LAITH MAROUF—Thousands of years of cultural exchange and intermarriage exists between East African peoples, and Arabic peoples and their ancestors. For one, there is not one Somali family that is not intermarried to a Yemeni family; thousands of years of sailing back and forth between what is now Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Yemen and Hijaz. The cultural exchange, trade and intermarriage along the Nile basin from Egypt to Ethiopia was as significant as the movement across the Red Sea. Finally, we can not forget the failed invasion of Mecca by the King of Abyssinia on the day of the birth of Prophet Mohammad, and the complete opposite 40 years later, the granting of asylum by the Christian King of Abyssinia to the first Muslims who were escaping assassins.
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MIKE WHITNEY—The reason Israel continues to kill non-combatants who are in-no-way connected to Hamas, is because it convinces everyone else that the bombing is “indiscriminate” which, in turn, suggests that the perpetrator is a deranged madman driven by irrational hatred. This is how one terrorizes the public into doing whatever is demanded of them. We expect that much of Israel’s current pysops in Gaza was meticulously worked out with a battery of behavioral psychologists long before the first bomb was dropped, perhaps, years before the Hamas attack on October 7.
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CNN-18—Israel’s land, sea and air assault on the Gaza Strip, triggered by Hamas’s cross-border attack on Oct. 7, has brought upheaval and destruction to the Palestinian territory on a scale never before seen in the enclave.
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EDITOR—In a series of extraordinary interviews with both Palestinians and Israelis, John Pilger weaves together the issue of Palestine. He speaks to the families of suicide bombers and their victims; he sees the humiliation of Palestinians imposed on them at myriad checkpoints and with a permit system not dissimilar to apartheid South Africa’s infamous pass laws. He goes into the refugee camps and meets children who, he says, “no longer dream like other children, or if they do, it is about death.”
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AL JAZEERA—Exclusive video and images obtained by Al Jazeera this morning show bodies piled up inside the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in the al-Faluja area, west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said a number of people including women, children and babies were killed execution-style by Israeli forces while sheltering inside the school.
