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Anti-Israel Group Leading Pro-Hamas Protests Under Fire for False Claim About Israel’s Independence Day
Pro-Hamas activists gather in Washington Square Park for a rally following a protest march held in response to an NYPD sweep of an anti-Israel encampment at New York University in Manhattan, May 3, 2024. Photo: Matthew Rodier/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A prominent anti-Israel group that has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza falsely claimed that Israel’s Independence Day was intentionally placed to “obscure” a Palestinian day of remembrance, sparking outrage and criticism.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which wrote the statement, is a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.
“Yesterday [Monday], the Israeli government ended its yearly cycle of state holidays that sequentially commemorates the Holocaust, Israeli militarism, and the creation of the state of Israel,” the statement read.
“The sequencing of these holidays,” it argued, “was intentionally designed to conclude and obscure May 15, the day Palestinians mark the ongoing Nakba.” The tweet has garnered more than 7,700 likes.
Yesterday, the Israeli government ended its yearly cycle of state holidays that sequentially commemorates the Holocaust, Israeli militarism, and the creation of the state of Israel.
The sequencing of these holidays was intentionally designed to conclude and obscure May 15, the…
— Jewish Voice for Peace (@jvplive) May 14, 2024
However, critics quickly noted that Nakba Day — meant to commemorate the Palestinian “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” of the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 — was inaugurated about 35 years after Independence Day and the other major Israeli national holidays near it, making it impossible for the latter to be intentionally established to desecrate the former.
Yom Haatzmaut and Yom Hazikaron — Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, respectively — were each established by law in 1963. Meanwhile, Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, was established in 1959.
In contrast, Nakba Day was officially established by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1998. However, local commemorations and protests were held for years before that.
The term “Nakba” was initially coined by Arab intellectual Constantin Zureiq in his 1948 book, The Meaning of the Nakba. He used the term to refer to the humiliation caused by many Arab armies losing to a small Jewish one in the 1948 war for Israel’s independence. Over time, however, it has come to refer to the fact that about 750,000 Palestinians became refugees as a result of the war, fleeing amid the Arab invasion.
At the same time, a similar number of Jews became refugees as they were expelled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
David May, research manager at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, rebuked JVP’s tweet, arguing, “Nakba Day was placed there specifically as a rejection of Jewish independence in their ancestral land. Its timing marks a continued rejection of the Jewish right to independence and self-rule that the Palestinians desire for themselves. So, the Palestinians placed their holiday around the Israeli ones, not the other way around.”
“A basic knowledge of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the thought process of Israelis,” he continued, “would have prevented a tweet assuming that everything Israel does is a callous attempt to erase Palestinians rather than an internal decision based on collective memory.”
“But JVP and their ilk see Israel as an irredeemable evil in a binary world composed of victims and oppressors,” he explained. “Everything they do stems from this basic perception.”
The post Anti-Israel Group Leading Pro-Hamas Protests Under Fire for False Claim About Israel’s Independence Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op
DF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
i24 News – The Israeli military eliminated 250 Hezbollah terrorists including 21 commanders in four days of ground combat, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday.
IDF soldiers operating in southern Lebanon have uncovered vast caches of weapons and munitions in civilian residences, showing how central embedding within civilian population is to Hezbollah’s mode of warfare.
Meanwhile, heavy strikes targeting the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahieh in southern Beirut were ongoing, Lebanese media reported.
The post 250 Hezbollah Terrorists Including 21 Commanders Eliminated in Ground Op first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says
Illustrative. Hodeidah, Yemen, July 20, 2024. Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS
Airstrikes were launched on Friday at several parts of Yemen including its capital Sanaa and Hodeidah airport, Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthi movement controlling much of Yemen, and residents said.
Strikes also targeted the south of Dhamar city and the southeast of al-Bayda province, the channel added.
Residents said that the attack on al-Bayda province targeted several Houthi military outposts.
Al Masirah TV reported that the strikes had been carried out by the United States and British forces, but a British government source said Britain was not involved.
Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since last November in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel‘s war with Hamas.
The attacks have drawn US and British retaliatory strikes and disrupted global trade as ship owners reroute vessels away from the Red Sea and Suez Canal to sail the longer route around the southern tip of Africa.
Following the airstrikes, a Houthi spokesman called the attack “a desperate attempt,” adding that “Yemen will not be deterred by these attacks and will continue its steadfastness in confronting the enemies.”
The post Airstrikes Launched on Several Parts of Yemen, Houthi Al Masirah TV says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem
Illustrative. Israeli troops during counterterrorism activity in Tulkarem, northwestern Samaria, September 2024. Photo: IDF.
JNS.org – An Israeli Air Force fighter jet conducted a rare strike in Tulkarem in the West Bank on Thursday night, targeting top Hamas terrorist Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi.
The Palestinian Authority reported at least 18 fatalities in the strike, with a local security source telling Agence France-Presse it was the deadliest in Judea and Samaria since the Second Intifada.
Ayyth Radwan, the head of Islamic Jihad’s Tulkarem branch, was also reportedly killed.
Oufi was planning a terrorist attack “in the immediate time frame,” according to the Israel Defense Forces, and directed the thwarted car bombing last month near Ateret in the Binyamin region of Samaria.
There were no casualties in the incident, which Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, called a “great miracle.”
The IDF said Oufi was involved in smuggling weapons to terrorists who perpetrated several recent attacks against Israelis, including some that resulted in injuries to civilians.
He also “worked to establish terrorist networks on behalf of Hamas and assisted terror operatives in the area to carry out significant shooting and explosive attacks,” added the military.
The post IDF Kills Hamas Commander in Tulkarem first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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