
South Africa urges more countries to stand up to Israel's ‘genocidal activities'
Pretoria has been leading calls against Israel's action in Gaza, bringing a case before the International Court of Justice in December 2023, arguing that its war in the territory amounted to genocide.
As some of Israel's allies 'are now also saying, no, this can't continue, it means that it is bringing us closer and closer to the Israel regime to stop the genocidal activities,' Lamola said.
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Arab News
5 hours ago
- Arab News
Thousands protest in Tel Aviv against Israeli govt move to expand Gaza war
TEL AVIV: Thousands took to the streets in Israel's Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for an end to the war in Gaza, a day after the government vowed to expand the conflict and capture Gaza City. MARCH FOR THE KIDNAPPED - TEL AVIV Crowds are in the streets of Tel Aviv tonight, marching for the return of those still held captive. Banners, chants, and an unmissable message: bring them home. The march is part of ongoing pressure on Israel's leadership to secure… — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 9, 2025 Demonstrators waved signs and held up pictures of hostages still held captive in the Palestinian territory as they called on the government to secure their release.


Arab News
5 hours ago
- Arab News
The US politicians who fight harder for Israel than for their own people
Why do so many American politicians love Israel more than they love their own country? This is a fair question to ask, considering that they often spend more time worrying about Israel than they do about their own citizens. Nearly 100,000 Americans live in Israel as 'dual citizens.' More disconcertingly, nearly 24,000 Americans serve in the Israeli army, yet have never served in the US military. Rather than raising concerns about this conflicting allegiance — you cannot have a genuine allegiance to the US and at the same time to the foreign country of Israel — this fact has instead prompted Republican and Democratic members of Congress to propose a law that would benefit those Americans who choose to fight for Israel. The proposed law, House Resolution 8445, which was introduced in May 2024 by members of Congress Guy Reschenthaler and Max Miller, would give same benefits granted to Americans who serve in the US Military to those who serve in the Israel Defense Forces. This is one of the many contradictions in how the US provides foreign aid and benefits to foreign countries that Republican member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene believes should be stopped in favor of addressing the needs of Americans who live in and serve the US. One factor driving this 'Israel-over-America' attitude is the enormous amount of money that powerful pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee gives to politicians who are in or running for office and do not question Israel's often reckless policies. Last year, AIPAC's top-18 affiliated political action committees donated $5.4 million to Democrats and Republicans who already hold office. Another factor is the fact that since the 1920s, the mainstream American news media has been biased in its coverage of Jewish settlers in Palestine, up until 1948, and then in Israel after it was founded. Why? Because many of America's most prominent journalists were Jewish and they understood the Jewish narrative far better than the Arab and Palestinian narrative. In fact, it was not until the late 1980s that America started to see some news reporting that portrayed the Israel-Palestine conflict in a more balanced and fair manner. Still, despite the slow increase in the numbers of Arabs entering journalism over the past two decades, the growing influence of the Arab world's news media, and the expansion of the English-language Arab media, the pro-Israel narrative continues to dominate US media, which in turns determines what Americans actually know about what is happening in Palestine and the wider Middle East. A good example of this bias is the way in which the vast majority of mainstream American news media have refrained from publishing front-page photographs of the effects of the Israeli carnage in Gaza on the Palestinians living there, including the devastating effects on the health of the population, including children. Yet the mainstream American news media does not hesitate to run pictures of Israeli hostages who are in a state of extreme physical deterioration, as they did this week with a photograph of Evyatar David, an Israeli captured by Hamas during the group's violent attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. He was described as having a 'frail body' and 'hollow eyes,' his skeletal bones showing through his skin, having lost half his weight. His relatives asserted that he had been tortured, and the photograph ran on the front pages of several American newspapers, countering the images on social media, ignored by those newspapers, of frail, starving Palestinian adults and children. An example of the political bias in the US was on full display this week when Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders visited Israel, along with other American politicians including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. She was elected in 2023 and is the daughter of the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who himself served as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. Huckabee Sanders spends more time defending Israel than she does fighting for the rights of people in her own state, which ranks as about the 47th worst state in the country according to most national evaluations. Both she and her father have an evangelical Christian fixation on Israel, which basically means, many critics argue, that they consider this foreign nation, which receives more US foreign aid than any other country, is just as, or even more, important than America. Those critics have a great argument. Arkansas ranks 37th in the country in terms of gross domestic product and 47th in terms of per capita income of about $57,000, two important measures that have pushed the state down to the bottom five in overall rankings among the 50 US states. With the support of Huckabee Sanders, annual US foreign aid to Israel last year reached $18 billion, which is significantly more than the $13.6 billion the Federal government gave to Arkansas last year. Even more significant is the fact that Israel does not really need that money. Israel ranks as the 28th richest out of 195 nations, based on per capita income, and does not need the aid money to feed its people or provide healthcare; it is being used mainly to fund its war machine in Gaza. Taylor Greene has demanded that the money given to Israel, and all foreign countries, instead be used to help needy Americans. Yet despite these economic and poverty discrepancies, Huckabee Sanders and her father spend much of their time defending Israel. As noted, this week she traveled to Israel where she spent time in meetings with her ambassador father and leaders of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been accused of genocide and war crimes because of his excessive and violent military policies in the Gaza Strip over the past two years, which have claimed the lives of more than 60,000 Palestinians, including at least 20,000 women and children. While in Israel with Speaker Johnson and other Republican members of Congress, Huckabee Sanders bragged that she is a signatory to the 'Recognizing Judea-Samaria Act,' which calls for the US government to use the name 'Judea and Samaria' when referring to the occupied West Bank, and rejects the identification of non-Jewish Palestinians who live there. Huckabee Sanders refers to the use of the name 'West Bank' as part of 'the politically motivated narratives that attempt to delegitimize Israel's presence in their homeland.' The proposed law is being pushed at both federal and the state levels to further undermine any effort to educate Americans about the history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and to prevent a two-state solution, which is something Netanyahu and his right-wing political allies oppose. Until the American public can hear about both sides of the conflict equally and fairly, their leaders will continue to fund Israel's war crimes, and their money will continue to be used to prevent peace in the Middle East. • Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist. He can be reached on his personal website at X: @RayHanania


Arab News
6 hours ago
- Arab News
Greece air-drops food aid over Gaza: PM
ATHENS: Greece on Saturday joined EU countries in dropping food aid over Gaza, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said.'This morning, two aircraft of the Hellenic Air Force dropped 8.5 tons of essential food supplies in areas of Gaza,' Mitsotakis said on Facebook.'The operation was organized in collaboration with countries from the European Union and the Middle East, aiming to support the basic needs of people in the afflicted region.''Greece will continue to undertake initiatives for the immediate cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages, and the unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza. It is the duty of all of us to put an end to human suffering immediately,' he countries including Britain, France, and Spain have recently partnered with Middle Eastern nations to deliver humanitarian supplies by air to the Palestinian the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees Philippe Lazzarini has warned that airdrops alone would not avert the worsening UN estimates that Gaza needs at least 600 trucks of aid per day to meet residents' basic has escalated about the situation in the Gaza Strip after more than 21 months of war, which started after Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a deadly attack against Israel in October Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces mounting pressure to secure a ceasefire to bring the territory's more than two million people back from the brink of famine and free the hostages held by Palestinian early Friday, the Israeli security cabinet approved plans to launch major operations to seize Gaza City, triggering a wave of outrage across the globe.