Barbados Times

Barbados, Caribbean & World News
Monday, May 29, 2023

US condemns Israeli extremists’ ‘hateful chants’ against Arabs

The United States on Thursday condemned Israeli demonstrators’ “racist” chants against Arabs, with AFP reporters saying that many of the marchers had shouted anti-Arab slogans.
“The United States unequivocally opposes racist language of any form. We condemn the hateful chants such as ‘Death to Arabs’ during today’s marches in Jerusalem,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wrote on Twitter.

Tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists marched to Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday in an annual flag-waving march commemorating Israel’s capture of it, as tensions on the Gaza border remained high.

Palestinians in annexed east Jerusalem closed their shops and were banned from the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City, a social hub, to make way for the marchers, some of whom attacked journalists with rocks and bottles.

Police said they had made two arrests over the attack, one of an adult and one of a minor.

In Gaza, thousands gathered for a rival flag day on the Israeli border, many of them holding Palestinian flags. Israeli troops fired tear gas toward anyone approaching the border fence.

A Palestinian security source in Gaza said the territory’s Islamist rulers, Hamas, fired a “warning rocket” into the sea, without elaborating.

Ahead of the Israeli march, the militant group said it “condemns the campaign of the Zionist occupation (Israel) against our Palestinian people in occupied Jerusalem.”

Two years ago, after weeks of violence in Jerusalem in which scores of Palestinians were wounded, a war between Hamas and Israel erupted during the march.

Speaking late Thursday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the celebrations were being held in Jerusalem “75 years after it was re-established as the capital of the reborn state of Israel, and 56 years after being reunited.”

Two of his extreme-right cabinet members, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, attended Thursday’s march, one of the events marking what Israelis refer to as Jerusalem Day.

“Today, we say to Hamas who threatened us: ‘Jerusalem is ours,’” Ben-Gvir said in a statement.

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel annexed east Jerusalem and its Old City in a move never recognized by the international community.

Thursday’s rally took place days into a cease-fire that ended deadly cross-border fighting with Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza.

Thirty-three people, including multiple civilians, were killed in the blockaded Palestinian enclave and two in Israel, a citizen and a Gazan laborer.

Some 2,500 police officers secured the march, which began in the western part of the city before passing into east Jerusalem and through the Old City to the Western Wall, where it wrapped up.

Before the march began, Palestinians with shops in the Old City closed up for the day.

Resident Abu Al-Abed, 72, said he wanted “to go home.” The marchers “are harmful, they’re walking and start to hit the doors of the shops and the doors of our houses,” he told AFP.

Scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian youths took place as early marchers arrived in the Old City, with police saying that in some cases forces “were required to act to prevent friction and provocations.”

But the violence was greatly reduced from last year, when at least 79 people were wounded as police clashed with Palestinian counter-protesters outside Damascus Gate.

Officials who manage the holy site estimated that 50,000 people took part in Jewish prayers at the Western Wall in the evening.

Prior to the march, dozens of Jews — including at least three lawmakers from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and a minister from Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power faction — visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site.

Jews, who call it the Temple Mount and revere it as their religion’s holiest site, are allowed to visit but not pray.

One of them, Tom Nissani, was sitting at Jaffa Gate with an Israeli flag, awaiting the march.

“It’s our capital city, we have to show it, to enjoy it, to fight for it,” the 34-year-old West Bank settler who works for an organization promoting Jewish presence on the flashpoint site told AFP.

Transport Minister Miri Regev, from Netanyahu’s Likud, was among Israelis waving flags at Damascus Gate hours before the official rally.

A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas warned Israel “against insisting on organizing the provocative flag march.”

Pushing ahead with the parade “confirms the acquiescence of the Israeli government to Jewish extremists,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said Wednesday.

Since last year’s rally, Israel’s leadership has taken a marked shift to the far-right.

Ben-Gvir, the country’s national security minister, was convicted in 2007 of supporting a terrorist group and inciting racism.

Far-right ally Smotrich holds the finance portfolio along with some powers in the occupied West Bank, and also has a history of inflammatory remarks about Palestinians.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Barbados Times
Close
0:00
0:00
If you donated to BLM, you got played
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
Actor Tom Hanks told Harvard University graduates to be superheroes in their defense of truth and American ideals, and to resist those who twist the truth for their own gain
The Sussexes' Royal Rebound: Could Harry and Meghan Markle Return to the UK?
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
France Arrests 10 on Suspicion of Failing to Respond in Time to Migrant Drowning
Neuralink Receives FDA Approval for First-in-Human Clinical Study
Is Saudi Arabia the holiest place in the world? Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions from "The Mount Sinai Stand" Discovered in Saudi Arabia
Ukrainian Intelligence Official Admits to Assassination Attempts on Putin
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Last Walmart in North Portland Closing Down
Florida's DeSantis seeks to disqualify judge in Disney case
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified
A French court of appeals confirmed former President Nicolas Sarkozy's three-year jail term for corruption and influence peddling
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines calls the British monarchy "an absurdity" he wants to remove in his lifetime
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
US Congresswoman threaten Twitter Files journalist with arrest
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
AG decries scapegoating and rushed lawmaking by government
The land of the free violence
21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested for leaking classified Pentagon Documents
The Supreme Court will allow a 12-year-old transgender West Virginia girl to compete on her middle school’s girls' sports teams amid a lawsuit over a ban
Bank of America cuts short conference after outrage at Ukraine comments
Revealed: royals took more than £1bn income from controversial estates
Mitt Romney calls Trump indictment 'overreach,' says charges were 'stretched' to suit a 'political agenda'
The G-7 aims to make global crypto regulations tougher
Don’t Dismiss China’s Peacemaking Bid
China and Brazil have signed a new deal that will allow them to trade in their own currencies, bypassing the US dollar as an intermediary
×