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Pro-Palestinian Protesters Meet With Heads of French Football Federation About Canceling Israel-France Match
Paris 2024 Olympics – Football – Men’s Group D – Israel vs Paraguay – Parc des Princes, Paris, France – July 27, 2024. Israel fans outside the stadium before the match. Photo: REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
A group of pro-Palestinian activists met with leaders of the French Football Federation (FFF) in Paris on Tuesday night, a day after they protested inside FFF headquarters and barricaded themselves in the building in protest of the upcoming Israel vs. France soccer match in the UEFA Nations League.
For reportedly more than an hour and a half, roughly 50 demonstrators from a collective called “Stop Genocide” demonstrated inside the FFF building on Monday, chanting in French against Israel and holding signs that urged the federation to cancel the soccer game scheduled for Nov. 14. The activists called on the FFF to boycott the Israeli national soccer team from participating in the match because of alleged “war crimes” committed by the state of Israel.
The demonstrators held signs in French and English that said “kick Israel out,” “Israel Criminal FFF Accomplice,” “Sanctions Against Israel!” “No to the France-Israel match,” “FFF ban Israel,” and “Champions League of genocide.” One activist wore a shirt that featured a red handprint and the words “Stop Genocide.”
Israel’s national soccer team, under coach Ron Ben Shimon, is set to face France in the fifth round of League B in the UEFA Nations League next week at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. The first match between the teams, which ended in a 4-1 defeat for Israel, took place in Hungary. The game on Nov. 14 will take place in France.
“Soldats colons, foutez le camp”
Plusieurs chants entonnés par des militants pro-palestiniens qui sont venus à la @FFF pour demander l’annulation de la prochaine rencontre de foot France-Israël. En cours à #Paris https://t.co/MCaGSkFXCQ pic.twitter.com/0aaXViyA8b
— Off Investigation (@Offinvestigatio) November 4, 2024
En cours à Paris : des militants pro-palestiniens viennent de pénétrer dans les locaux de la @FFF pour demander l’annulation de la prochaine rencontre France-Israël et dénoncer les violations du droit international par
. #Paris #Gaza pic.twitter.com/PQgZUQkzG9
— Off Investigation (@Offinvestigatio) November 4, 2024
On Tuesday night, following the demonstration, a delegation from the “Stop Genocide” collective met with FFF leaders, according to a French-language press release published by the anti-Israel group after the meeting. The group said the federation told them it “understands” how upset the activists feel about the soccer match on Nov. 14 between Israel and France.
“Its leaders even told us that as soon as they had read the draw for the UEFA Nations League competition, they expressed their ‘concerns,’ both in the direction of the European football organization UEFA and the French government,” the collective added. However, the FFF was told by public authorities and UEFA that despite its concerns, it must organize the match. The game will take place as scheduled but with heightened security, the FFF explained.
“[The FFF] publicly stated that the match ‘could’ take place in Saint Denis, at the cost of an ‘extremely reinforced’ police presence. A way of admitting, in his own way, the obvious disturbance of public order that this shameful match represents,” the collective stated.
Nicolas, an activist with the Stop Genocide collective who was present at the FFF meeting, told the French publication Le Parisien there was no way to even move the location of the upcoming soccer match. “They told us that the French team, by contract, had the obligation to play at the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis,” he explained.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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