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Rashida Tlaib Introduces Resolution to Mandate Federal Recognition of Palestinian ‘Nakba’
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Wednesday introduced a resolution recognizing the 77th anniversary of the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
“The nakba never ended. Today we are witnessing the Israeli apartheid regime carry out genocide in Gaza. It is a campaign to erase Palestinians from existence,” Tlaib said in a statement.
“War Criminal Netanyahu,” she continued, referring to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “has threatened to ethnically cleanse the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, annex the land, and permanently occupy it. As we mark the 77th anniversary of the nakba, we honor all of those killed since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine began, and the Palestinians who were forced from their homes and violently displaced from their land.”
Co-sponsors of the bill include Democratic Reps. André Carson (IN), Summer Lee (PA), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), Delia Ramirez (IL), Lateefah Simon (CA), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ).
The resolution does not mention the Jewish people’s millennia-long connection to the land of Israel or any instances of Palestinian terrorism against the Jewish state.
“Nakba refers not only to a historical event but to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day, including the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction and expansion of illegal settlements, and the confinement of Palestinians to ever-shrinking areas of land,” the bill reads.
“It is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to commemorate the nakba through official recognition and remembrance; denounce the ongoing nakba of the Palestinian people; [and] reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States government with denial of the nakba.”
Tlaib, the only Palestinian American woman in Congress, further repudiated the US as being “an accomplice” in the alleged ongoing “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” by supporting Israel’s defensive military efforts.
Since entering Congress in 2018, Tlaib has established herself as one of the most vocal critics of Israel. She has repeatedly characterized Israel as an “apartheid state” and accused the Jewish state of transforming Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led slaughters in Israel, Tlaib ramped up her condemnations of the Jewish state. She was initially hesitant to condemn the terrorist attacks in Israel, in which 1,200 people were murdered and 250 hostages were kidnapped. However, Tlaib was among the first US lawmakers to accuse Israel of committing “genocide in Gaza. In most of her public statements regarding the war in Gaza, she has omitted any mention of the Hamas terrorist group. Moreover, the lawmaker has sparked backlash by attending multiple pro-Palestine events connected to terrorists.
The post Rashida Tlaib Introduces Resolution to Mandate Federal Recognition of Palestinian ‘Nakba’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.