• Online Symposium Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery Tickets, Thu 7 Mar 2024 at 10:00 | Eventbrite
    https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/online-symposium-material-power-palestinian-embroidery-tickets-8507740
    https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F706456369%2F107052201315%2F1%2Fori

    The Whitworth, Manchester, UK, presents a free online symposium, Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, organised in partnership with the V&A, London, UK.

  • « Venez me chercher » : le terrible récit des derniers mots de Hind Rajab, 6 ans, morte à Gaza

    La fillette palestinienne a vu ses proches périr sous ses yeux, puis s’est retrouvée seule face aux tirs, avant de ne plus donner signe de vie. Son corps sans vie a été retrouvé ce samedi à Gaza.

    Par L.A. avec AFP -Le 10 février 2024 à 14h53, modifié le 10 février 2024 à 19h55 - Le Parisien
    https://www.leparisien.fr/international/israel/venez-me-chercher-le-terrible-recit-du-dernier-soupir-de-hind-rajab-6-ans
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxT9FTi8da4

    Seule, coincée par un déluge de feu au milieu des cadavres de ses proches. Hind Rajab avait joint les secours, en vain, la voix brisée par la terreur. Ses suppliques poignantes avaient ému le monde entier. La petite fille palestinienne de 6 ans a été retrouvée morte, samedi à Gaza.

    Il y a près de deux semaines, Hind et certains membres de sa famille cherchent à fuir la violence des combats. Leur véhicule est arrêté par des chars de Tsahal, quand ceux-ci ouvrent le feu, selon le récit de la famille. La fillette survit miraculeusement, et parvient à joindre des proches par téléphone. Les autres occupants de la voiture sont tous morts. Pendant des heures, elle survit dans la voiture, prisonnière au milieu des cadavres et des tirs, en pleine opération israélienne à Gaza-ville.

    Elle avait peur, elle était terrifiée et elle était blessée au dos, à la main et au pied », avait raconté son grand-père, la voix gorgée de sanglots. Le Croissant-Rouge palestinien (PRCS) avait confirmé qu’une de ses standardistes avait eu Hind au téléphone, puis entendu un bruit de tirs. Dans un enregistrement qu’il a diffusé, on entend la petite voix de la fillette supplier, la voix rongée par la terreur : « Venez (…) me chercher », « J’ai tellement peur, s’il vous plaît, venez ». En vain.

    💔For over three hours, Hind has desperately pleaded with our teams for rescue from the occupation tanks surrounding her, enduring gunfire and the horror of being alone, trapped among the bodies of her relatives shot by the Israeli forces in front of her eyes. The PRCS heroes… pic.twitter.com/VT00WJaP1B
    — PRCS (@PalestineRCS) February 3, 2024

    Après ces appels, personne n’avait plus eu de nouvelles de la fillette, tout comme des secouristes envoyés pour la secourir. « Pendant plus de trois heures, la petite fille a désespérément imploré nos équipes de venir la sauver des tanks (israéliens) qui l’entouraient, subissant les tirs et l’horreur d’être seule, prisonnière au milieu des corps de ses proches tués par les forces israéliennes sous ses yeux », avait ajouté le Croissant-Rouge. Du haut de ses six ans, comme des milliers d’enfants palestiniens, Hind est une victime des ravages de la guerre.

    Sa dépouille et celle de plusieurs membres de sa famille ont été retrouvées samedi matin dans la voiture près d’une station essence du quartier de Tel al-Hawa, après que les chars israéliens se sont retirés de la zone à l’aube, a annoncé sa famille, qui a accusé les Israéliens de les avoir tués. Les corps des deux secouristes du Croissant-Rouge palestinien (PRCS) envoyés pour la secourir ce jour-là ont été retrouvés eux aussi samedi matin, dans leur ambulance, à quelques mètres de là, a précisé le PRCS dans un communiqué.
    Ambulance ravagée et calcinée

    « Hind et tous ceux qui se trouvaient dans la voiture ont été tués », a déclaré son grand-père, Baha Hamada. « Ils ont été retrouvés par des membres de (notre) famille qui sont allés à la recherche de la voiture et l’ont trouvée près de la station essence », une zone jusque-là inaccessible en raison de la présence militaire israélienne, a-t-il expliqué. « Hind Rajab a été tuée par les forces d’occupation (israéliennes) avec tous ceux qui se trouvaient avec elle dans une voiture », a confirmé le ministère de Santé du Hamas dans un communiqué, appelant « les institutions des droits de l’Homme et les Nations unies à une enquête sur ce crime odieux ».

    https://seenthis.net/people/kassem

    • 13 février 2024 - 17h50
      https://www.rfi.fr/fr/moyen-orient/20240213-en-direct-la-pression-internationale-s-intensifie-pour-un-accord-entre-

      L’émoi autour de la mort d ’Hind Rajab , une jeune gazaoui de 6 ans

      Washington demande à Israël d’enquêter « urgemment » sur la mort « déchirante » de Hind Rajab. Cette fillette de 6 ans, et plusieurs autres membres de sa famille, ont été retrouvés morts la semaine dernière dans la ville de Gaza. Encerclés dans leur voiture par les forces israéliennes, ils contactent le Croissant Rouge palestinien pour demander de l’aide. L’appel au secours de la petite fille et de sa cousine est enregistré au standard. Il est, depuis, largement diffusé sur les réseaux sociaux, et suscite beaucoup d’émoi, raconte notre correspondant à Jérusalem, Sami Boukhelifa.

      L’enregistrement dure quelques secondes à peine. Effroyable. À l’appareil, Layan Hamada, la cousine, jeune gazaouie âgée de 15 ans, est terrifiée. « Ils nous tirent dessus. Le char est juste à côté », dit-elle. Ses derniers mots : « Nous sommes cachés dans notre voiture. » Viens le silence… glaçant. Et puis, une voix fluette apparaît. La petite Hind Rajab, 6 ans, supplie : « J’ai si peur, s’il vous plaît, venez me chercher ». L’opératrice tente de la rassurer. « Nous allons t’envoyer quelqu’un », promet-elle.

      Une mission difficile puisque le Croissant Rouge palestinien doit d’abord obtenir le feu vert de l’armée israélienne, avant de se rendre sur la zone en question. Le service de secours palestinien affirme « avoir négocié un accès sécurisé avec les forces israéliennes ».

      Trois heures après avoir reçu l’appel, une ambulance est dépêchée sur place. À son bord, deux urgentistes. Après le retrait de l’armée israélienne de la zone, les corps des deux secouristes sont retrouvés dans leur véhicule pulvérisé, à quelques mètres de la voiture qui transportait les deux jeunes filles et leur famille.

  • CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’ | CNN | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/86a4032d59628776965de090bb28c7fa8215152d/0_13_4000_2400/master/4000.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.

    Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza.

  • Irlande du Nord : Michelle O’Neill, issue du Sinn Fein, élue officiellement première ministre
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2024/02/03/irlande-du-nord-michelle-o-neill-issue-du-sinn-fein-elue-officiellement-prem


    Michelle O’Neill, au palais de Stormont, siège de l’Assemblée d’Irlande du Nord situé à Belfast, le 3 février 2024. PETER MORRISON / AP

    La vice-présidente du parti nationaliste Sinn Fein est devenue samedi la première cheffe de gouvernement républicaine de la province britannique. Une décision historique.

