Arabs | عرب

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6012135

As hundreds of Druze civilians were being massacred in Suwayda in July, a portrait of one of the youngest victims began to circulate widely online: a girl with flowing dark hair and a violin in her hands.

Her name was Ghina Mazen Helal. She was 14 years old.

The Cradle spoke with Ghina’s relatives and friends to investigate the circumstances of her death. Their accounts point to a chilling conclusion: Ghina was deliberately shot by a sniper from Syria’s General Security forces as she tried to escape the besieged city with other women and children. Her uncle and cousin were also killed during the same events.

Contrary to claims by Syrian President and former Al-Qaeda commander, Ahmad al-Sharaa (Abu Mohammad al-Julani), that security forces were deployed to protect civilians, these testimonies and video evidence suggest the opposite: that Sharaa's forces carried out a calculated campaign of mass killing against the Druze population of Suwayda.

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Oman and Qatar already had it banned, hopefully all countries follow.

Some excerpts:

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, Libyan, Arab and European officials told MEE that National Security Adviser Ibrahim Dbeibah, a relative of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, was spearheading the talks despite Palestinians in Gaza flatly rejecting US President Donald Trump's postwar plan for the enclave.

The source said that in an attempt to placate some Libyan leaders, the US was prepared to confer economic support or other benefits in exchange for the country taking in Palestinians.

The idea of Libya serving as a possible new home for expelled Palestinians comes amid reports that Khalifa Haftar, a powerful military leader who also oversees a rival rubber-stamp parliament in the country's east, was offered greater control over the country's oil resources if he agreed to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

"The Palestinians will not be getting any care from those governments, which will push them to the following catastrophe, [which] will lead to a new wave of migration towards the shores of Europe. And this is also a scary thought, firstly because the past decades have proven to us that many of them will only make it halfway through the Mediterranean, like many of those boats that capsized. And those that would eventually get to Europe, I do not think that Europe would be welcoming of another one million Arabs arriving at its shores, as the Syrians who just made similar journeys just few years ago."

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4036679

[...]

Food is so scarce in [Sudanese city of] el-Fasher that prices have soared to the point where money that used to cover a week's worth of meals can now buy only one. International aid organisations have condemned the "calculated use of starvation as a weapon of war".

The hunger crisis is compounded by a surge of cholera sweeping through the squalid camps of those displaced by the fighting.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Thursday said Sudan is experiencing the worst cholera outbreak the country has seen in years, fuelled by the ongoing civil war. There have been nearly 100,000 cases and 2,470 deaths over the past year, it said, with the current epicentre near el-Fasher.

[...]

هذا ليش العلمانية مهمة

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5824383

Mu’arrajat is one of the many Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank that have been demolished or forcibly displaced by Israeli settlers in the last year. Aliya Milhat, a Palestinian journalist and activist, lived in Mu’arrajat with her family until they were forcibly displaced in March.

“My family and I were forced out under gun threats [sic], along with all the families of the village,” Milhat told Truthout. “We cried over our beautiful days there, and we are still crying. We are in shock because we never deserved this. We are peaceful people who love life, simple and educated people, and we never imagined leaving our home this way.”

Residents attempted to return to the village last week, after Israel’s High Court ruled that the Israeli military must facilitate their return, but they were repelled by Israeli settlers who set fire to one of the remaining homes.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5783230

Sectarian violence and massacres against Alawites, Druze, and Christians have skyrocketed since former ISIS commander Ahmad al-Sharaa became president in December

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented the violent deaths of nearly 10,000 people in Syria since the former ISIS commander, Ahmad al-Sharaa, was installed in power in Damascus.

After Sharaa toppled the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December last year, he was widely praised. An article in the UK's Telegraph described his armed group, the former Al-Qaeda affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), as “diversity friendly jihadists.”

Since that time, his HTS-led security forces have gone on a killing spree targeting Syria's minority groups.

