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Australian Soccer Fan Blames Media Distortion After Being Accused of Doing Nazi Salute at Match
Sydney United 58 players greet their supporters after being defeated in the Australia Cup Final soccer match between Sydney United 58 and Macarthur FC at Commbank Stadium in Sydney, Saturday, October 1, 2022. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
A soccer fan in Australia said the press “twisted” an image of him to make it appear like he was doing the Nazi salute at a major soccer game, Australian news outlets reported on Monday.
Dominik Sieben, 25, is accused of knowingly displaying in public a Nazi symbol without a reasonable excuse. He appeared in a New South Wales (NSW) court on Monday with two other men who face the same charges — Nikola Marko Gasparovic and Marijan Lisica — regarding an incident that happened at the Australia Cup final between Sydney United 58 and Macarthur FC on Oct. 1, 2022, at Parramatta’s CommBank Stadium. All three Sydney United fans — who are Croatian and do not know each other — were caught allegedly performing the “Seig Hitler” salute on the stadium’s security cameras and cameras broadcasting the game for a local channel. The three men were not sitting next to each other.
The Sydney United team was originally called Sydney Croatia because it was largely comprised of migrants from Croatia who settled in Australia. It was renamed in 1993.
Magistrate Joy Boulas at Parramatta Local Court in New South Wales (NSW) was played footage of an interview that Sieben did with NSW police in Feb. 2023 at his home in Sydney. During his questioning, Sieben denied doing the Nazi salute at the Australian Cup final. He said he had a beer in one hand and was just trying to cheer on his team with his other arm.
“It was disgusting, the whole thing, everything that was accused of me,” he told police. “Everyone was chanting … the media grabbed my photo and twisted the entire thing and made it look like someone I’m not. It had nothing to do with the Hitler crap … any of that crap … it was blown out of proportion so much.”
Sieben claimed he was caught on camera from a “low angle,” which gave a deceiving portrayal of reality. “I think that honestly … [the media] twisted the entire thing,” he added. He further told police he had “eight to nine” friends who are Jewish.
“Two or three of them I see on a regular basis,” he said. “When they saw it they literally laughed.”
The court was told Gasparovic, 46, and Lisica, 45, chanted a song at the Australia Cup final that is linked to a Croatian far-right movement, according to local reports. Lisica also wore army camouflage to the game and Gasparovic carried a “World War II-era Nazi” flag,” a police prosecutor told the court. Gasparovic “acknowledges doing an action but denies any association with Nazism,” the police prosecutor added. The case is ongoing.
Anyone found guilty of publicly displaying a Nazi symbol without reasonable cause in NSW can face a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison and/or an $11,000 fine, according to the Daily Mail.
The post Australian Soccer Fan Blames Media Distortion After Being Accused of Doing Nazi Salute at Match 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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