    Le Monde avec AFP
    Publié aujourd’hui à 17h07

    Michelle O’Neill est devenue officiellement, samedi 3 février, la première républicaine, favorable à l’unification de l’Irlande, à prendre la tête du gouvernement nord-irlandais. Cette élection marque une étape historique pour la province britannique dominée pendant des décennies par les unionistes, et au passé marqué par trois décennies de conflit sanglant.

    La cheffe de file du Sinn Fein nord-irlandais, âgée de 47 ans, a été désignée première ministre après le redémarrage des institutions de la province, boycottées depuis deux ans par les unionistes pour s’opposer aux dispositions commerciales post-Brexit, qu’ils dénonçaient comme une menace pour la place de l’Irlande du Nord au sein du Royaume-Uni.

    En 2022, Michelle O’Neill avait porté au sommet le Sinn Fein, ancien bras politique du groupe paramilitaire de l’Armée républicaine irlandaise (IRA) [on disait plutôt l’inverse, mais bon], qui a remporté des élections locales, du jamais-vu en Irlande du Nord. Mais il a fallu attendre près de deux ans pour qu’elle puisse prendre la tête du gouvernement, car les unionistes, attachés à la place de l’Irlande du Nord au sein du Royaume-Uni, bloquaient l’assemblée locale à Belfast. Elle avait notamment remporté l’élection en mettant en avant les thèmes du quotidien, comme l’amélioration des services de santé en Irlande du Nord.

    « Un jour historique »

    Devant les élus réunis au palais de Stormont samedi, Michelle O’Neill a salué « un jour historique », une « nouvelle ère », et a promis une assemblée « pour tous », rappelant qu’il aurait été « inimaginable pour la génération de [ses] parents » qu’un nationaliste dirige l’exécutif local.

    A son arrivée à Stormont, la cheffe du Sinn Fein pour toute l’île d’Irlande, Mary Lou McDonald, a estimé que le gouvernement nord-irlandais ne « pouvait pas être entre de meilleures mains ». « C’est une victoire pour tout le monde aujourd’hui, la démonstration que l’égalité et l’inclusion sont à l’ordre du jour », a-t-elle ajouté.

    En vertu de la cogouvernance issue des accords de paix de 1998, l’unioniste Emma Little-Pengelly (attachée au maintien de l’Irlande du Nord au sein du Royaume-Uni) a été choisie comme vice-première ministre.

    Une nouvelle génération entrée en politique

    Michelle O’Neill incarne une nouvelle génération entrée en politique après l’accord de paix du Vendredi saint, en 1998, qui a mis fin à trente années de violences entre nationalistes, principalement catholiques et favorables à la réunification de l’île d’Irlande, et loyalistes, essentiellement protestants, attachés au maintien de la province sous la couronne britannique.

    Rompant avec la tradition républicaine, elle a assisté en septembre 2022 aux funérailles de la reine Elizabeth II puis au couronnement de Charles III, en mai 2023. Elle est particulièrement appréciée des jeunes pour ses idées de gauche, face aux unionistes aux positions conservatrices sur des sujets comme l’avortement.

    Michelle O’Neill a remisé au second plan l’objectif historique du Sinn Fein, la réunification de l’Irlande. En 2019, au congrès du parti, elle avait déclaré que « la question [n’était] plus de savoir si, mais quand se tiendra le référendum sur la réunification ». Mais son discours est désormais plus modéré, qualifiant mercredi la partition d’« échec pour tous les habitants de l’île » : « Notre peuple a été contraint de vivre dos à dos au lieu de vivre côte à côte ». Elle a appelé à un débat « inclusif », sur les identités britannique et irlandaise, « tous ensemble ».

    Des mois de négociations

    Après des mois de négociations avec le gouvernement britannique, les unionistes du Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) avaient annoncé leur décision cette semaine de mettre fin à leur boycott. Celui-ci entraînait la paralysie de l’Assemblée et de l’exécutif local, où le pouvoir est partagé entre les unionistes – attachés au maintien de l’Irlande du Nord dans le giron britannique – et les républicains.

    Evoquant le difficile chemin parcouru, le chef du DUP, Jeffrey Donaldson, a fait valoir que son parti avait « apporté le changement que beaucoup décrivaient comme impossible ». Il a salué une « bonne journée pour l’Irlande du Nord », où « notre place au sein du Royaume-Uni et son marché intérieur est respectée et protégée ».

    Un argumentaire loin de convaincre les unionistes les plus durs, à l’instar de Jim Allister (TUV, Traditional Unionist Voice), pour qui l’Irlande du Nord reste « dirigée en bonne partie par des lois étrangères », celles de l’UE.
    Lire aussi | Article réservé à nos abonnés Brexit : l’Irlande du Nord « de plus en plus à part »

    Le Monde avec AFP

  • Gmail And Yahoo Inbox Updates & What They Mean For Senders | Mailgun
    https://www.mailgun.com/blog/deliverability/gmail-and-yahoo-inbox-updates-2024

    The requirement from both Gmail and Yahoo is to set up strong authentication with “SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your domain.” Previously not a requirement, this move towards implementing DMARC is something Sinch Mailgun’s Jonathan Torres had already predicted in our guide on email security and compliance.

    (...) For­ DMAR­C you will­ need­ to set at mini­mum a p=no­ne poli­cy. (...)

    Il ne suffit plus d’avoir SPF et DKIM, il va aussi falloir implémenter l’enregistrement DMARC, en mode « none » au minimum.

    • Je ne comprend pas pourquoi le standard mail n’évolue pas.
      Si les corps de mails étaient stockés sur le serveur d’émission et non sur celui de réception, le stockage des spam serait à la charge de l’émetteur. Du coup :
      1. les serveurs de réception pourraient accepter beaucoup plus facilement les entêtes
      2. le corps pourrait être scanné pour les spams uniquement lorsque l’utilisateur demande l’affichage d’où une réduction de charge.
      3. le volume global de transaction et de stockage serait beaucoup plus faible (seuls les entêtes seraient copiés pour un mail à plusieurs destinataire)

      En fait on est resté sur un modèle basé sur les lettres papiers.

    • After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won.
      Carlos Fenollosa
      https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-
      Le problème est plus grave. Das Internet ist kaputt. L’exclusion des petit prestataires est sytématique. Depuis au moins deux ans je ne propose plus l’hébergement de boîtes email (sur mes serveurs). Ce monsieur espagnol explique pourquoi.

      September 04, 2022 — Many companies have been trying to disrupt email by making it proprietary. So far, they have failed. Email keeps being an open protocol. Hurray?

      No hurray. Email is not distributed anymore. You just cannot create another first-class node of this network.
      ...

      #monopoles #oligopoles #email #internet

    • De mon côté, depuis 2 ans, ça va mieux.

      Mieux : les serveurs Microsoft se font jeter par Google, et réciproquement. Parce que ponctuellement, les uns et les autres ne sont pas capables de respecter les RFC. Quand ça tombe sur un client que j’ai été contraint de migrer vers MS, ça fait plaisir de pouvoir lui dire que Microsoft n’est pas la panacée non plus.

      Ça va mieux au sens où MS et Google ont cessé de filtrer sur des règles arbitraires (surtout MS d’ailleurs). Il reste Orange, avec des règles absurdes, mais c’est vraiment rare qu’on doive intervenir.

