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Erdogan Attacks US and Britain for Striking Houthis, Says Turkey Providing Evidence to ICJ Against Israel
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan attends the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 11, 2023. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday lambasted the US and Britain for launching military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, continuing his harsh anti-Western rhetoric since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
“All that has been done is a disproportionate use of force,” Erdogan said after Friday prayers in Istanbul, referring to the strikes in Yemen. “At the moment, they are trying to turn the Red Sea into a sea of blood and Yemen, with the Houthis and by using all of its force, says it is and will give the necessary response in the region to the United States, Britain.”
The US and Britain overnight launched dozens of air strikes across Yemen in retaliation against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control much of the country including the capital, for attacks on Red Sea shipping. Houthi forces have carried out several attacks on ships heading to Israel to support the Palestinians since the eruption of the war in Gaza triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in southern Israel.
The rebel movement — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — has also claimed responsibility for attempted drone and missile strikes targeting Israel itself.
As a result of the Red Sea attacks, a number of major shipping lines have announced they would forgo the vital trade route and instead opt for a longer, pricier journey around Africa.
Turkey, a NATO member, has previously condemned Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and supported UN-led talks between the Houthi rebels and Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
Nonetheless, Erdogan said Turkey heard from various channels that the Houthis were conducting a “very successful defense, response” against the US and Britain, adding that Iran was looking at “how it can protect itself against all that is happening.”
Erdogan’s comments were the latest in a string of remarks against Western countries, who he has lambasted for supporting Israel in its defensive war against Hamas following the Palestinian terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel communities.
“Those who try to skip over the deaths of all those innocent people by using the excuse of Hamas have nothing left to say to humanity,” he said last month, referring to Western powers, which he called “blind and deaf.”
In a separate development on Friday, the Turkish leader said his country was providing documents to support South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with committing genocide in Gaza.
“I believe Israel will be convicted there. We believe in the justice of the International Court of Justice,” Erdogan told reporters, adding that Turkey would continue to provide documents, mostly visuals, on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Israeli officials have strongly condemned the ICJ proceedings, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Erdogan has been one of Israel’s harshest critics since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, repeatedly attacking the Jewish state. Last month, he accused Israel of operating “Nazi” concentration camps and compared his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.
Weeks earlier, Erdogan said that Netanyahu was a “butcher” who would be tried as a “war criminal” over Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza. He has also called Israel a “terror state.”
Turkey hosts senior Hamas officials and, together with Iran and Qatar, has provided a large portion of the Palestinian terror group’s budget.
Several Western and Arab states designate Hamas, an offshoot of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, as a terror group.
However, Erdogan has defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
Israel withdrew all its troops and civilian settlers from Gaza in 2005.
Turkey has ridden a wave of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Among the legislative proposals currently being debated by the Turkish parliament is a ban on individuals from holding joint Turkish and Israeli citizenship and another on the sale of land in Northern Cyprus — illegally occupied by Turkey since 1974 — to “Jews and Israelis.”
The post Erdogan Attacks US and Britain for Striking Houthis, Says Turkey Providing Evidence to ICJ Against Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it
The group said members were going to be volunteering on an urgent food security issue instead.
The post Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
Dutch police said on Sunday that they have identified and are investigating 45 suspects of whom they have images in connection to the violent attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam earlier this month.
“Because of the seriousness of the crimes, but also because of the social impact, we immediately scaled up to a special investigation team,” Dutch police chief Janny Knol said in a statement.
All 45 suspects are being probed for serious violent crimes, according to Dutch media. Nine of them have been arrested so far and remain in police custody, authorities said on Sunday, including a suspect who reported to police on Saturday night after his unblurred photo was released to the public.
On Friday, police said they were investigating 29 more suspects, including two who ultimately turned themselves in and have been arrested. Unblurred photos of the some of the other suspects have been online since Friday night and more images of suspects will be released soon, according to a police spokesperson cited by the NL Times.
Following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian gangs violently attacked Israelis who attended the soccer game. The premeditated and coordinated attack took place in various parts of the city late that night and into the early hours of Nov. 8. Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, run over by cars, assaulted, and taunted with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Police are “looking at all crimes committed in the run-up to the game and in its aftermath,” Knol said after the violence erupted in the Dutch capital.
