The latest negotiations in Doha to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal have been the most productive in months, and negotiators will reconvene next week in Cairo hoping to conclude it, a senior Biden administration official said on Friday.

“It was consensus of all of the participants over the past 48 hours that there’s really a new spirit here to drive it to a conclusion,” the official said, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity.

He still cautioned that work remained to be done.

“This is a very difficult, complex deal.”

On Friday, the US, with help from mediators Qatar and Egypt, put forward a bridging proposal the three countries believe would close all gaps between warring parties Israel and Hamas, the official said.

The past two days in Doha were probably “the most constructive 48 hours” that the parties have had in months, the official said.

“The Israeli team that was here was empowered … We made a lot of progress in the number of issues that we’ve been working on,” the official said.

The latest round in months of talks to end the war in Hamas-ruled Gaza began on Thursday between Israel and mediators. The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas was not directly involved in the talks but was kept briefed on progress.

The White House sent CIA Director Bill Burns and US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel were also taking part.

The negotiations took place in the shadow of a feared regional escalation. Iran, which backs Hamas, has threatened to retaliate against Israel after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.

There will be engagements over the course of next week between working groups that will discuss everything from the list of hostages, the sequence by which the hostages would be released and the Palestinian prisoners.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Israel on Sunday.

The conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas fighters rampaged into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and seizing around 250 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign in neighboring Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.

The Israeli military says it has eliminated 17,000 terrorists in Gaza during its campaign.

The post US Official Calls Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Doha the Most Constructive in Months first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Supreme Court of British Columbia justice in Vancouver issued an injunction to Vancouver Island University on Aug. 15 to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment, the last of its kind at a Canadian university, from its campus in Nanaimo within 72 hours, or by Aug, 18 at 9:30 a.m. PDT. Jewish organizations were pleased by the […]

The post Court injunction at Vancouver Island University ends the campus encampment trend (for now) appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Anti-Zionist activists recently launched a barrage of racist attacks against African Americans on social media, triggering an exchange of insults as well as arguments over the Arab world’s role in enslaving Black Africans.

“Black people also wear a uniform and get on a plane and come to our countries and kill us!” one influencer said in a compilation of TikTok posts shared by pro-Israel activist Hen Mazzig. “You vote the same f—king melanated f—king people to government that sign papers to kill us. I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

“Keep Palestinians names out of your f—king mouths when you’re trying to defend your decision for voting for Kamala,” another said, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who is Black.

TikTok user “Dan1ahan” charged that Black Americans “switched up 180 on Palestinians and people who are Palestinian activists the second we have a Black woman running for office,” describing the alleged betrayal as “disgusting.” Touching on the upcoming US presidential election, one Arab woman said all Black people want is a “token ethnic president” in office.

Black TikTok influencers descended on the platform in droves to denounce the comments, with several announcing that they intended not only to remove Gaza-related content from their profiles but also to cease engaging in anti-Zionist activity entirely. The conversation escalated in subsequent posts, touching on the continuance of Black slavery in the Arab world and what young woman called “voracious racism” against African Americans.

“What’s even crazier is that earlier people were like, oh these are bots, no — this is how people really feel. And she made a video that’s a real human being that feels exactly that way,” an African American woman said. “These are people who feel like they are entitled to the support of Black people no matter what, that they get to push us around and tell us who the hell we get to vote for if we support them … They’ve lost their minds.”

An African American male said, “Why don’t we talk about the Arab slave trade? And keep in mind that the Arabs have enslaved more Black people than the Europeans combined.” Another African American woman accused Arabs of not denouncing slavery in Antebellum America.

“We spend our money with you,” she said. “We stand in solidarity with you, and you keep asking for more, and more, and more, and it’s never enough.”

This is not the first time that anti-Zionists have hurled racist abuse and expletives at Black Americans while denigrating their accomplishments and status as full citizens of the United States.

In April, an anti-Zionist student group at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, DC staged an unprecedented protest of a talk by US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield at the university’s Elliot School of International Affairs.

“Zionist imperial puppet,” “imperial and blackface,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” were among the chants yelled by members of the Student Coalition for Palestine (GWSCP) outside the building — a clamoring which could be heard throughout the Elliot School. Thomas-Greenfield was at GWU to speak at an event held to encourage Black youth to pursue careers in foreign affairs. GWSCP protested her appearance because she had vetoed multiple UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign against Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians.

In a pamphlet distributed to everyone who showed up to the event, the students accused Greenfield of being a “puppet,” alluding to the fact that she is a Black woman holding a distinguished presidential appointment. GWSCP seemed to suggest that the color of Greenfield’s skin excluded the possibility that she is an agent of her own destiny.

“For as long as we have been here, we have resisted these systems of oppression, but the United States of Amerikkka [sic] has always used Black bodies as puppets to carry out repression and dissent,” the pamphlet said. It also compared Greenfield to Black enslaved persons who had been assigned, against their will, to work as overseers of other enslaved persons on cotton plantations.

Later, according to GWU’s official student newspaper, the group encircled Dean of Student Affairs Colette Coleman, an African American woman, outside the building. One member of the group began “clapping in her face” while others screamed that she should resign.

That same month, at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, anti-Zionists occupying an administrative building verbally abused a Black officer, whom they accused of betraying his racial identity. “Shame on you!” they shouted at him. Someone else said, “You are Black in America, and you’re not standing with the marginalized people of the world. What does that make you?”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Token Ethnic President’: Pro-Hamas Crowd Launches Racist Verbal Assault on Black Americans Over Harris Support first appeared on Algemeiner.com.