      On en reste de notre côté à 3 points à contrôler :
      1) Les DNS conformes : SPF, DKIM, DMARC ; parfois, DKIM est compliqué, selon l’hébergement final utilisé
      2) Les IP émettrices identifiées et en nombre limité : ici, on concentre les flux sur deux IP RIPE
      3) La surveillance des DNSBL, pour être toujours au vert ; pas mal de temps qu’on n’a pas eu besoin de faire quoi que ce soit à ce sujet

    • De ce que je lis ici, l’enregistrement #DMARC est imposé uniquement si on envoie plus de 5000 e-mails par période de 24 heures sur un service (GMail ou Yahoo donc) :

      https://www.it-connect.fr/fevrier-2024-google-et-yahoo-imposent-utilisation-spf-dkim-dmarc

      En dessous, la norme reste SPF et/ou DKIM. Par contre, "Tous les domaines et adresses IP utilisées pour émettre des e-mails doivent avoir un enregistrement DNS de type « PTR » (reverse) correctement configuré" et ça, je ne sais pas trop ce que ça veut, si quelqu’un·e a des infos...

      Bon, j’imagine que ce n’est qu’une première étape et ça sera généralisé à terme.

    • L’enregistrement PTR, c’est de s’assurer que si ton serveur de messagerie répond qu’il se nomme toto.domain.tld, il faut que l’IP publique émettrice réponde « toto.domain.tld » à une recherche inverse.

      En mode Linux, avec la commande host, je vérifie la résolution dans les deux sens, nom vers IP et IP vers nom (PTR) :

      $ host seenthis.net
      seenthis.net has address 217.182.178.243
      $ host 217.182.178.243
      243.178.182.217.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer seenthis.net.

      Et là, je vérifie ce que répond le serveur de messagerie dans sa réponse d’accueil :
      $ nc seenthis.net 25
      220 seenthis.net ESMTP Postfix (Debian/GNU)

      Tout est conforme, donc.

    • Effectivement, ce sont des images formidables de solidarité internationale, comme celles qui nous viennent, par exemple, d’Algérie ou du Maroc. On ne pourra pas dire que le génocide se perpétue dans l’indifférence et, même s’il ne s’agit pas de se bercer de trop d’illusions, les chefs d’État sont bien obligés de prendre en compte se qui se passe dans les rues de leurs pays.

      Ces manifestations massives, tout comme les campagnes de boycott peuvent jouer un rôle déterminant, surtout dans les pays du « Nord global », pour obtenir, à court terme, un cessez-le feu. Voilà pourquoi, plus qu’en Algérie ou au Maroc, la rue de Londres, de Paris, de Berlin ou de New-York aura peut être plus de poids pour obtenir ce cessez-le-feu.

      Quant à savoir ce qui se passera pour l’avenir du peuple de Palestine, le « jour d’après » cet hypothétique cessez-le-feu, tout le monde sait bien que c’est une autre affaire. Rien ne sera joué – à commencer par la sécurité des Israéliens – tant que le projet sioniste ne sera pas fondamentalement remis en cause en Israël et par les puissances impériales, en particulier aux USA, pour envisager la coexistences des populations sur ce territoire, dans un autre cadre. Autant dire que l’hypothèse semble aujourd’hui totalement inimaginable.

      Pour revenir aux images impressionnantes des manifestations londoniennes, on est bien obligé de les mettre en rapport avec ce qui se passe en France et notamment à Paris sur le même sujet. Même s’il ne s’agit pas se savoir qui a la plus belle ou qui fait la plus grande, force est de reconnaître que le contraste est pour le moins spectaculaire.

      Le comble du ridicule étant ce 6 janvier, quand dans un froid glacial nous nous sommes retrouvé·es à une poignée de manifestant·es, au pied de l’Opéra Bastille, pour terminer sous un kiosque de la place de la Nation, encadré·es par une rangée de flics, afin de ne pas perturber la circulation. La manif de samedi dernier (13 janvier) à Paris était plus consistante mais on est quand même loin du compte pour imposer en France la nécessité immédiate d’un cessez-le feu à Gaza.

      L’article référencé ci-dessous (16 décembre), donne quelques pistes d’explication mais j’avoue humblement que je peine quand même à comprendre pourquoi il semble impossible d’organiser en France la solidarité avec autant de force que dans d’autres pays.

      https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/politique/161223/la-solidarite-avec-la-palestine-sur-un-point-de-bascule

    • @cabou : Je suis comme toi, sans réelle explication par rapport à l’atonie française... J’ai relu l’article de Médiapart, avec ses arguments sans doute réels mais qui ne me paraissent pas embrasser la totalité des causes possibles. Je ne sais pas si quelqu’un sur Seenthis a de meilleures explications...

    • D’autant qu’en Angleterre, la presse baigne dans la même propagande qu’en France :
      https://www.arretsurimages.net/chroniques/sur-le-gril/israel-gaza-plaidoirie-sudafricaine-et-silence-mediatique

      À l’international, on observe une tendance semblable à celle de Franceinfo : la plaidoirie sud-africaine n’a pas été retransmise sur la BBC ou SkyNews le 11. Mais celle d’Israël a fait l’objet d’une diffusion en direct sur les deux chaînes. Le monde - en tout cas, le monde médiatique occidental - ferme les yeux, ou n’en ouvre qu’un.

    • J’ai participé à plusieurs des manifestations à Paris : celle fin novembre était assez nombreuse (20.000 ?) mais elle a été totalement ignorée des médias qui le lendemain se sont focalisés sur la grande manifestation contre l’antisémitisme : est ce que cela ne contribue à l’invisibilisation et produit in fine de la démotivation ? Par ailleurs, si la sociologie des participants inclue c’est beaucoup de personnes issues de l’immigration, il y aussi beaucoup de jeunes, étudiants etc. Ce samedi à Paris, de République à Barbès, ce n’était pas ridicule sans être massif (quelques milliers ?) mais évidemment très loin des dizaines de milliers ++ à Londres et ailleurs

    • Comme le dit l’une des personnes dans ce film, l’Angleterre est historiquement liée à la colonisation de la Palestine et à la création de l’État d’Israël. C’est peut-être l’une des raisons pour lesquelles la mobilisation pour la Palestine atteint ce niveau là-bas.

      J’étais ce soir à la rencontre organisée par l’UCL, qui s’est déroulée ce soir à la librairie de Beaux Lendemains, à Bagnolet, en présence d’Alain Gresh et d’Hélène Aldeguer, à propos de leur livre Un chant d’Amour.

      Selon les participants, l’explication du faible niveau de mobilisation en France serait à trouver, d’une part, dans le contexte de montée du racisme et de répression violente du mouvement social et, d’autre part, dans l’intense propagande réactionnaire du pouvoir assimilant la solidarité avec la Palestine à de l’antisémitisme. Pourquoi pas ?

    • Israeli officials allege that Hamas carried out a pre-mediated and carefully executed massacre of 364 Israeli civilians at the Nova music festival near Gaza on 7 October as part of the Palestinian resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. They claim that Hamas and other Palestinians had hours to murder Israeli partygoers before the army reached the scene.

      However, new details have emerged showing that Israel’s Border Police was deployed at the Nova site before Hamas stumbled on the festival, causing the eruption of a major battle.

      While some ravers were indeed killed by the Palestinian resistance - whether by intent or in the chaos of battle - the evidence now suggests that the majority of civilian deaths were likely inflicted by Israeli forces themselves.

      This was due to the overwhelming firepower employed by occupation forces - including from Apache attack helicopters - and because Tel Aviv issued the controversial Hannibal Directive to prevent Hamas from taking Israeli party-goers as captives.

