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Rapper Macklemore Releases Video to 5.2 Million People Slandering Israel
A photo of Mackelmore wearing a costume in 2014 that was criticized as being antisemitic. Photo: screenshot.
On May 6, Yom HaShoah, American rapper Macklemore once again decided to come for the Jewish people. His 2014 costume of a caricatured Orthodox Jew was not enough. This time, he chose to share with his 5.2 million followers (almost one-third of the total number of Jews in the world) a nearly three minute propaganda song. The song, titled “Hind Hall,” is filled with inaccuracies and anti-Jewish tropes in grotesque forms.
Over a rap beat, the opening shot of the music video displays a Palestinian flag-waver in head to toe in black, standing on a roof.
Within the first four sentences, Macklemore asks, “What is the problem about divesting and wanting peace?” The answer is straightforward. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is not about peace, as explained by Palestinian Human Rights and Peace Activist Bassem Eid.
The BDS movement ignores the realities on the ground, and is really about de-legitimizing and destroying the State of Israel in any recognizable form. BDS leaders themselves have said that their goal is to destroy Israel.
After a repetitive chant of “block the barricade until Palestine is free,” a slogan used to declare the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the rapper declares, “f**k the police” for stopping the violence on campus and the harassment and assault of Jewish students by Palestinian protesters.
Deeply upsetting graphics of war-torn children are featured throughout the video. Not once does Macklemore mention the Israeli children murdered by Hamas on October 7 — or in the decades before by Palestinians who are viewed as heroes by their government. He also ignores Hamas’ role in the perpetration of violence against Gazans. Hamas sacrifices Gazan civilians, uses them as human shields, and buries its infrastructure in civilian areas. At the beginning of the war, Hamas threatened Gazans not to leave areas of fighting. And if October 7 had not happened, there would be no war in Gaza right now.
The Irish-raised Catholic wordsmith says that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism by tokenizing parasitic-minded anti-Zionist Jews for “finally cutting ties with a state” relying “on an apartheid system.” According to a 2021 Pew study, 8-in-10 Jews feel an intrinsic connection to Israel. Macklemore is using anti-Zionism as a litmus test for who is a good Jew — and the only Jews he supports are a tiny minority.
It’s also completely false to claim Israel is an apartheid state.
In addition to calling Israel an apartheid state, he labels Israelis as “colonizers” consistently in the song. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, using this falsehood is antisemitic, as the rhetoric denies the Jewish connection to the ancestral homeland of Israel.
Subsequently, he mentions how Israel is “bombing all the mosques,” which is not only a lie, but also ignores that Hamas has used some mosques as hideouts. Why the dishonesty? Additionally, proceeds from the song are going to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has credible ties to promoting terrorist activity.
The cherry-picked imagery and out-of-context claims feel deliberate throughout the music video. As a musician, he has great power and influence, no matter how irrelevant he seems. His slander against the Jewish State will cause true and irreparable damage — but that’s exactly his goal.
Listen to the propaganda piece for yourself here.
The post Rapper Macklemore Releases Video to 5.2 Million People Slandering Israel 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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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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