by admin | May 25, 2021 | Uncategorized
Asad Mirza
During the last week hundreds of Palestinian protesters have been wounded in clashes with Israeli police and more than 197 are dead in Gaza and 10 in Israel, 42 were killed in the early hours of 17 May only, after the Israeli rocket attacks and bombarding by Israeli planes on Palestinian settlements in the west Bank. Jerusalem has witnessed worst unrest in years with Arab communities inside Israel holding continuous demonstrations against the atrocities during the Holy month of Ramadan.
Events leading to the current crisis
Tension had been brewing in the Old City of Jerusalem since the end of the last month, in addition to a series of events converging at once, reaching a crescendo last Monday (10 May).
On one hand Palestinians are frustrated by a decision of Mahmoud Abbas, the 85-year-old leader of the unpopular semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority, to postpone planned elections, PA’s last parliamentary ballot was held in 2006. On the other hand, results of an election held in March earlier has further emboldened Israel’s far right, bringing a party of Jewish ultra-nationalists allied with the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to power.
In addition, since the beginning of the the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Palestinians have complained of what they term as unnecessarily severe restrictions by Israeli police, who prevented them from gathering on steps outside the Old City – an unofficial tradition after evening prayers.
Amid rising tensions, there was an increase in communal violence, with videos shared online of street harassment and several attacks between Jews and Palestinians. Events came to a head in late April when hundreds of far-right Israelis marched down city streets chanting “death to Arabs” and confronted Palestinians.
Added to this was the anger building over an Israeli court ruling, due on 10 May, on whether Israeli authorities would evict dozens of Palestinians from the majority-Arab East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah and give their homes to Jewish settlers.
On 10 May, thousands of flag-waving Israeli nationalists were due to march through Muslim neighbourhoods in the Old City in a provocative parade that celebrated Israel’s capture of the city in 1967. Though, the court date was rescheduled and the march was rerouted, but it has added to increased passions across both the parties.
Historical context
Jewish families claim they lost land in Sheikh Jarrah during a war in 1948, when Israel was created, a conflict in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were also displaced.
Israel recaptured East Jerusalem from Jordanian forces in the 1967 war and later annexed it. Under Israeli law, Jews who can prove pre-1948 title can claim back their Jerusalem properties. But no similar law exists for Palestinians who lost homes in West Jerusalem.
Why is Jerusalem a flashpoint?
Jerusalem has always been at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian tensions, as several holy sites revered both by Jews and Muslims are situated in the city.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. The Palestinians want the eastern sector of the divided city to be recognised as the capital of their future state.
The Al-Aqsa mosque compound situated at the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem occupies a 35-acre rectangular esplanade. The area was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, which was later, annexed in a move, which has never been internationally recognised.
Muslims revere this area as Al-Haram al-Sharif, and the compound houses the famous golden Dome of the Rock shrine, a seventh-century structure, believed to be where Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) ascended to heaven and the Al-Aqsa mosque, which used to be the mosque towards which Muslims used to turn while praying, before the Grand Mosque at Makkah was declared as the Kabbah, after it was cleared of the idols by the Holy Prophet. It is the third-holiest site in Islam after the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, both in Saudi Arabia.
The site is also revered as the holiest site in Judaism because it housed both the First and Second Temples. In Hebrew, it is referred to as Har Ha Bayit — the Temple Mount.
Jews are allowed to visit the compound, but are forbidden from praying there for fear of sparking tensions with Muslim worshippers.
Israel has several times tried to change the status quo and annex the whole of Jerusalem. In 1996, an Israeli decision to open a new entrance to the west of the plaza sparked clashes that left more than 80 people dead in three days.
And a controversial visit to the plaza in September 2000 by the then right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon was one of the main triggers for the second Palestinian Intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.
In July 2017, the compound was temporarily closed after three Arab Israelis opened fire at Israeli police near the site, killing two of them, before fleeing into the sacred compound, where they were shot dead by security forces.
In 2020 access to the compound was closed to the public during the month of Ramadan due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the reopening was subject to strict sanitary conditions with a limit on the number of worshippers.
Arab countries’ response
The reaction and response by different Arab countries and organisations over the recent flare-up has been the same as always. They issued hollow statements and discussed the situation telephonically with each other. The UN also just expressed its desperation; the UN Secretary General has warned that the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict is heading for “an uncontainable security and humanitarian crisis”.
The response as expected has been muted and is more subdued because of the recent wave of establishing ties with Israel by different Arab countries, which are more guarded now due to the regional geo-politics or just political pressures. Though the Arab leadership has been found wanting the response of the public at large has been that of continued support to their Palestinian brethren.
Why the Indian Muslims support Palestine?
