ISRAELI POLICE ASSAULT JEWISH PROTESTER

For decades, Israel has cast itself as representing all Jews.

While the media just started covering it, a section of Israeli society, especially Haredi Jews, have opposed Israel's military operation that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians since 7 October. For years, these ultra-orthodox Jews have called for a free Palestine. The state's response has been violent, as exemplified in this clip—one of many online—of militarised Israeli police assaulting protesting Haredi Jews.

Despite this and an Israel official admitting Israel has been sterilising Ethiopian Jews, the West insists Israel is the 'only democracy in the Middle East.'

Continued…. The United States, Canada and some European countries have used that argument to provide Israel with funds, arms, and diplomatic cover in the form of ceasefire resolution vetoes at the United Nations over the past almost six months.

Leaders such as US President Joe Biden have referred to Israel as a Western outpost or 'beachhead' in West Asia. We also cannot forget that immediately after 7 October, Israel began launching attacks into neighbours Jordan and Lebanon under the guise of rooting out militant group H*m*s.

While some say Israel is the only safe home for Jews, this video shows US/EU-backed Israel will assault some of its own population to maintain its settler-colonial project.

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MOTHER OF THE NATION

On 2nd April 2018, Winnie Mandela breathed her last. Many South Africans remember the radical anti-apartheid activist as the mother of the nation. Today, we take a few moments to remember her efforts towards the emancipation of her people and why she is still referred to as the mother of the nation.

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Continued….The 81-year-old belonged to the ANC for more than six decades, but his relations with them have soured. He now openly supports MK ahead of the May 29th general elections.

According to opinion polls, the new party is likely to capture ANC votes, especially in two populous regions. Gauteng province is the country's economic centre, and KwaZulu Natal is Zuma's home province.

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Over sixty years late, France has finally condemned the massacre its police inflicted on Algerian protesters in Paris in 1961.

On March 28th, the country’s parliament voted to recognise what happened as a crime tantamount to “bloody and murderous repression” - and called for an official commemoration of the atrocity, which the authorities covered up for decades. Alas, the resolution is non-binding.

In 1961, around 30,000 Algerians took to the streets of Paris to protest colonial rule in their homeland. At that time, the Algerian National Liberation Front had been fighting against French colonial forces for seven years. In response, French police killed possibly hundreds of Algerian anti-colonial protesters. A document from the Parisian archives notes that:

“There were a lot of bodies. Some with the skulls crushed, others with shotguns wounds.”

Continued….. Over 110 bodies were reportedly discovered in the River Seine over the course of the following weeks. Graffiti scrawled along the Seine embankment appeared afterwards, reading, “Algerians are drowned here.”

France has stubbornly refused to apologise for colonial violence in Algeria, where it ruled with an iron fist for 132 years. French colonial forces were notorious for their use of torture during Algeria’s war for independence.

In 2020, 24 skulls of 19th-century Algerian freedom fighters were sent back to Algeria after having been kept in a French museum for over 100 years. The Musée de l’Homme in Paris still possesses 18,000 skulls of various origins, mostly tied to French-colonialism.

French politicians continue to debate whether or not October 17th, the date of the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerians, should be an officially recognised memorial date.

What do you think?

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TUNISIANS DEMAND GAZA CEASEFIRE

Over a thousand Tunisians have taken to the streets, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The demonstration, on March 30th, coincided with Palestinian Land Day commemorating a brutal crackdown by Israel forces 48 years ago.

The UN Security Council recently voted for a halt in the fighting. However, Israel continues its bombardment of the Strip and the Washington Post reports the US has sent another multi-billion dollar consignment of weapons to Tel Aviv.

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One of Ghana’s most influential traditional spiritual leaders has come under fire, following his marriage to a 12-year-old girl. The 63-year-old priest, Nuumo Borketey Laweh Tsuru XXXIII, wedded the child in a customary ceremony. The incident has prompted loud criticism in the country, where the age of consent is 18 - and child marriage is actually illegal. According to UNICEF data, Ghana is currently home to over two-million child brides, with one-in-five women aged 20 to 24 married before the age of 18. What’s your reaction?

