Take a close listen to this interview with someone from Hamas. There’s no talk from him about how Israel does not have a right to exist; nor is there any mention of pushing the Israelis into the sea or otherwise killing any and all Israelis. Rather what you do hear is a rational approach to occupation, to wit, that Palestinians want their sovereignty to be respected and an end to the embargo so that people of Gaza can live like human beings something all people are entitled and deserve.
It’s news because its revelatory but it’s not news because it happens time and time again between Israel and its interaction with its neighbors. The latest Gaza incursion was a bloodfest which made it a war crime. Max Blumenthal writes about that conclusively here.
Dan Cohen and I conducted an interview with two ICRC volunteers from Gaza, 25-year-old Ahmed Awad, and 24-year-old Ala’a Alkusofi, who worked with ambulance crews throughout the war, the video of which will be released in the near future. They recalled entering Khuza’a during the siege of the town to collect the body of Mohamed Abadla, a local man who had been tied to a tree by both arms and riddled with bullets. When they arrived at the execution site, a group of Israeli soldiers ordered one of the volunteers’ colleagues to exit the ambulance, walk five meters forward, then light a cigarette lighters. When he did so, they shot him in the heart and leg, killing him in front of his colleagues.
The ICRC volunteers told us they later found a man in Khuza’a with rigor mortis, holding both hands over his head in surrender, his body filled with bullets. They then discovered a family — men, women and children — so badly decomposed they had to bury them with a bulldozer in a mass grave. The vast majority of bullet wounds they found were to the head and chest.
In Beit Hanoun, a northern border city that had been comprehensively by Israeli shelling, I met Abdul Rahman, a 50-year-old farmer whose orange groves, bee farm, goat herd, wheat fields and four story home had all been destroyed prior to or during Operation Protective Edge. Rahman told me how his neighbors, the Wahadan family, had been prevented from evacuating by Israeli forces, who warned them they would be shot if they left. Remember that the Israeli military dropped leaflets on Beit Hanoun warning its residents to leave just prior to the ground invasion. A week after trapping seven members of the Wahadan family, the Israeli air force bombed their home, killing seven members, including two-year-old Ghena Wahadan. The survivors of the family were male relatives who had been abducted and interrogated for days in Israeli prisons.
Were the Wahadans used as human shields? That’s an open and legitimate question. In other areas, I documented cases in which the use of human shields by Israeli soldiers was undeniable. On the outskirts of Rafah, for instance, soldiers stripped 19-year-old Mahmoud Abu Said of his clothes and stood him in front of windows in his home while they sniped at his neighbors. In Khuza’a, members of the Najjar family told me soldiers forced them to stand at opposite corners of their roof for a full day. And in the northern village of Oum Al Nasser, members of the Mismeh, Madhoun and Jarrad family told me they forced to sit in the center of town for three hours between 6:30am and 9:30am on July 18 — 100 meters in front of Israeli tanks.
You will not hear about this case of Israel using human shields as it kills Palestinians although the contrast is certainly the case. Also you can be sure nothing will happen as a result of this exposure although plenty will be said about any cases where Palestinians did such a criminal act and some sort of punitive action will result this is why although it is newsworthy this happened repeatedly during the Gaza invasion last month, nothing will result from it.
America has managed to enlist the support of five Arab countries in the fight with ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic state and the UAE has stepped up to the plate big time. I don’t like self-promotion and it seems there’s a hint of that here in releasing this information…..I mean we rarely know the names of fighter pilots who fly sorties for the American military but the fact that this is even news is somewhat exceptional for the time and place in which it was revealed.
The first female pilot for the United Arab Emirates military was used in a multi-national air strike against ISIL/ISIS/the Islamic state and she is one Major Miriam al-Mansouri. 