The Indian Muslims and to a certain extent the Indian polity also, during the last 70 years has been supportive of the Palestinian cause. One reason for this was that they were experiencing the same troubles and repercussions, though not up to that level, after the partition of India at the hands of the British, who were also responsible for creating the state of Israel.
Thus, the colonialists are responsible for creating two permanent sores in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent, to safeguard their interests and submerge the populace in a continuous state of flux. In addition India being one of the leading promoters of the Non-Aligned Movement, its leaders always had good rapport with the Palestinian leaders and supported their cause to the maximum, a fact that was endorsed even by late AtalBihari Vajpayee when he led the coalition Janata Party government.
In the given circumstances it seems too wishful to hope that this conflagration would die, as Israel to camouflage its military aggression, tries to give it religious colours to win its populace for support. And we know, once religion creeps into any political issue it becomes too difficult to solve it.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, News
Senior virologist Shahid Jameel
He has been complaining of government’s complacency
NEW DELHI — Shahid Jameel, a top virologist in the country, has stepped down as chair of the scientific advisory group of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) on Friday, news reports said on Sunday. The group, consisting of scientists from different laboratories across the country, was set up by the central government last year for laboratory and epidemiological surveillance of strains of Covid-19.
While Jameel did not explain the reason behind his resignation, reports citing sources say that he was critical of the policy of Modi government on dealing with the second wave pandemic.
Jameel who is currently director of the Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University recently wrote an article in the New York Times where he said that scientists in India were grappling with the government’s “stubborn response to evidence-based policy making.”
Of late, Jameel had emerged as one of the foremost scientific experts explaining the behaviour of the virus that has wreaked havoc in the country, consuming thousands daily.
Jameel led the government’s advisory group of laboratories to detect and analyse genomic variants of SARS CoV 2 after there were apprehensions that the UK variant of the virus may have arrived in India.
Reports said that INSACOG did not get adequate funds which impeded the important work it has been assigned to conduct.
The government had initially said that Rs 115 crore will be allocated for the project for a period of 6 months but no allocation was done and the Department of Biotechnology under the Union Ministry of Science and Technology was asked to fund the initiative from its own resources, said a report in the New Indian Express. Citing official sources it said that the first tranche of money could be released only by March end and the revised estimate for the project was Rs 80 crore.
Scientists at these laboratories say they have been doing genome surveillance mostly from their own limited resources.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Frank F. Islam
Woke up this morning and this was on our minds: Do we have the use of the word “woke” and the phrase “cancel culture” backwards?
Is it liberals and those on the left who are woke and employing the cancel culture? Or is it conservatives and those on the right?
The Oxford English dictionary defines woke as “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines cancel culture as “the practice or tendency of mass canceling…as a way of expressing disapproval or social pressure.”
Given both of these definitions, woke and cancel culture would seem to apply more to those on the left, and to be positive or neutral in orientation. Over the past year or so, however, some Republican elected officials have taken to using those categorizations pejoratively and critically.
Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been a leader in the accusations against wokeness. At the Republican National Convention in August 2020, Gaetz declared that supporters of Joe Biden in the Democratic party are “woketopians” who “…will disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.”
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has weighed in on the “cancel culture.” After Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was relieved of her House Committee assignments in February 2021 because of her support of conspiracy theories and racist social media posts, Jordan spoke out in her defense, proclaiming, “Everyone has said things they wish they didn’t say. Everyone has done things they wish they didn’t do. So, who’s next? Who will the cancel culture attack next?”
Gaetz, Jordan, and others have gone on the attack using these terms to label and malign those with whom the disagree. Here’s the interesting twist.
Given an alternative definition, the real practitioners of wokeness and the cancel culture could be seen as those on the far right who embrace Donald Trump’s perspective and polemics. If woke were defined as “alert to threats to the existing racial and social status quo” and cancel culture as “pushing back to express disapproval and in an attempt to repress social change,” those Trumpist Republicans would move to the head of that class.
The term woke has been used within the African-American community for decades to describe the need to be aware of prejudice and discrimination. The Black Lives Matter movement’s use of the hashtag #staywoke led to its increased usage and application to those of all races who recognize inequities and speak out against them.
If it was the recent racial injustice that spawned today’s woke movement on the left, it was the emergence of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and as president that spawned the woke movement on the right. The question becomes: is Trump a symptom or a cause of wokeness?
There is no definitive research on this. But we believe the answer is both.
Trump began his rise to power by channeling the wokeness of those outsiders — primarily white and male — who felt they were losing whatever influence and status they had in American society and reflecting his understanding of their plight and prejudices back to them. After he became President, by acting as the tweeter-in-chief and rally-holder in charge, Trump used the bully pulpit to remake and amplify wokeness in his own image and likeness. In a phrase, Trump’s most ardent supporters woke him and then he woke them.
