[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Sharma Ji]

Time for a Mohammed remix ?



@Mainerik

 

[Saif]

Israeli forces boarded Gaza-bound boat carrying Greta Thunberg, says Aid group

The organisers of a Gaza-bound aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists said Israeli forces intercepted the vessel on Monday, after Israel vowed to prevent it from reaching the Palestinian territory.

en.prothomalo.com

Israeli forces boarded Gaza-bound boat carrying Greta Thunberg, says Aid group
AFP Cairo
Published: 09 Jun 2025, 09: 53

The organisers of a Gaza-bound aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists said Israeli forces intercepted the vessel on 9 June 2025. Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC)

The organisers of a Gaza-bound aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists said Israeli forces intercepted the vessel on Monday, after Israel vowed to prevent it from reaching the Palestinian territory.

The Madleen aimed to deliver aid and challenge Israel's decades-long naval blockade of Gaza.

AFP lost contact with the activists onboard early Monday morning after the organisers said alarms sounded and life jackets were being prepared for a possible interception.

"Connection has been lost on the 'Madleen'. Israeli army have boarded the vessel," the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the activist group operating the vessel, posted on Telegram. It added that the passengers had been "kidnapped" by Israeli forces.

The activist group posted a series of pre-recorded videos from those onboard, including one from Thunberg.

"If you see this video we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters," she said.

Mahmud Abu-Odeh, a Germany-based press officer with the coalition, told AFP that "the activists seemed to be arrested".

Defence Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered Israel's army to stop the ship from reaching Gaza or violating a blockade he described as needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the activists' boat was instructed to change course as it approached "a restricted area" early Monday. About an hour later, it said the boat was being towed to Israeli shores.

"The passengers are expected to return to their home countries," the ministry wrote on social media.

"The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the 'celebrities' will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels," it added.

Swedish climate campaigner Thunberg is among a multi-national group of activists aboard the Madleen, which departed from Italy on 1 June to raise awareness about the humanitarian plight in Gaza.

The United Nations has repeatedly warned of famine, malnutrition and disease throughout the 21 months of the Israel-Hamas war.​

 

[Saif]

Britain sanctions Israeli far-right ministers over Gaza comments

Britain and other allies imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, on Tuesday over "their repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities", the UK's foreign ministry said. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway joined Britain

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Britain sanctions Israeli far-right ministers over Gaza comments

REUTERS
Published :
Jun 10, 2025 22:27
Updated :
Jun 10, 2025 22:27

Britain and other allies imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, on Tuesday over "their repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities", the UK's foreign ministry said.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway joined Britain in freezing the assets and imposing travel bans on Israel's national security minister Ben-Gvir - a West Bank settler - and finance minister Smotrich.

"Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable," British foreign minister David Lammy, along with the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said in a joint statement.

"This is why we have taken action now to hold those responsible to account."

Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said the move was "outrageous" and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the "unacceptable decision".

Smotrich, speaking at the inauguration of a new settlement in the Hebron Hills, spoke of "contempt" for Britain's move.

"Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we cannot do it again. We are determined God willing to continue building."

Britain, like other European countries, has been increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to end the blockade on aid into Gaza, where international experts have said famine is imminent.

In Tuesday's joint statement, allies tried to soften the blow by saying Britain reiterated its commitment to continuing "a strong friendship with the people of Israel based on shared ties, values and commitment to [its] security and future".

"We will strive to achieve an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the immediate release of the remaining hostages by Hamas which can have no future role in the governance of Gaza, a surge in aid and a path to a two-state solution," the statement said.​

 

[Saif]

Macron calls for release of Gaza activists as thousands demonstrate

Tens of thousands of people staged rallies after Israel stopped the boat, the Madleen, that was carrying 12 activists.

en.prothomalo.com

Macron calls for release of Gaza activists as thousands demonstrate

AFP Nice, France
Published: 10 Jun 2025, 08: 40

Protestors hold signs and a Palestinian flag as they attend a demonstration to show their support for activists aboard a boat stopped by Israeli forces enroute to deliver aid to Gaza, in Toulouse, south-western France on June 9, 2025. AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Israel to quickly free activists, including Greta Thunberg, on a boat that was seized Monday as it headed for Gaza in an operation that sparked angry protests in several European cities.

Tens of thousands of people staged rallies after Israel stopped the boat, the Madleen, that was carrying 12 activists.

In France, rallies in Paris and at least five other cities were called by left wing parties. Jean-Luc Melenchon, head of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, called the seizure of the Gaza boat by the Israeli military “international piracy”.

In Switzerland, several hundred people blocked train stations in Geneva and Lausanne to protest Israel’s military operations in Gaza, media reports said.

Some 300 protesters carrying Palestinian flags occupied two tracks at Geneva’s main station for about an hour, leading to delays and cancellations, the reports said. A similar protest was staged in nearby Lausanne where police cleared the tracks.

Macron meanwhile urged the immediate liberation of French nationals among the 12 activists on the vessel.

Macron had “requested that the six French nationals be allowed to return to France as soon as possible,” his office said.

Protestors hold signs and a Palestinian flag as they attend a demonstration to show their support for activists aboard a boat stopped by Israeli forces enroute to deliver aid to Gaza, in Toulouse, south-western France on June 9, 2025 AFP

France was “vigilant” and “stands by all its nationals when they are in danger,” he added. The French government had also called on Israel to ensure the “protection” of the activists. Macron also called the humanitarian blockade of Gaza “a scandal” and a “disgrace”.

Israel’s foreign ministry said earlier that “all the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed”, and it expected the activists to return to their home countries.

Israel has virtually sealed off Gaza as part of its military operation in the Palestinian territory since the Hamas militant group’s attacks on Israel on 7 October, 2023.​

 

[Saif]

Last days of Gaza

THIS is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets...

www.newagebd.net

Last days of Gaza
12 June, 2025, 00:00

The genocide is almost complete. When it is concluded it will have exposed the moral bankruptcy of western civilisation, writes Chris Hedges

THIS is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets.

They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.

In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, allegedly funded by Israel’s ministry of defence and the Mossad, is weaponising starvation.

It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.

What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution.

We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.

I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.

We — full participants in this genocide — will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter.

The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.

There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralysed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyse us. Who is not traumatised? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.

I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralysed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.

This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back.

And how will we remember? By not remembering.

Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended.

A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.

In his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad writes: ‘Should a drone vaporise some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathisers, ostracised, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them.

‘For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at.’

You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback.

The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp.

‘It’s not a decision,’ Engel explained years later. ‘You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, “Let us to do, and go and do it.” And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, “That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.”’

Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilisation, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?

What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the global south?

It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.

‘To preserve the values of the civilised world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,’ El Akkad writes: ‘To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones.

‘To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilised world might win.’

There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardising their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs.

They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them.

At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians.

ScheerPost.com, June 10. Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for the New York Times.​