      Operation Philistine Horseman

      At 6:30 am, just after sunrise on 7 October, fighters from the Hamas military wing, the Qassam Brigades, launched its military operation, firing a barrage of missiles toward Israel. Thousands of its fighters and those from other factions breached the Gaza border fence in multiple locations to attack surrounding Israeli military bases and take captives in settlements as leverage for a mass prisoner swap deal.

      Though it would take the army hours to respond, units of the Border Police were quickly deployed. At 6:42 am, a mere 12 minutes after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was launched, the Southern District Commander of the Israeli Police, Amir Cohen, gave an order code-named “Philistine Horseman,” sending police officers and Border Police who were on alert to the sites of various battles.

      This included members of the Yamam, and Tequila commando units that have no police duties but conduct military and counter-terrorism operations, including undercover assassinations in the Gaza Strip and occupied-West Bank.

      According to a senior Israeli officer speaking with by the New York Times, the first formal reinforcements to southern Israel came from commandos that arrived by helicopter.

      Sagi Abitbol, a policeman working as a security guard at the festival, was among the first to confront Hamas fighters near Nova, and witnessed the early arrival of these helicopters.

      During the fighting, 59 Israeli police officers were killed, including at least 17 at the Nova festival.

      Hamas did not plan to attack the festival

      Avi Mayer of the Jerusalem Post asserted that Hamas carefully planned to attack the concert in advance, intending to murder as many Israeli civilians as possible. The facts, though, tell an entirely different story.

      An Israeli police investigation reported by Haaretz indicates that Hamas was unaware of the festival in advance. The official findings suggest that the intended target was Re’im, a settlement and military base located just down the road - on Route 232 - from the Nova site.

      A major fight did indeed take place at Re’im, home to the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, the Palestinian resistance’s stated military target. The commander of the base was forced to call in airstrikes from an Apache helicopter on the base itself just to repel the Hamas attack.

      The police investigation also indicates that Hamas fighters reached the festival site from Route 232, rather than from the Gaza border fence, further supporting the claim that the festival was not a planned target.

      Following the launch of missiles from Gaza - and before Palestinian resistance fighters arrived on the scene - the organizers of the festival promptly ceased the music and initiated an evacuation.

      According to a senior police officer quoted by Haaretz, roughly 4,400 people were present at Nova and the “vast majority managed to escape following a decision to disperse the event that was made four minutes after the rocket barrage,” while the first shots were not heard for another half hour.

      Trapping civilians: Israel police blocked the vital 232 Road exit

      However, as people exited the festival site by car and moved onto Route 232, Israeli police established roadblocks in both directions, leading to a traffic jam that trapped many partygoers in the area where fighting between Hamas and the Border Police would eventually break out.

      “There was a lot of confusion. The police barricaded the road, so we couldn’t go near Be’eri. We couldn’t go near Re’im, the two near kibbutzim,” says one witness, Yarin Levin, who was trying to evacuate the area with his friends.

      Levin, a former Israeli soldier, said this is when they had their “first encounter of the terrorists… fighting against the police that are there… two terrorists got lost in some kind of gun fight, so they found us.”

      Another witness, Shye Weinstein, also confirms the Israeli police roadblocks that blocked the main exit from the festival. He took photos of a Border Police vehicle and a heavily armed policeman in combat gear impeding the road in front of his car.

      A cell phone video from a concert attendee shows Israeli police and security forces using their vehicles to block the road near the festival site and exchanging fire with Hamas fighters.

      When gunfire erupted, those trapped on the road fled east into open fields, whether in their cars or by foot. Many made it past the fields and hid near trees, under bushes, and in ravines.

      But body cam footage shows heavily armed Israeli police units taking up positions on the road and firing across the open field into the trees where civilians had taken cover.

      Photos of destroyed cars near the Nova music festival
      As Nova attendee Gilad Karplus, also a former Israeli soldier, told the BBC:

      “We pretty much knew they would probably block the road. I’m pretty sure a lot of people got killed on those roads...We drove into the field and tried to hide from them… afterwards we got a bit deeper into the fields and then they started firing sniper rifles on us from different places and also heavy artillery.”

      Though Karplus and other partygoers were being fired on by the Border Police, they couldn’t make sense of this, and initially believed the shooting was from Hamas fighters disguised as police or soldiers. In other words, these witnesses actually saw Israeli forces firing on them.

      For Hamas to have executed a plan involving elaborate disguises, the Nova operation would have had to be pre-planned, and the Israeli police investigation has already ruled that Hamas was unaware of the festival in advance. Moreover, no other site of clashes on 7 October reported sightings of Palestinian fighters donning Israeli uniforms - neither at the various breached settlements, nor at the Israeli military bases they entered.

      Friendly fire

      In short, both the Border Police and Apache attack helicopters were deployed to the festival site immediately. According to Israeli Air Force (reserve) Colonel Nof Erez, the helicopters were in the air by 7:15 am - 45 minutes after the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood - with a significantly larger number deployed throughout southern Israel within a few hours.

      A survivor of the festival, Noa Kalash described hearing gunfire from both Hamas and Israeli forces, as well as airstrikes from attack helicopters and warplanes, while hiding in the bushes for hours to stay alive.

      “We hear guns all over the place and people shooting and we can already recognize if its terrorists shooting or if it’s the army. Or it is an airplane, or a helicopter or rockets,” Kalash recalled.

      It is abundantly clear that helicopter fire killed some of the terrified concertgoers. Haaretz quotes a police source saying that Apache helicopters “fired at the terrorists and apparently also hit some of the revelers who were there.”

      Multiple eyewitnesses who visited the Nova site after the battle ended described the horrific destruction. As another news report states:

      “It’s impossible to describe the scenes there in words. You can only list the sights that go on for a kilometer. There are hundreds of burned and bullet-riddled cars, huge wet bloodstains buzzing with flies and emitting a sickening odor, bags with body parts collected by the ZAKA [rescue] organization, thousands of bullets and casings and shrapnel of every kind.”

      A Times of Israel journalist who visited the site days later recounted that, “dozens of cars were parked in rows, some of them burnt husks containing charred bodies of young festival-goers who were shot and burned alive.”

      Saving bullets for soldiers

      Incredibly, Israeli officials claim it was Hamas fighters who destroyed hundreds of cars at Nova, burning their passengers alive. But Hamas did not have this kind of firepower.

      The group’s fighters were armed only with light machine guns and RPGs, and their ammunition was limited to what they could bring with them in pick-up trucks from Gaza.

      Guardian journalist Owen Jones noted this while discussing a 43-minute compilation of video footage from 7 October shown to select journalists by the Israeli army. He says Hamas fighters “urge bullets to be saved for killing soldiers. One terrified reveler in a car is asked, ‘Are you a soldier?’”

      As Jones notes: “So there is clearly some distinction being made between civilians and soldiers in the footage selected by Israel of the thousands of hours of footage which we don’t see.”

      While Hamas’ ammunition was limited, the Border Police were heavily armed and Apache helicopters are equipped with Hellfire missiles and 30 mm automatic chain guns, which can hold up to 1,200 rounds of ammunition and fire 625 rounds a minute.

      This suggests Israeli forces caused most of the death and destruction at Nova - which could be confirmed If Israel were to release all of its video footage from 7 October.

      The Hannibal Directive

      Israeli forces had not only the fire power, but also an official order to kill Israelis at Nova.