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WE REACT: BLACK UK MP SILENCED IN DEBATE ON HER ABUSE

Imagine being the subject of a debate about the racist abuse you’d received - without being allowed to participate in that debate.

That was the recent experience of UK MP Diane Abbott, who tried to speak 46 times during Prime Minster’s Questions - after a donor to the ruling Conservative Party said she made him want to “hate all Black people” and that she “should be shot.”

The prime minster and the leader of the opposition were each given chances to comment - and tried to make political capital out of those chances - but the House Speaker never gave Abbott herself the chance to let parliament hear her views.

It all smacks of systemic racism and sexism to us. Here’s our reaction. What’s yours?

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CONGRESSMAN LIVID U.S. LOSING COSTLY NIGER BASE

Niger’s new assertiveness is not going down well in the US Congress.

Last month, Niamey announced the end of military cooperation with Washington - and in this clip, you can see how Republican US Congressman Matt Gaetz took the news. He lets rip his feelings at Commander General Michael Langley, the head of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Gaetz points out that the US invested $500 million in Niger. According to investigative journalist Nick Turse, since 2016, it’s splashed out more than $250 million on Air Base 201 in the city of Agadez alone. The Agadez site - a drone base - is the biggest US military complex in Africa after Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti.

Continued…. Niger kicking out the Americans comes on the back of a wave of anti-imperialist sentiment in the Sahel. Niamey, along with fellow Pan-African neighbours and allies Burkina Faso and Mali, has already said ‘au revoir’ to French troops. Will Ouagadougou and Bamako now also serve notice to the US?

What would you like to see happen?

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GUYANA’S PREZ SCHOOLS ARROGANT BBC ON CLIMATE CHANGE

The West has used the Climate Crisis to hamper the development of the Global South. In this now viral clip, Guyana’s president, Irfaan Ali, gives a BBC reporter a glorious lesson in hypocrisy after the latter tries to suggest Georgetown should put the brakes on a project that will earn it an estimated $150 billion in oil revenues over a decade.

The West has long benefitted from pollution, using ‘dirty energy’ to industrialise. Kicking away the ladder, the West now cracks down on energy sources like coal and oil, necessary for the development of currently non-existent industries in places like Guyana.

Continued…Worse still, communities in the Global South are currently made to pay the highest price for climate change. Apart from indigenous livelihoods such as agriculture and pastoralism coming under threat from climate change, communities are now being displaced from their lands in the name of dubious ‘solutions’ such as carbon credits. This conveniently neglects the fact that indigenous communities have been historical guardians of the ecosystem. This is the case in Kenya, where a conservancy with links to the former British colonial government now controls close to 10% of Kenya’s land area. The Maasai are being evicted in northern Tanzania, while Liberia, a few months back, signed a deal with UAE-owned Blue Carbon to control close to 10% of Liberia’s land area.

There is also the issue of exploitation - and the ensuing infringement on sovereignty. For example, in Guyana, ExxonMobil is accused of using its influence and economic clout to twist deals in its favour. The country gets to keep just 52% of the revenues from an off-shore oil venture with the US multinational - losing out on an estimated $55 billion. (In other countries where Exxon operates, similar deals have seen the government take home 65%-85%). Further, the oil giant is not responsible for any cleanup or compensation costs in case of oil spills - that bill would be transferred to the Guyanese people.

This exchange between Guyana’s President Ali and Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur is quite something. Let us know your reactions in the comments.

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WANGARI MAATHAI ON AFRICA’S MICRO NATIONS

On 1 April, the world commemorated Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai’s 84th birthday.

Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an organisation that championed tree planting, environmental conservation and women’s rights.

In 1989, the government of Daniel Moi, who exerted control over the judiciary and turned Kenya into a one-party state, proposed erecting a British-designed and -owned 60-storey glass skyscraper in Uhuru Park, a popular recreational spot in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi. Maathai’s protests were enough to force the government to relent. But that did not come before the government referred to her as a ‘crazy woman’ who, in Moi’s words, should be a proper African woman who respects men and stays quiet.