Trumpist Republicans would never believe they are members of their own woke generation. And they absolutely would never accept that they are the actual cancel culture.
They would assert cancel culture is comprised of those guys and gals on the other side and we should be scared of them, very scared of them. That’s the message that the Republican sent at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
As Aja Roman reports in his excellent Vox article, before the first night of speakers at the convention, the delegates passed a resolution which described the cancel culture “…as having ‘grown into erasing history, encouraging lawlessness, muting citizens, and violating free exchange of ideas, thoughts and speech.” After that, the speakers, including Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), Representative Matt Gaetz, and former UN ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, all railed against the existential threats posed by the leftist cancel culture.
Therein lies the irony. The more existential threats are presented not by the left but by those in the Trumpist cancel culture who, through their actions and voices, have indicated that they would cancel, to name just a few, and not even go into the cancellation of the U.S.’s role in world leadership: the federal government; science; medicine; voters rights; immigration; the news media and free press; the truth; and democracy. Let’s look briefly at the cancellation efforts in each of those areas.
- Federal Government: As we noted in an earlier piece, the Trump administration decimated nearly all federal agencies — most especially the domestic ones. In many cases, Trump appointed an agency head who was opposed to the agency’s mission. That appointee changed the agency’s mission, inverted its policies, and drove many competent federal bureaucrats out of the organization. His supporters who saw government as the problem reveled in this and still see it as such.
- Science: The Trump administration was a consistent climate change denier, rolling back numerous orders of the Environmental Protection Agency. These rollbacks contributed to an acceleration of global warming but were welcomed by the businesses and workers who benefitted from them.
- Medicine: The consequences of the Trump administration’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic, in terms of deaths and cases in the United States, speak for themselves. Great progress has been made in distributing and administering the vaccines to halt the pandemic under the Biden administration. Sadly though, it looks like the desired state of herd immunity will not be achieved because 20 to 25% of Americans — many of them Trumpists — are practicing herd impunity and say they will not get vaccinated.
- Voters Rights: In spite of political and illegitimate claims to the contrary, this past national presidential election was a fair one. Because the wrong candidate won — due to the voters’ expression of their preference — numerous states have introduced voter suppression laws to make it more difficult for that to happen again. The Brennan Center for Justice found that as of March 24, legislators had introduced 361 bills with restrictive provisions in 47 states.
- Immigration: The loudest clamor of the presidential election campaign from President Trump and his rabid supporters in 2016 was the need to build a wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico and Latin America. After becoming president, Trump paid for much of the construction of the wall in part by redirecting billions of dollars from the Department of Defense budget, even though he campaigned saying that Mexico would pay for it. Not as well noticed was the fact that the Trump administration, in its budget for FY 2021, set the number of refugees to be admitted to the U.S. at a record low of 15,000.
- News Media and the Free Press: Early in the Trump administration, Kellyanne Conway appeared on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd. She defended the White House’s false claim that Trump’s inauguration was watched by the largest audience ever by telling Todd, “…we feel compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.” Initially, there was uncertainty as to what alternative facts were. That was clarified quickly as the President called traditional news and honest reporting fake news and issued his own alternative news as the real deal. As a result, the President’s fake news on social media and coverage on Fox News, Trump’s favorite public relations agency, became the sole sources of “real news” for his supporters.
- Truth: It has been said that truth is in the eye of the beholder. The Washington Post Fact Checker team reports that over the course of his presidency Donald Trump made more than 30,500 “false or misleading claims.” The Trump supporters beholding those claims saw and heard all or the vast majority of them as the truth.
- Democracy: The acceptance of distorted reality led to the Big Lie, in which Donald Trump, with no proof at all to support his assertion, claimed that the presidential election was stolen from him. That Lie led to the tragic events of January 6, with a mob of Trump truth believers storming the U.S. Capitol, after being at a rally listening to Trump and other instigators. By so doing, they wrought a state of havoc on our democracy. In spite of this, Trump persists in perpetuating the Big Lie about the election being stolen. An Ipsos/Reuters poll in March of this year found that six of ten Republicans — or somewhere between 50 to 55 million Americans — still believe the Lie.
Given its own type of wokeness and cancel culture, why are some in the Republican Party using those terms to demean and discredit Democrats and progressives, and what could be the consequences?
Writing for the Washington Post, Kathleen Parker explains that the “Republicans have latched on to ‘woke’ out of necessity. They know they need something — or someone to blame — for President Biden’s popularity and their own failings.” We believe that Ms. Parker hits that woke nail right on the head.
