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Israeli Survivors of Oct. 7 Massacre Detained, Mistreated by British Officials at UK Airport, Jewish Leaders Say
Two UK Border Force officers accused of discriminating against two Israeli survivors of Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter across southern Israel. Photo: Screenshot from X/Twitter
Two Jewish, Israeli nationals who survived Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel were detained and subjected to discrimination while being processed at Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom on Sunday, a local Jewish civil rights group has charged.
The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region (JRC) on Monday sent a letter alleging that two Israeli men who had traveled to the UK to discuss narrowly escaping Hamas’ attack on the Re’im Music Festival — where Palestinian terrorists para-glided into the venue, murdered more than 300 young people, and kidnapped dozens of others on Oct. 7. — were singled out by multiple British Border Force officers upon presenting their Israeli passports and explaining why they were there. According to the letter, the officers forced the Israelis to submit to two hours of “detention and interrogation,” as well as abusive comments.
“The only reason for their detention and interrogation was because they are Israeli. We are in possession of a video which shows a male officer speaking in aggressive terms to the two males,” JRC alleged in the letter. “They were detained for two hours. When finally released, the same Border Police Officer said, ‘they had to make sure that you are not going to do what you are doing in Gaza over here.’”
JRC condemned the officers’ “discriminatory treatment” of the men, describing it as antisemitic “abuse” warranting an investigation by the British government and the Manchester Airport Group as a “matter of urgency.”
“We unequivocally condemn the fact that Israeli nationals were detained and subjected to abuse by a Border Police Officer,” the letter stated. “The comment upon their release proves that this individual was motivated by antisemitic intent.”
On Tuesday, a Manchester Airport communications officer told The Algemeiner that it is not the employer of the two Border Force officers in question but said that the allegations “are serious.” The airport has urged the British Home Office, which oversees the Border Force, to “ensure they are looked into,” an action which Home Secretary James Cleverly vowed to take.
“We are investigating this,” Cleverly, a Conservative Party Member of Parliament, said in a statement commenting on the incident on X/Twitter. “We do not tolerate antisemitism or any form of discrimination. This incident will be handled in line with our disciplinary procedures.”
The alleged abuse of the two Israeli men came amid a historic surge in hate crimes targeting the Jewish community around the world, including paroxysms of antisemitic sentiment and violence, following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7.
Indignities to which diaspora Jews have been subjected range from last week’s cancelling of the Hamilton Film Festival, which was set to take place next month, to the mobbing of Jewish college students in the US and the stabbing of a 50-year-old Jewish man in Zurich, Switzerland. The UK Jewish community is already reeling from another outrage reported earlier this month, the alleged abuse of a 9-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy by Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital nurses, clad in pro-Palestinian “badges and stickers,” who forced him to undergo a blood transfusion on the floor.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic incidents in the UK have occurred in unprecedented numbers since Oct. 7. In 2023 alone, there were upwards of 4,000, and in London, a city home to Europe’s largest concentration of Orthodox Jews, there were 1,177, an average of just over three per day. In one brutal case, two Black females mercilessly battered a Jewish woman, pounding her with punches and then kicking her while she lay on the ground unconscious. Aware of the damage they wrought on the defenseless woman, the assailants, still standing over her body, speculated that she was “dead.” Not 10 days later, someone graffitied a bus stop outside a Jewish girls school, spray painting a blue Star of David and defacing it with a large “X,” spray painted in black.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Israeli Survivors of Oct. 7 Massacre Detained, Mistreated by British Officials at UK Airport, Jewish Leaders Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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