Maathai developed an environmental consciousness through her ethnic community, the Kikuyu, who revered nature and, therefore, believed in conserving the environment.

Continued…. To the Kikuyu, trees are holy and shouldn’t be cut down. Conserving trees reduces landslides and increases access to underground water.

Maathai also became the first woman to receive a doctoral degree in Kenya, where she served in the parliament and, later, as a minister. Maathai went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

In this clip from an unknown date, Maathai said that before European colonisers arrived in Africa to extract resources, African communities governed themselves, functioned like a well-oiled machine, and economic and social affairs were in the hands of the people. Before colonialism, people, such as the Kush in the Nile River Valley and the Songhai in West Africa, built civilisations on the continent that prioritised nature. Maathai articulated in this clip that colonial oppressors only had one way to subjugate and gain control: Through a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy that would ease colonial extraction. She also replaced the word ‘tribe’ with ‘micro-nation’ to describe our people’s ethnic groups.

Maathai became an ancestor on 25 September 2011. We honour and remember her great works as we celebrate her in a week when she would have turned 84. Rest in power, legend.

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RAMADAN IN WAR-TORN EAST DRC

Conflict impacts every aspect of life - including religious observances. Millions of Congolese have been internally displaced by the fighting in the east, including Muslims - who, amid a humanitarian catastrophe, are struggling through the holy month of Ramadan. This is supposed to be a time of fasting, but with food anyway scarce, ‘breaking’ the fast in the mornings and evenings, as is traditional, is barely an option. Muslims at an overcrowded camp in Goma shared their ordeal.

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DOCTOR: ISRAEL USES H*M*S AS EXCUSE TO TARGET HOSPITALS

A spit-fire response!

On Sky News, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive-care physician with Doctors Without Borders, recently told Sky News presenter Kamali Melbourne that H*m*s militants have not been present at the al-Shifa Hospital complex, the Gaza Strip’s largest healthcare facility. She added that Israeli military forces have ‘systematically targeted’ hospital workers and their attacks have reduced the complex to rubble.

Israel has been striking hospitals across the enclave for almost six months since 7 October. Israel often claimed that H*m*s militants were hiding underneath the al-Shifa complex, which international experts and doctors have refuted and Israel has never proven. Moreover, witness accounts have accused Israeli military forces of killing children, r*ping women before killing them, and murdering doctors in al-Shifa Hospital.

Continued….International experts and doctors have called out an Israeli pattern of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system through airstrikes and by besieging facilities in the war-torn enclave, such as al-Aqsa Hospital. The UN reports only about 24 per cent of healthcare facilities function. Shortages in medical equipment have also stressed the healthcare system.

Israel has also attempted to dismantle the UN’s operations in the Gaza Strip. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has provided aid since 1950. Tel Aviv also killed a group of seven food-aid workers for the nonprofit World Central Kitchen in the city of Deir Al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. The UN has said famine is ‘imminent’ by the month of May for Palestinians who remain in the northern Gaza Strip.

Since 7 October, Israel’s military operation and blockade have killed close to 33,000 Palestinians. This comes despite an International Court of Justice ruling in January that Israel must prevent genocidal acts and a recent UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, but only during Ramadan.

Will the international community ever hold Israel accountable for mounting evidence of crimes?

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MADRID POLICE ATTACK UNARMED BLACK MEN

A disturbing video has emerged in Spain showing two police officers in Madrid’s Lavapiés neighbourhood using brutal force on two unarmed Black men. One is pinned down in a chokehold and is hit with a baton while another man nearby is punched.

Police justified the violence by claiming the men had been arrested for ‘undermining’ authority and that one officer was injured. They also claim drugs were found on one of the men during the incident on Friday, 29th March. Spain’s interior ministry says it will investigate what happened after the footage went viral on social media and sparked outrage.

Anti-racism groups have condemned it as a typical example of police behaviour. Leftist politicians have called the violence unacceptable.

On Sunday, hundreds of activists took to the streets of Lavapiés calling for an end to police harassment against Blacks migrants in their neighbourhood.

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