We believe that Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) does the same thing, on the consequences of continuing to buy into the Big Lie, in her op-ed for the Post, when she states, “The Republican Party is at a turning point, and Republicans must decide whether we are going to choose the truth and fidelity to the Constitution.” Cheney concludes her piece by stating, “History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles and protect our freedom and our democratic process.”
Cheney paid the price for speaking the truth. On May 12, the House Republican conference chose the path of the Big Lie. Meeting in a closed-door session and by voice vote, they cancelled Representative Cheney from her position as the number 3 person in their leadership ranks.
In conclusion, in these polarizing times, words and phrases can add fuel to the flames of division or they can start a healing process. Finger-pointing, name-calling, and blame-placing is a formula for the continuing diminution of our democracy. Constructive criticism, thoughtful commentary, and collaborative problem-solving, on the other hand, can provide the platform for rebuilding.
It’s time we all woke up and realized that. It’s time to find our common ground and shared values as Americans and not our partisan islands. It’s time to be woke about what we need to do and say to bring us closer together rather than to tear us apart.
It’s time to move our country forward rather than backward. If we don’t, the United States of America could be cancelled. We woke up this morning and this was on our minds.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Uncategorized
They say that they perform all these tasks by having deep faith in Allah
NEW DELHI — The selfless service being rendered by Muslims during this hour of crisis is drawing people’s attention. Media reports and social media posts are full of stories which point to noble work that Muslims are doing throughout the country. The latest report is from Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district where four Muslim youths have performed the last rites of more than 800 bodies of Hindus according to Hindu traditions.
As a result of rising Covid deaths, crematoriums and burial grounds in most parts of the country are brimming. New18 reports that Abdul Jabbar, Sheikh Ahmad, Sheikh Alim and Arif Khan have been carrying out Hindu funerals at a crematorium in Yavatmal. The report says that the youths haven’t even had the time to take a short nap in days.
Relatives of many people who are dying of Covid-19 have been abandoning the bodies at the crematorium out of fear of catching the deadly disease, they say.
Maharashtra is India’s worst-affected state. According to the latest available reports, nearly 45,600 people have got infected in the district while over 1,150 have died. The state on Thursday reported 66,159 new Covid-19 cases in a 24-hour period and 771 deaths; the number of active cases hit 6,70,301.
The moment a person dies of Covid infection, the whole family is spooked, locals in Yavatmal say.
Officials say the situation is so dire that people are not helping those infected by the virus and do not even turn up for the last rites. In situations like that, others like these four youths have had to step in. Abdul Jabbar and Sheikh Ahmad have been working at the crematorium for the past 17 to 18 years.
They are performing the last rites of Hindus according to the religious tradition of the deceased. They say that they perform all these tasks by having deep faith in Allah. And that they will keep doing this in the future.
Since virtually no one is coming forward to perform the last rites of the dead as per their religious rituals, the administration has handed over this responsibility to the municipal corporation. For this task, the civic body has constituted two teams and they perform the last rites. The members of these two teams are working day and night at the crematorium, officials say.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
KOKATA – Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress has crossed the half-way mark in early leads in Bengal and is leading in 206 seats, though the BJP seems to have made gains since the 2019 national elections.
The BJP ran a bitter, no holds barred communal campaign against Banerjee that defied Covid safety rules as well as the poll code. But Mamata Banerjee is trailing the BJP’s Suvendhu Adhikari – her former close aide — in Nandigram, which is the most-watched fight in Bengal.
The 2021 assembly election has been a major test for the ruling Trinamool Congress as the saffron brigade had put in all its might to make its footmark for the first time in West Bengal. But if early trends are taken as an indication, then Mamata Banerjee seems to have an edge over her rival.
The trends available from different sources indicate that Trinamool Congress is leading in 206 of the 292 seats while the BJP is leading in 85. United Front – an alliance of Left Front, Congress and the newly formed Indian Secular Front, has been wiped away.
There was no election in two assembly constituencies as the respective candidates died before the polls. Presently the counting of postal ballots is going on where mainly the government officials on election duty and voters above 80 years of age exercised their franchise.
As counting of the postal ballots show Trinamool having an edge over the BJP, it is also indicative that the government employees who turned their face away from the ruling party are showing signs of coming back into the Trinamool fold. In the last Lok Sabha elections, on the basis of postal ballots, the BJP was ahead in 41 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats.
Trinamool heavy weights like state education minister Partha Chatterjee, PWD minister Arup Biswas, power minister Sovondeb Chattopadhayay and panchayat minister Subtrata Mukherjee are leading from their respective constituencies but tourism minister Goutam Deb is trailing till the last report came in.
On the other hand, BJP heavy weights like Locket Chatterjee, Swapan Dasgupta, Mukul Roy have been leading from their constituencies but Babul Supriyo has been trailing behind TMC’s Arup Biswas from Tollygunje constituency.
