Kyrie Irving Wears Palestine Chain in Match

CrossFireArabia
Culture
November 14, 2024

Dallas Mavericks star Kyrie Irving showed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza by wearing a chain with the Palestine flag in the shape of Israel’s land mass.

In a pre-game interview on a San Francisco basketball court Tuesday, Irving, 32, was seen wearing the necklace.

“I’m excited for him (his Dallas teammate Klay Thompson). I want him to be present as much as possible, to really receive the love and the flowers that he deserves. He put in a lot of hard work here, a lot of sacrifice for this organization,” Irving told reporters as Thompson, a former Golden State Warriors guard, returned to Chase Center to play against his ex-team.

“So it’s only right that we support him and show him a lot of love and get ready to compete on the court. It’s going to be one of those games,” Irving added according to Anadolu.

Home team the Warriors beat the Mavericks 120-117 in an NBA Cup game in San Francisco, California.

An eight-time NBA All-Star, Irving is one of the important players in the league and won the 2016 NBA title with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

He had also played for the Boston Celtics and the Brooklyn Nets before moving to the Mavericks in 2023.

Last season, Irving attended a post-match press conference wearing a keffiyeh to show solidarity with Palestinians.

Last year, the NBA and Irving’s team the Mavericks confirmed their support for Israel following an October 2023 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas.

Israel has continued a devastating offensive on Gaza since the attack by Hamas, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

Nearly 43,700 people have since been killed in Gaza, mostly women and children, and over 103,000 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its deadly war on Gaza.

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

Culture News

It Was The Largest Kite Flying in Gaza. The Year 2011

CrossFireArabia
August 25, 2026

This is what Ahmed Khaled Al Najjar wrote:

In 2011, the children of Gaza broke the world record for the largest kite flying event.

I remember that day clearly. We used to attend UNRWA summer camps during the school holidays. Before the event, we made our kites at school, and I was incredibly excited for the moment we would finally fly them.

The next day, we went to the camp held at our school, then boarded buses heading to the beach. It was a day that felt like normal life.. children running around, kites filling the sky, and biscuits and juice being handed out to us. We were just children who wanted nothing more than a few hours of joy.

Today, everything has changed.

In Gaza, a kite is no longer simply a toy in a child’s hands، in Israel’s eyes, it has been described as a “weapon of war.”

A four-year-old child was killed while flying a kite.

Think about the absurdity and brutality of that sentence.. a four year old child… a kite… and a bombing.

Years ago, children in Gaza made kites to fill the sky with joy.

Today, a child who looks up at the sky to watch his kite must fear that the very sky above him could become the source of his death.

This is how childhood is stolen in Gaza..

A child is not allowed to play, to run, to dream, or even to fly a kite without his joy being turned into a crime, his toy into a pretext, and his sky into a target.

This is not a war against kites.

It is a war against children’s right to simply be children.

Culture