A Dutch court last week arraigned eight suspects, including minors, who were arrested in connection to the violent attack in Amsterdam, the NL Times reported. Those suspects include a 21-year-old man from Almelo, a city in eastern Netherlands; a 37-year-old man from Amsterdam suspected of pulling someone off his bicycle; two men, ages 19 and 21, who were arrested over the weekend; and two 26-year-old men, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht, who are suspected of publishing posts on social media that incited violence against the Israeli soccer fans.
The post Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027
A statue of the school’s mascot, “Jumbo,” stands on the campus of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 27, 2017. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Tufts University in Massachusetts has extended a suspension of its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter until January 2027, a school spokesman confirmed with The Algemeiner on Monday.
Tufts first temporarily deactivated the group in October, citing “multiple violations of university policies,” including SJP’s promoting violence and calling on peers to participate. According to a disciplinary letter shared by SJP, days ahead of a celebratory demonstration it planned for the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the group posted a picture of “individuals with assault rifles, instructing students to ‘Join the Student Intifada’ and to ‘escalate’” during its event. The inciting content left school officials “no choice but to impose interim suspension,” the university said in the letter.
SJP has said that the university’s adding 27 months to its initial suspension represents “an attempt to fracture the strength of our movement” and accused it of “bankrolling” conflicts in the Middle East. Additionally, in a gesture which aimed, unsuccessfully, to turn the tables on Tufts, SJP proclaimed its “formal break and disaffiliation from tufts university [sic].”
It continued, “As the zionist [sic] genocide of Palestine and Lebanon has escalated over the past year, tufts [sic] in turn has sought to repress our solidarity movement,” the group charged. “The administration has threatened to suspend individuals over Instagram posts and vigils …We are done justifying our action against this university’s role in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We will not apologize.”
Tufts University spokesman Patrick Collins defended the school’s decision in a lengthy statement shared with The Algemeiner. It explained that SJP has violated nearly a dozen prohibitions on gambling, communicating violent threats, and unauthorized assembly.
“The complaint is now resolved, resulting in a disciplinary suspension that takes into account the group’s actions, their impact on other community members, the group’s repeated refusal to cooperate with university policies and expectations, and its refusal to follow through on sanctions arising from previous conduct policy violations,” Collins wrote. “The suspension also follows multiple attempts over the last year by the university’s student life staff and other administrators to work and communicate with SJP and its leaders, who have rejected these efforts.”
Collins noted that SJP can apply for re-recognition by the university, pending its compliance with certain “terms,” which include observing its suspension, something it has failed to do so far. If it is reinstated by the university, SJP will be placed on a “one-year probationary period,” during which school officials will determine if it has truly reformed. He added that what SJP is experiencing is not, as the group has maintained, personal or ideological.
“The Student Code of Conduct for the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering considers and addresses student and student organization behavior regardless of their viewpoints,” he continued. “Individuals and groups that violate university policies face a range of disciplinary actions, up to and including suspension or expulsion from the university for individuals, and suspension or permanent revocation of university recognition for student organizations.”
SJP’s suspension comes amid concern that it and similar pro-Hamas organizations are using college campuses as recruiting grounds for domestic terrorist operations.
“The movement contains militant elements pushing it toward a wider, more severe campaign focused on property destruction and violence properly described as domestic terrorism,” Capital Research Center researcher Ryan Mauro wrote in a groundbreaking report, titled “Marching Toward Violence: The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement,” which was published last week. “It demands the ‘dismantlement’ of America’s ‘colonialist,’ ‘imperialist,’ or ‘capitalist,’ system, often calling for the US to be abolished as a country.”
Drawing on statements issued and actions taken by SJP and its collaborators, Mauro made the case that toolkits published by SJP herald Hamas for perpetrating mass casualties of civilians; SJP has endorsed Iran’s attacks on Israel as well as its stated intention to overturn the US-led world order; and other groups under its umbrella have called on followers to “Bring the Intifada Home.” Such activities, the report explained, accelerated after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, which pro-Hamas groups perceived as an inflection point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an opportunity. By flooding the internet and college campuses with agitprop and staging events — protests or vandalisms — they hope to manufacture a critical mass of youth support for their ideas, thus creating an army of revolutionaries willing to adopt Hamas’s aims as their own.
“Groups in the pro-terrorism, anti-Israel movement co-exist as our concentric circles of increasing malevolence,” Mauro explained. “Groups in the outermost circle avoid risks as they recruit new protest members and seek to integrate as many political causes as possible under the anti-Israel umbrella … Some militants aspire to incorporate the campaign into a broader wear on law enforcement if not an insurgency.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Tufts University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Until 2027 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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