SOHR reported on 7 August that “due to ongoing violence and violations by local and foreign actors, coupled with widespread security chaos,” at least 9,889 people have been killed since 8 December 2024, the day Damascus fell.

The SORH said that 7,449 civilians were among the victims, including 396 children and 541 women.

It also stressed that there has been no accountability for killings carried out by members of Syria's security forces and affiliated armed factions, while “in some cases, perpetrators are being covered up and facts are being distorted.”

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5764460

The organisers of the Western Sahara international film festival (FiSahara) have criticised Christopher Nolan for shooting part of his adaptation of the Odyssey in a Western Saharan city that has been under Moroccan occupation for 50 years, warning the move could serve to normalise decades of repression.

The British-American film-maker’s take on Homer’s epic, which stars Matt Damon, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o and Anne Hathaway, is due to be released on 17 July 2026.

According to the Hollywood studio Universal, which is backing the project, the film will be “a mythic action epic shot across the world” made “using brand new Imax film technology”.

But the decision to film in the Western Saharan coastal city of Dakhla has provoked fierce criticism from Sahrawi activists and those who were forced to live under occupation or to go into exile after Morocco annexed the country following the withdrawal of its former colonial power, Spain, in 1976.

The UN classifies Western Sahara as a “non-self-governing territory”. In a report last year, the UN secretary-general noted that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had not been granted access to the territory since 2015, adding that OHCHR “continued to receive allegations relating to human rights violations, including intimidation, surveillance and discrimination against Sahrawi individuals particularly when advocating for self-determination”.

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A UN conference in New York last week, attended by more than 100 countries and co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, aimed to advance momentum for a two-state solution.

Numerous diplomatic sources told MEE the UK was pivotal in pushing for these demands to be included in the statement, as well as the inclusion of strong language condemning the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

It was described as "both historic and unprecedented" by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

He hailed that for "the first time" Arab and Middle Eastern countries "condemn Hamas, condemn 7 October, call for its disarmament, call for its exclusion from any form of participation in the governance of Palestine, and clearly express their intention to maintain normalised relations with Israel in the future and to join Israel and the future state of Palestine in a regional organisation".

Sellouts.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5755793

Four weeks after Israel signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain on 15 September 2020, Tel Aviv’s Higher Planning Council approved 4,948 new settler units in the occupied West Bank. No public fanfare.

No tanks rolled in – just signatures authorizing another layer of occupation. The first wave of expansion advanced quietly, legitimized by the language of “peace.”

This sequencing deliberately reflects the core logic of Zionist expansion: Normalize when the region submits, colonize when the world blinks.

Where possible, the occupation state's army conquers land directly. Where resistance or scrutiny makes that unfeasible, the occupation government builds a web of security pacts, trade routes, and intelligence partnerships that extend its reach without a single uniformed soldier. This dual formula, territorial conquest and hegemonic integration, has underpinned Israeli strategy since 1967, and today stretches unimpeded from the Jordan Valley to the Atlantic coast.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5717213

After the Ansarallah-aligned Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) announced that it would resume attacks on merchant ships linked to companies operating with Israeli ports, tensions in the Red Sea and beyond have reignited, as Tel Aviv's ongoing genocide in Gaza fuels instability across West Asia.

As part of the fourth phase of the blockade, the Yemeni army sank two commercial vessels earlier this month, showcasing not only its enduring capabilities but also the failure of US-led strikes to curb its maritime campaign.

On 6 May, US President Donald Trump claimed, “The Houthis have declared they no longer want to fight. They simply don't want to fight anymore. And we will honor that. We will stop the bombings, and they have surrendered.”

Yemeni officials immediately dismissed the claim, reiterating that Sanaa had not negotiated with Washington nor agreed to halt operations in support of Gaza. The Sanaa government's naval campaign resumed soon after, with fresh attacks targeting Israeli-linked vessels – undermining Trump’s attempt to declare victory.

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