      A major reason Hamas launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was to take Israeli captives that could be exchanged for the thousands of Palestinians held captive in Israeli prisons. But Israeli forces were determined to prevent Hamas from taking captives back to Gaza, even if this meant killing the captured civilians.

      An investigation of Israel’s long-controversial Hannibal Directive concludes that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

      But, on 7 October, according to a Yedioth Ahronoth investigation, the Hannibal Directive - which has previously only applied to army captives - was issued against Israeli civilians as well. The Hebrew-language daily writes that "at noon on October 7, the IDF [Israeli army] ordered all of its combat units in practice to use the ‘Hannibal Procedure’ although without clearly mentioning this explicitly by name.”

      The order was to stop “at all costs any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, that is, despite the fear that some of them have abductees,” the investigation concludes.

      In the days and weeks after the incident, Israeli authorities made a great show of distributing images of vehicles destroyed at the festival site, fully implying that the cars - and the dead victims inside - had been burned to a crisp by Palestinian fighters. The Yediot report completely upends that claim:

      “In the week after the attack, soldiers of elite units checked about 70 vehicles that were left in the area between the settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed,” including Israeli captives.

      Nof Erez, the Israeli Air Force colonel noted above, similarly concluded, in regard to Israel’s indiscriminate use of helicopter firepower that day, that “The Hannibal directive was probably deployed because once you detect a hostage situation, this is Hannibal.”

      An apparent instance of this at the Nova festival was inadvertently documented by the BBC, which reported that video footage showed a woman who was taken hostage, but who:

      “Suddenly reappears two minutes later. She jumps and waves her arms in the air. She must think help is at hand - by this time, the Israeli Defence Forces had began their efforts to repel the incursion. But seconds later she slumps to the floor as bullets bounce around her. We don’t know if she survived.”

      The rationale for the Hannibal Directive was further explained by Brigadier General Barak Hiram, who ordered a tank to open fire on a home to resolve a hostage situation in Kibbutz Be’eri, “even at the cost of civilian casualties.” The strike killed 12 Israelis, including 12-year-old Liel Hetzroni, and dozens of Hamas fighters.

      “I am very afraid that if we return to Sarona [Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv] and try to hold all kinds of negotiations [to free hostages], we may fall into a trap that will tie our hands and not allow us to do what is required, which is to go in, manipulate, and kill them [Hamas]...”

      #7_octobre_2023 #Nova_festival #Hamas #FDI #directive_hannibal

  • Why did Hezbollah strike the Israeli ’Meron’ intel, airforce base? | Al Mayadeen English
    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/why-did-hezbollah-strike-the-israeli--meron--intelligence--a

    A report by a specialized research group based in the US state of Texas, which was brought to light by Israeli media months ago, revealed problems in pinpointing the locations of some civilian aircraft in the region, particularly over southern Lebanon and northern occupied Palestine.

    After precise monitoring of jamming signals disrupting receivers’ ability to detect satellite waves, “Mount Meron” was determined as the source of interference against civilian GPS devices.

    Indeed, satellite-based location systems were entirely disrupted during the first week following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Israeli media reported that the disruption was aimed at preventing the Resistance in Lebanon from using devices for precise missile or drone strikes against the entity.

    The targeting of “Meron” by Hezbollah holds strategic significance of disrupting, or even with later operations potentially hindering, “Israel’s” ability to conduct precise military strikes.

    A center for aerial operations against Lebanon and Syria

    Historically, the high-base served as the command center for Israeli aerial operations and surveillance on the northern front of the occupation.

    Its geographical position offers direct surveillance of a substantial portion of Lebanese territory and complete oversight, including broadcasting and receiving capabilities. This provides the base with powerful control and communication abilities towards Lebanon. Moreover, for hostile operations against Syria, “Meron” Base is complemented by radar and broadcasting facilities located on the occupied Mount Hermon, overlooking Syrian territories.

    In recent years, the base has gained increased significance, especially with the expanded use of military drones.

    As “Israel” increasingly relies on UAVs for intelligence gathering in Lebanon and Syria on a nearly daily basis, the base has emerged as the primary command center for aerial operations against both countries. It facilitates direct communication with the drones, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity and making it more challenging to disrupt their signals. The base also streamlines military operations due to the concentration of communication devices, command centers, and radars on “Mount Meron.”

    Thanks to its extensive geographical oversight of Lebanese territory, the base can receive and broadcast various wireless communications directly to and from Lebanon. This makes it a critical communication component with informants and a central hub for tracking and monitoring wireless communications, including espionage activities.

    The base’s giant advanced cameras and modern monitoring devices provide strategic oversight over a large portion of the line between Lebanon and occupied Palestine. It also covers Israeli sites and their corresponding locations in Lebanon.

    Consequently, “Meron” Base plays a pivotal role in intelligence gathering that was previously concentrated in locations in proximity with the Lebanese borders, many of which have been targeted and destroyed by the Resistance in recent weeks.

    The strategic base has not been immune to threats since the beginning of the military escalation in southern Lebanon.

    Many Israeli analysts have spoken about the possible evolution of the Resistance’s targets list. This is particularly relevant given that Hezbollah previously repeatedly struck the base during the 2006 July war, which resulted in the death of two settlers and the injury of five others, as acknowledged by Israelis.

    However, attacking the base today during a period below the threshold of an all-out war constitutes a heavy blow to the entity. Its implications go beyond direct consequences.

    The Resistance has meticulously chosen the nature of its targets throughout this period as part of its precise management of the escalation ladder with the Israelis.

    Over the past three months, Hezbollah has effectively controlled the pace and general course of events, compelling the Israelis to adhere to its equations.

    This applies to the military operations zone, the nature of the strikes within Lebanon, and the deterrence of the occupation from targeting Lebanese civilians within the equation of reciprocity.

    However, “Israel’s” assassination of Palestinian Resistance leader Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri and a number of his comrades in Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahyeh) with missile strikes, prompted Hezbollah to opt for an escalation.

    Today’s strike was described by Hezbollah as an “Initial Response” to the assassination of al-Arouri, leaving the door open for potential confrontations should the occupation entity decide to respond to this escalation in kind.
    Historical and religious significance

    In addition to the military and intelligence critical role it provides to the Israeli entity, the “Meron” Base holds special importance for Zionist Jews, as they consider the mountain itself to be mentioned in the Torah

    (...)
    A severe response

    Striking the “Meron” Base with precision-guided missiles marks Hezbollah’s confirmation that it has introduced the latest-generation Kornet E-M missiles into the battle.

    These missiles have a range of up to 10 kilometers and were most likely used in the accurate targeting of the base, as indicated by footage recorded by one of the Zionist settlers during the strike today.

    The precision targeting of a base of such importance, housing command centers and equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars and regularly hosting leaders of the occupation’s military, in addition to specialized and elite personnel, is indicative of the base now serving as a prime target for the Resistance. It also signifies that the Israeli entity is facing a genuine predicament.

    While its main headquarters in the north is now under imminent threat from Hezbollah, the occupation entity cannot evacuate the base, pushing “Israel” into a very difficult dilemma. Additionally, the Resistance has effectively pushed the front line with the Israeli entity to 8 kilometers inside the occupied Palestinian borders.

    Furthermore, Israeli generals had believed that their main headquarters were largely out of the Resistance’s reach and that their war against it was mostly remote, relying on aircraft and drones. This has changed after the operation today.

