearly visible from the Turkish border and in some cases even spilled over. Five people were wounded when a mortar round hit a house in Turkey on Sunday, prompting authorities to evacuate part of the area.

Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz said on Monday that NATO had prepared a strategy to defend Turkey, a NATO member, if it is attacked along its border with Syria.

The Voice of Women In Gaza

by

A radio broadcaster sits in the sound booth at NISAA FM radio station, which focuses on women's issues, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, July 9, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

A radio broadcaster sits in the sound booth at NISAA FM radio station. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)

A Gaza based women’s radio station was destroyed in the last days of the Israeli war, when the 14 story building housing the studio was brought down as an act of terrorizing the population.

Gaza’s Nisaa FM was located in Basha towers inside an office building in the north of Gaza. The tower was a target for Israeli assault on August 26th, and the whole building, including Nisaa Gaza radio office, collapsed.

The office contained all the equipment, radio studio, computer training lab, the archive and furniture within. They took it upon themselves to not stop running the radio, and started working from a volunteer’s home.

Nisaa FM wants to rebuild its offices, so the channel can return its full potential, be productive and regain its hub for women in the Gaza strip.

We are producing Nisaa FM’s appeal to its well wishers and supporters to come forward to its assistance.

The Voice of Women In Gaza

A group of us, women from across Gaza, have come together in 2013 to form the first online community radio for women in the Gaza Strip. Not only we were proudly taking part in democratizing communications in our country, but we created a platform to share first hand our challenges, our findings and our voice on all fronts. It is a challenge for Arab women to be outspoken, let alone creating a community radio managed by women in Gaza. We helped pass this opportunity forward to the women of our community through a training center dedicated to training women on the use of multi-media. This will give them the chance to participate in the forms of communication, accessing information and the production of high quality material.

We help women of Gaza fully understand their rights; provide them the knowledge and the tools to apply their freedoms on ground depending on themselves, fighting their own injustices, involving their community and reflecting positively on the generations to come.

Our goals are:

  • Recognizing women’s role in communication and media, elevating the media scene for women journalists in Gaza
  • Bringing awareness to public on women’s issues and opinion, especially those living in marginalized areas in Gaza.
  • Women documenting stories of the oppressed within the Gaza community
  • Recruiting men and women to fight for gender equality in Gaza

Appeal

Since our office building has been destroyed, we will need to locate to a different location. At the new location, we will need to rebuild a modest radio studio, purchase equipment and furniture for the radio, training labs, and general office furniture. This includes studio equipment, recording equipment, 10 computers, a generator, and office furniture. We have estimated the amount needed to operate at our original capacity at $18,000.

What you get

For any funding we receive, we are ready to send you special handcrafts made by women of Gaza, which reflects on our culture and heritage.

Other ways you can help

Spread the word about our campaign through your social media networks and any other way you feel that could help us reach our maximum potential!!

To contribute: http://igg.me/p/939422/x

You can reach Nisaa FM at:

qaryamedia@gmail.com

www.nisaagaza.com

https://www.facebook.com/nisaagaza1

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives