Calling the Faithful to Freedom!

Not satisfied with classifying singing Palestinian songs as a form of terrorism within its own borders, Israel is “examining the possibility of calling for the cancelation of all of Assaf’s events in the United Arab Emirates”: Israel to Prevent Artist Mohammed Assaf from Visiting Palestine (Palestine Chronicle) “Al-Aqsa Mosque shall be entered through the gate…

Existing law forbidding anyone from knowingly contacting the agent of a foreign state or terrorist organization without explanation would be expanded to impose a 15-year sentence on contact with any “foreign political entity,” including human rights organizations: New Israeli Legislation to Criminalize Anti Occupation Human Rights Work (Al-Haq) Feeling “discriminated against by the politicians and…

By amending its rape laws to punish “anyone convicted of raping a woman or child … with ‘death or rigorous imprisonment for life’” Bangladesh joins four Muslim countries and China in taking a hard line against the most brutal and humiliating crime of aggression: From Bangladesh to Iran, Countries Where Rape Carries the Death Penalty…

Critics called the BJP-led government imposition of a “property tax in the Union Territory … ‘despotic and anarchic rule’ aimed to ‘harass’ the people of Kashmir economically”: ‘Despotic, Harrassing’: Mainstream Parties Slam Property Tax Imposition (Kashmir Observer) By refusing to accept that a truly secular government would not engage “in what is essentially a community’s…

The Lancet took down a letter noting that “poverty, military occupation, discrimination and institutionalized oppression” turned the Covid-19 outbreak in Gaza into “a preventable biosocial injustice rooted in decades of Israeli oppression” three days after publication: The Lancet Censors Gaza Health Letter After Pro-Israel Pressure (Electronic Intifada) A survey of articles published about Palestinians in…

“While some conservatives warn that a “soft-totalitarianism” of progressive intolerance is growing in the U.S., when it comes to Israel-Palestine, full-blown authoritarian coercion, like the blacklisting carried out by Canary Mission, is already well entrenched”: The Real Cancel Culture: Pro-Israel Blacklists (The Intercept) “Twenty scholars—including eight women” bring “collective analytical sensibility combined with academic rigour”…

Israeli murdered an unarmed autistic man and made 442 people homeless during the pandemic, demolishing “389 … homes and other structures in the West Bank, the majority for lacking building permits that Israeli authorities make virtually impossible to obtain”: Israel’s Systematic Repression of Palestinians Continues During Pandemic (Human Rights Watch) Over one “thousand academics and…

Erdogan sides with Azerbaijan against Armenia “to boost his credentials with nationalists and distract from perpetual economic crisis at home” while Iran whose Azerbaijani community may be up to one fourth of its the population take a pragmatic approach: Perspectives | While Turkey Encourages Karabakh Violence, Iran Fears Domestic Strife (Eurasia) “UAE served as the…

Two SFSU professors expect the university to “seriously and publicly challenge Zoom’s attempt to control higher education and the content of our curriculum and classrooms”: YouTube, Zoom and Facebook Censor Leila Khaled for Israel (Electronic Intifada) Mohammed Ali al-Houthi says that “the word terrorism is a floating term that the United States could not define”…