    Most importantly, given the base’s role in operating and coordinating air strikes, the base is a central target to respond to the occupation army for assassinating al-Arouri earlier this week.

    Therefore, it can be concluded that the “calamity of the occupation is great” today, as the military leadership’s headquarters in the north has been targeted. This means that the Resistance has placed the ball in the court of the Israeli army and its government.

    Israelis must choose between remaining silent in the face of this humiliating and perilous strike, or heading toward a response, the repercussions and limits of which they do not know.

    • Guerre en Ukraine : Pas de preuves que la belle-mère de Volodymyr Zelensky a acheté une villa en Egypte – 20 Minutes (30/08/2023)
      https://www.20minutes.fr/monde/ukraine/4050500-20230830-guerre-ukraine-preuves-belle-mere-volodymyr-zelensky-ache

      FAKE OFF Le président ukrainien et ses proches sont régulièrement accusés à tort d’avoir acquis de luxueuses villas à travers le monde
      […]
      François Asselineau s’appuie sur une vidéo partagée sur YouTube, dans laquelle un homme, qui se présente comme étant Mohammed Al-Alawi, un journaliste d’investigation, affirme qu’Olha Kiyashko, la belle-mère du président ukrainien, a acheté une luxueuse maison dans la station balnéaire réputée d’El Gouna, en Egypte. Dans la vidéo, l’homme affirme avoir obtenu des documents montrant la transaction immobilière, mais il ne les présente pas à l’écran. La vidéo n’est plus disponible, le compte YouTube associé ayant été clôturé ce mardi.

      La vidéo, toutefois, interpelle : aucun journaliste d’investigation égyptien n’apparaît sous ce nom en dehors de ce compte YouTube. Seule cette vidéo, qui dure moins de deux minutes, a été publiée sur ce compte, qui n’était actif que depuis ce mois. L’homme n’apporte pas de preuves de ce qu’il affirme.

    • l’info initiale (août 2023) n’a, apparemment été reprise que par un magazine nigérian, Punch, sans compter la droite poutinolâtre française, à la suite de F. Asselineau. En tous cas, c’est la seule référence proposée sur le site (russe) qui reprend l’info.
      https://fr.topwar.ru/233087-najden-mertvym-avtor-materiala-o-pokupke-teschej-zelenskogo-villy-s

      La source de la Pravda : El Mostaqbal
      https://elmostaqbal.com/745819
      Le frère du défunt journaliste y confirme que c’était « le premier gros coup » de son frère.

  • ’I Had to Be the Voice of Women’ : The First Female Hijacker Shares Her Story
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k99k7/leila-khaled-first-female-hijacker-profile

    Une brève biographie de la miltante palestinienne Leila Khaled

    « Vice » classe cette interview avec la militante palestinienne Leila Khaled sous « identité ». Par cette ruse la rédaction fait disparaître sa cause, son combat contre l’injustice et les responsables de l’injustice derrière cet écran de fumée composé de tolérance identitaire et fausses présomptions.. Pourtant son témoignage explique ses mobiles et fait comprendre pourquo il y a des situations où la lutte non-violente n’a plus de raison d’être et les causes politiques ne peuvent se faire entendre que par le combat armé.

    Nous pouvons nous estimer heureux que nous vvions en Europe centrale toujours sous des conditions relativement paisibles malgré l’oppression et l’exploitation des classes populaires de plus en plus brutale.

    4.8.2016.by Leila Ettachfini - On August 29, 1969, 25-year-old Leila Khaled made her way into the cockpit of TWA Flight 870 and commandeered the plane on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. After that, she became known equally as an icon and a terrorist.

    On April 9, 1948, a young Palestinian girl from Haifa celebrated her fourth birthday, and between 100 and more than 250 Palestinian villagers were killed at the hands of the Irgun and Lehi, two paramilitary Zionist organizations, in what came to be known as the Deir Yassin massacre. The massacre proved to the girl’s family that they could no longer keep their eight children safe in their home country—they would have to flee. In the days following the bloodshed, the little girl, Leila Khaled, became a refugee. Twenty-one years later she would become the world’s first female hijacker.

    Deir Yassin was the first large-scale massacre of Palestinians in the history of the Palestine/Israel conflict, and it was only the beginning of similar tragedies. It preceded the beginning of the 1948 Palestinian exodus—also known as the Nakba, literally “the disaster” in Arabic—by one month. Though Khaled’s parents hoped fleeing the country would increase their children’s chances at a safe and normal life—and by many historical accounts, they were safer fleeing than staying home—this did not mean that their new lives as refugees were free of struggle and danger. When Khaled’s family left Palestine, they headed to the Dahiya, a suburb south of Beirut that has been home to thousands of Palestinian refugees since 1948. The location of major refugee camps like Sabra and Shatila, the Dahiya is a place all too familiar with instability and deadly attacks, committed by both Israeli forces as well as right-wing Christian Lebanese groups like the Phalangists. Overall, it is a poverty-stricken area populated mostly by refugees and Lebanon’s own lower class. For four-year-old Khaled, it was her new home.

    Now 72, Leila Khaled agreed to Skype me from her home in Jordan in late June. She sat in her living room wearing thin-framed eyeglasses and a hot pink shirt with traditional white embroidery—quite the opposite image to the woman in the iconic photo of Khaled in her youth, wearing a military shirt and keffiyeh, the typically black-and-white scarf that has come to symbolize Middle Eastern pride, and holding an AK-47. On her hand she wears a ring made from the pin of the first grenade she ever used in training.

    Khaled described her childhood as, simply, “miserable,” living in a state of uncertainty about both her country and her family. When they left their country initially, her father stayed behind to fight for Palestine; he would join his wife and their children in the Dahiya six months after they made the initial journey. Growing up, Khaled recalls asking her parents two questions constantly: “Why are we living like this?” and “When are we going back?”

    Based on the current state of Palestine, the latter may seem naive, but it was not entirely so at the time. In December of 1948 the UN adopted Resolution 194, which stated that, “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” Because Israel never complied, Khaled and many other refugee children continued to ask when they would return home well into adulthood.

    As is the case with many refugee families, especially in the Dahiya, the Khaleds faced poverty. “I never had a whole pencil,” Khaled told me, “always half. My mother used to cut it into two so every child could go to school.” Despite this, the Khaleds had it better than most refugee families who did not have the family connections in Lebanon that provided Leila and her family with shelter and food. Still, they, like many others, relied on UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees.

    By the late 50s, the atmosphere of the area echoed the “rise of the national spirit,” according to Khaled, and she often participated in the frequent public demonstrations in her community meant to raise awareness for the plight of the Palestinian people. It was then that her involvement within the Palestinian resistance began to evolve from passive to active. Many of her older siblings had joined the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), which declared the liberation of Palestine as one of its main goals. In her early teens, though Khaled was not allowed to fight with the ANM quite yet, she contributed by providing fighters with food and support even in the middle of dangerous battles. At age 16 she was accepted as an official member.

    In 1967, at age 23, Khaled joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the PFLP, despite her mother’s wishes. According to Sarah Irving’s book Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation, Khaled’s mother told her, “Let your brothers go and be fighters.” But Leila Khaled did not want to be on the sidelines of the movement. “Calling for armed struggle—it was my dream,” she told me.

    The PFLP is considered a terrorist organization by countries like the US and the EU; its political leanings are usually described as secular and Marxist-Leninist. When the PFLP was formed, Khaled says, it was clear that it wanted both men and women actively involved in the resistance. When she was assigned to partake in a hijacking in 1969, she viewed the assignment as the PFLP upholding that idea.