I have often written here on the pages of Miscellany101 of the forward thinking all inclusive nature of Emirati society as it pertains to Emirati women and this is just another feather in their cap. It’s ironic that one of the other countries participating in the airstrikes with the UAE military was Saudi Arabia where Ms. al-Mansouri wouldn’t even be able to drive a car, much less pilot an airplane. That fact alone makes me question the legitimacy of the coalition and its goals. Why are the two even on the same side in this matter…..it would seem to me al-Mansouri should be leading airstrikes against KSA instead of joining with them to fight an opponent as conservative and backwards as the Saudis.
You can read about the UAE’s integration of female pilots in the military here
There’s no doubt this phenomenon of ‘The Islamic State’ has very little to do with Islam…..rather it is a geopolitical group put together by who knows to further the aims of those who want to see confusion and strife rule in the Arab/Muslim world. We are all well acquainted with what ISIL, ISIS, ‘the Islamic State has done but now there is no room for doubt about what the world’s “other” Muslims or people of good will and common sense think about them. The image below makes a rather simplified distinction between who and what ISIL/ISIS/’the Islamic state is and the religion of Islam itself in what could only be called a double entendre.
The international Muslim community has decided to take on ISIS/ISIL/the Islamic state head on using the very weapons employed by them to justify their murderous binges and have literally bitch slapped them harder than Ray Rice beat his wife in what could only be decisively and irrefutably removing from them the cloak of Islamic legitimacy. They wrote an open letter to Al-Baghdadi which can be found in its entirety here and it leaves no doubt where the signatories stand nor where the rest of the Muslim world SHOULD stand. It also stands as a document every Muslim can point to when those too lazy to find it themselves and who then like to ask facetiously where are the Muslim voices of condemnation to silence such haphazard and sophomoric excuses. The points made by the over 100 Muslim scholars who put this document together were summarized on the first page of the letter, but each point was expounded on in detail throughout the 23 page document…
It is permissible in Islam [for scholars] to differ on any matter, except those fundamentals ofreligion that all Muslims must know.It is forbidden in Islam to ignore the reality of contemporary timeswhen deriving legal rulings.It is forbidden in Islam to kill the innocent.It is forbidden in Islam to kill emissaries, ambassadors, and diplomats; hence it is forbidden to kill journalists and aid workers.Jihad in Islam is defensive war. It is not permissible without the right cause, the right purposeand without the right rules of conduct.It is forbidden in Islam to declare people non Muslim unless he (or she) openly declaresdisbelief.It is forbidden in Islam to harm or mistreat in any way Christians or any ‘People of theScripture’.It is obligatory to consider Yazidis as People of the Scripture.The reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam. It was abolished by universal consensus.It is forbidden in Islam to force people to convert.It is forbidden in Islam to deny women their rights.It is forbidden in Islam to deny children their rights.It is forbidden in Islam to enact legal punishments (hudud) without following the correctprocedures that ensure justice and mercy.It is forbidden in Islam to torture people.It is forbidden in Islam to disfigure the dead.It is forbidden in Islam to attribute evil acts to GodIt is forbidden in Islam to destroy the graves and shrines of Prophets and Companions.Armed insurrection is forbidden in Islam for any reason other than clear disbelief by the rulerand not allowing people to pray.It is forbidden in Islam to declare a caliphate without consensus from all Muslims.Loyalty to one’s nation is permissible in Islam.After the death of the Prophet, Islam does not require anyone to emigrate anywhere.
I ran across this picture here. It was taken in 1998 in South Minneapolis and it is a group of Somali students praying at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (whose generosity and good will I and every decent American should applaud) across the street from Roosevelt High School during the time of the Friday prayer. What struck me was the number of people in the photo all of whom are students and primarily Somalis. Moreover, this picture is 16 years old and more than likely the numbers of Muslim students have increased as has the fear their mere presence generates in the hearts and minds of America’s #Islamophobes. America’s call for homeless refuse yearning to be free doesn’t apply to people of color who lie outside the Judea-Christian ethic. American hypocrisy will be America’s downfall.
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