    On August 29, 1969, Khaled and fellow PFLP member Salim Issawi hijacked TWA Flight 840 on its way from Rome to Tel Aviv. Khaled boarded the plane with a hand grenade and pistol. Once in the air, the two revealed their weapons, made their way into the cockpit, and said, “This is the Palestinian movement taking over your airplane,” according to Harry Oakley, the co-pilot. They then instructed the pilots to redirect the plane to Damascus, but not before flying over Palestine. “It was my happiest moment,” she said, “when we flew over Palestine and I saw my city, Haifa—not the hijacking.”

    Despite being a young woman about to attempt a mission that would either end her life or change it forever, Khaled was not nervous. “The contrary,” she told me, “I was happy because I was doing something for my people.” As for the purpose of the hijacking, Khaled is just as straightforward there. “It was meant to put the question in front of the whole world: Who are the Palestinians? After 1948, we were dealt with as refugees who needed human aid and that’s it—not recognizing our right of return. Also, to release the prisoners.”

    Upon landing, Khaled and Issawi evacuated the Boeing 707, and Issawi proceeded to blow up the nose of the aircraft as it lay empty on the cement. “We had instructions not to harm passengers,” said Khaled. “Very strict instructions not to hurt anyone, and to deal with the pilot and the crew with politeness—not to frighten them even.” Still, Khaled knows that her actions did, of course, frighten the innocent passengers, but to her, their momentary fear was a small a price to pay in order to put the suffering of her people on the world’s stage.

    In a post-9/11 world, it’s hard to imagine, but in 1969, hijackings were a relatively new tactic and not considered death sentences to the extent that they are now. Video footage of the passengers aboard TWA flight 840 shows a crowd that is relatively calm—some even express an understanding of Khaled and Issawi’s actions. In video footage of interviews with the passengers after the plane landed, one man reasons, “There was an Israeli assassin on board who was responsible for the deaths of many Arab women and children, and all they wanted to do was bring this assassin to a friendly Arab city and give him a fair trial.” The “assassin” the man is referring to was Yitzhak Rabin; at the time, he was Israel’s ambassador to the United States and was scheduled to be on TWA flight 840 that day, though a last-minute change of plans made it so he was not. Despite the understanding of some, like this passenger, many were understandably upset and shaken.

    After six weeks of off-and-on hunger strikes and questioning in Syria, Khaled and Issawi were released. While they were in jail, Syria made negotiations with Israel that resulted in the release of Palestinian prisoners who had been kept in Israeli prisons. This—and the frenzy of attention that labeled Khaled a hero among many Palestinians, as well as put the Palestinian story on the world’s stage—was enough for Khaled to deem the mission a success.

    Others, however, including many Palestinians, did not agree. For one, whether Khaled knew it at the time or not, this hijacking would tie the word terrorism to the Palestinian resistance for years to come. Many thought her mission tainted their image in front of the world; rather than refugees in need, Palestinians were now terrorists who didn’t deserve sympathy. In 2006 Palestinian–Swedish filmmaker Lina Makboul made a documentary called Leila Khaled: Hijacker. The film ends when Makboul asks Khaled, “Didn’t you ever think that what you were doing would give the Palestinians a bad reputation?”

    Then, the interview cuts out. “By not having her answer in it,” Makboul told me, “I wanted to show that in the end it actually doesn’t matter—because she did it.”

    Still, I was glad to have the opportunity to ask Khaled myself. “I told [Makboul], I think I added to my people, not offended the Palestinian struggle,” said Khaled.

    It makes sense that Khaled was proud of her mission—for one year later, she would do it again. This time, though, it was with a different face.

    After the first hijacking, Leila Khaled quickly became an icon within the Palestinian resistance. Posters of her famous photo were printed out and hung around refugee camps that occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the diaspora. She was well known—a problem for two reasons. One, she never wanted personal fame; in fact, she found it pretty annoying. “Some would ask me, ’How many hours do you spend in the mirror?’” she said, “as if this was a question of any logic.” She often refused to answer. “We’d be happy to answer all the questions dealing with the cause itself,” she said, “the core issues, why the conflict, who is oppressing who, and so on—these are the main issues that we want to raise in front of the media. Not whether I have a boyfriend or not. That doesn’t mean anything.”

    The second issue was that being very recognizable made it difficult to continue her work with the PFLP. In 1970, Khaled was appointed to participate in another hijacking mission, but her new notoriety meant she could no longer fly under the radar like she had before. Still, no measure was too drastic when it came to the question of Palestine: Between the first hijacking and the second, Khaled underwent six total plastic surgeries in Lebanon.

    On September 6, 1970, Khaled and a man named Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan–American who volunteered with the PFLP, attempted to hijack a plane on its way from Amsterdam to New York City. This time, Khaled’s mission did not run so smoothly. After moving to the cockpit and threatening to blow up the plane, Khaled was tackled in the air by guards and passengers while carrying two hand grenades and a pistol. In an attempt to defend her, Argüello fired at those tackling her, but he was shot and later died of his injuries. Simultaneously, the pilot of El Al flight 219 cleverly dropped the plane into a nosedive; Khaled lost balance, making her more vulnerable to attack, despite the visible weapons she carried.

    This operation was a part of a series of PFLP missions known as the Dawson’s Field hijackings. (Dawson’s Field is the deserted airstrip in Jordan where Khaled and Argüello were supposed to force the plane to land.) With Khaled knocked out by the men who tackled her and broke her ribs—and Argüello dead—the plane made an emergency landing in London. In her autobiography, My People Shall Live, Khaled writes, “I should have been the one to be killed because it was my struggle and he was here to support us.”

    After being taken to the hospital, Khaled was held and questioned by British authorities while the PFLP held the passengers who were aboard the rest of the hijacked aircrafts hostage at Dawson’s Field and attempted to negotiate with the countries they were from. The majority were released in Amman a few days later, but the PFLP kept 40, arguing that they were members of the Israeli army and thus “prisoners of war.” On September 30, British authorities let Khaled walk free as part of a negotiated deal with the PFLP; several Palestinian prisoners were also freed from European prisons.

    Upon her release, Khaled went back to Beirut and back to work, though she was constantly on the move to ensure her safety. In November of 1970, not two months after she left prison, she married the man who first taught her how to hold arms. He was a military commander in the PFLP who had previously been jailed for ten years in Iraq, where he was from, for his involvement in the Communist Party. But as tensions in Jordan were on the rise and Khaled’s husband felt pressure to go fight with his men, their relationship began to disintegrate. When Khaled could no longer ignore Israeli threats and decided to go into hiding, it was clear that their marriage was no longer working; the couple decided to get a divorce.

    In 1973 Khaled decided to move to the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut. (Shatila is widely known for the massacre of 1982, where death toll estimates are between 700 to 3,500 people—mass graves and a failure to investigate by the Lebanese government account for the wide range.) Fed up with her widespread, international attention, Khaled wanted to be in a humble place. “To be under light all the time was not comfortable for me,” she said. “For this reason I went and lived in Sabra and Shatila camp—to be with the people and work with the people.”

    When Khaled visits Shatila with Lina Makboul in her documentary, she is visibly welcomed as a hero. “I have always dreamt of walking beside you,” a man says to her as she makes her way through the camp on her way to visit an old comrade. Another points to her jokingly, “Do you know Leila Khaled? She is a terrorist!”

    Though Khaled is widely known for the hijackings that took place more than 40 years ago, she has been anything but absent from the resistance since then. In the aftermath of her hijackings, Leila Khaled became involved in the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) and a member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC). Threats against her safety were a part of her daily life and frequently materialized. On Christmas 1975, she came home to find her sister and her sister’s fiancé shot dead in her apartment. She had been the target.

    In 1978 she left Lebanon to study history in the Soviet Union, where she met her second husband, a medical student and fellow PFLP member, Fayez Hilal. But two years after she began her studies, the resistance called—she was back in Lebanon working at the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office. Khaled and Hilal had two children in the 80s, Badar and Bashar.

    It was never easy being a woman in the resistance, let alone a mother—she was expected to speak for the entire female Palestinian population. “I had to be the voice of women, those who nobody sees,” she said. Still, she maintains that the victims in the conflict are the Palestinian people in general—not women or men. “To feel injustice and be conscious of who is oppressing you—you will act as a human being, whether you are a woman or a man,” she said. “Men were fighting; they gave their lives. Women also gave their lives. Men and women went to jail.”

    Today, Khaled is an icon of not only the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, but also of the Palestinian women’s movement. “The revolution changed the image of the Palestinian woman,” she said. “They are also in the revolution on an equal basis—they can do whatever the revolution needs.”

    When Khaled is asked about religion, she is firm that her enemy has never been Judaism. After her second hijacking, Khaled was rushed to a hospital in London, where a cop informed her that her doctor was Jewish. Khaled didn’t mind. “I was against Zionists, not Jews,” Khaled later told Sarah Irving. “[The cop] did not understand the difference, and I was in too much pain to explain.”

    Unlike most notorious terrorist organizations today, Khaled’s organization, the PFLP, has a secular reputation. It was the last week of Ramadan when I spoke to Khaled, but she told me that she isn’t particularly religious. “I think that whatever you are—you believe in Islam, or Christianity, or in Judaism—this is something personal,” she told me. When I asked if she practices Islam, she said, “I practice the values of humanity. These values are also mentioned in Islam: to be honest, to help the poor.”

    Khaled has been called both an Arab-Marxist hijacker and a freedom fighter, regarded as both a terrorist and a hero. When I asked her to define terrorism, she said it was “occupation.” The Leila Khaled on my Skype screen had been through much more than the young woman in the photo with her head loosely wrapped in a keffiyeh, but fundamentally the two are much the same. The terrorist/freedom fighter debate may be relative when it comes to Khaled, but her unwavering devotion and passion for Palestine is indisputable. “I’m from a family who believes in Islam,” she said, “but I’m not a fanatic. I’m a fanatic about Palestine and about my people.”

    #Palestine #PFLP #histoire #nakba #marxisme #sionisme #féminisme #moyen_orient

  • World VFX Day - Tom Salinksy
    https://www.mydylarama.org.uk/World-VFX-Day-Tom-Salinksy

    Happy World VFX Day! There’s nothing more special than special effects. Whether digital or practical, special effects are created by a highly skilled, specialised labour force and have created some of cinema’s most captivating images (that’s why we insist on calling them SPECIAL effects). In support of the effects industry and to celebrate the first World VFX day we spoke with a random collection of people who work in and/or love sfx and asked them to share some of their favourite (...) #Screen_Extra

  • Poet and scholar Refaat Alareer has been killed by an Israeli airstrike. ‹ Literary Hub
    https://lithub.com/poet-and-scholar-refaat-alareer-has-been-killed-by-an-israeli-airstrike

    The Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Dr. Refaat Alareer was killed today in a targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. He is survived by his wife, Nusayba, and their children.

    Dr. Alareer was a beloved professor of literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007.

    He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). In his contribution to the 2022 collection Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, titled “Gaza Asks: When Shall this Pass?”, Refaat writes:

    It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying. Sometimes I mean it. Sometimes I don’t. And as Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.

    Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization launched in Gaza after Israel’s 2014 attack and dedicated to creating “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.”

    Through his popular Twitter account, “Refaat in Gaza,” Dr. Alareer vehemently condemned the ongoing atrocities committed against his people by Israeli forces, as well as the successive U.S. administrations that enabled them. (...)

    “““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““"
    son dernier poème sur Twitter : https://twitter.com/itranslate123/status/1719701312990830934
    If I must die,
    you must live
    to tell my story
    to sell my things
    to buy a piece of cloth
    and some strings,
    (make it white with a long tail)
    so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
    while looking heaven in the eye
    awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
    and bid no one farewell
    not even to his flesh
    not even to himself—
    sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
    above
    and thinks for a moment an angel is there
    bringing back love
    If I must die
    let it bring hope
    let it be a tale

    https://seenthis.net/messages/1030671

    • Charlies Ingalls Le Vrai 🤠🐑🐄🐔🐎🤓
      @CharliesIngalls | 11:46 PM · 9 déc. 2023
      https://twitter.com/CharliesIngalls/status/1733619132405256326

      🚨🇵🇸 "Si je dois mourir, tu dois vivre pour raconter mon histoire", l’écrivain et poète gazaoui Refaat Alareer délibérément assassiné par l’armée israélienne selon l’ONG de défense des droits de l’homme Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

      "La frappe aérienne a visé précisement l’appartement du deuxième étage dans lequel il était réfugié et non l’immeuble entier, ce qui indique que c’est l’appartement qui était visé", a déclaré l’organisation.

      Sont également morts dans l’attaque israélienne son frère Salah, l’un des enfants de ce dernier, Muhammad, sa sœur Asmaa et trois enfants de cette dernière, Alaa, Yahya et Muhammad.

      Refaat écrivait en anglais depuis des années pour alerter sur le sort des Palestiniens. Il y a quelques semaines, il témoignait depuis Gaza, en larmes.

      Son dernier poème, écrit pendant cette guerre.

      « Si je dois mourir,
      tu dois vivre
      pour raconter mon histoire,
      pour vendre mes affaires,
      pour acheter un morceau de tissu
      et quelques ficelles,
      (fais qu’il soit blanc avec une longue traine)
      pour qu’un enfant, quelque part à Gaza,
      scrutant le paradis dans les yeux,
      en attendant son père parti dans un brasier -
      sans dire adieu à personne,
      pas même à sa chair,
      pas même à lui-même -
      voit le cerf-volant, mon cerf-volant que tu as fait,
      s’envoler au-dessus de lui
      et pense un instant qu’un ange est là
      pour ramener l’amour.
      Si je dois mourir, que ce soit
      pour apporter de l’espoir.
      Que ce soit un conte. »

      https://liberation.fr/international/moyen-orient/offensive-israelienne-refaat-alareer-le-poete-mort-pour-gaza-20231208_6PU

  • Rami Jarrah sur X : “BREAKING: Professor Sufian Tayeh, who headed the largest university in #Gaza, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp. He was ranked among the top 2% of researchers globally & was appointed UNESCO chair for Physical & Astrophysical sciences in Palestine. https://t.co/lqEvhN3Wp5” / X
    https://twitter.com/RamiJarrah/status/1730928859837522209

    BREAKING:

    Professor Sufian Tayeh, who headed the largest university in #Gaza, killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp.

    He was ranked among the top 2% of researchers globally & was appointed UNESCO chair for Physical & Astrophysical sciences in Palestine.
    Traduire le post