CrossFireArabia
Coinciding with the genocide Israel has been perpetrating in the Gaza Strip since October of last year, 620 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli occupation forces in the occupied West Bank ever since, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. It pointed out that 154 of them were children.
CrossFireArabia
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has officially announced Yahya Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau. Sinwar succeeds the late Ismail Haniyeh, who served as the leader of the Islamic movement up until Israel assassinated him in Tehran last week.
The social media is buzzing about the news of the selection of Sinwar as the next chief of the political bureau.
Many say the selection of Yahiya Sinwar to lead Hamas is being described as “Israel’s worst nightmare now unfolding.”
Israeli analyst Avi Issachharoff says Hamas has chosen the most dangerous person to lead it while one Israeli officer tweeted “we [Israel] made a mistake in assassinating Haniyeh so Sinwar becomes the head of Hamas.”
Hamas’s quick and unanimous selection of Sinwar as president demonstrates the movement’s vitality, said Osama Hamadan, head of Hamas in Beirut.
Hamas’s message is that it has chosen someone who has been entrusted with the fight on the ground in Gaza for more than 300 days, he added.
The Israeli Walla website stated that sirens went off in Ashkelon and Sderot after Sinwar’s appointment was announced.
Sinwar, a prominent leader within Hamas, is deemed to be the architect of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October, 2023, which inflicted significant human and military losses and shook the image of Israel’s intelligence and security agencies before the world, the Quds News Network reported.
And as a result, Israel announced that Sinwar’s elimination is one of the objectives of its offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Sinwar is considered one of Hamas’s most knowledgeable leader about the Israeli mindset. He is also regarded as one of ‘the hawks’ within the movement, which can influence the course of negotiations on a prisoner exchange deal. This comes after Hamas, under Haniyeh, had shown significant flexibility the Quds website reported.
CrossFireArabia
Pro-Palestine voices overshadowed Japan’s commemoration of the United State’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima Tuesday, many social media posts highlighted.
Slogans, demonstrations and calls against Israel were held in Hiroshima and other parts of the country, as Japan remembered victims of the US nuclear bombing during World War II.
The US dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima, the site of the world’s first atomic bombing on 6 August, 1945, and then Nagasaki, three days later, on 9 August, resulting in the deaths of at least 140,000 people by the end of that year according tp Anadolu.
This year, Japan is commemorating the 79th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of the two cities and participants at a peace event in Hiroshima observed a moment of silence at around 8.15 a.m. (23:15GMT, Monday), the time when America dropped the nuclear bomb on Japan on this day in 1945.
However, pro-Palestine and peace activists assembled near the commemoration site in Hiroshima to protest the local administration’s invite to Israeli officials, to remind them that Tel Aviv was engaged in war on Gaza which resulted in the killing of nearly 40,000 Palestinians since 7 October last year.
According to a social media user @hiroshima_mai on X, people gathered near the event venue, seeking an end to Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Several videos and photos of pro-Palestine events in Japan were shared, with people seeking a cease-fire in the besieged Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Another social media user @toshobin, said pro-Palestine activists held a rally in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome.
Police had placed iron fences and inspection gates to keep the protesters away.
“War continues all over the world… Men, women, children and the elderly are being shot through with bullets or blown to pieces by missiles,” said the Hiroshima governor while the TV channels were showing the participation of Israeli ambassador at the event, according to an X user @horiris.
– War on Gaza ‘shattering normal life,” says mayor
While refusing to heed calls to withdraw Israeli officials from the “peace event,” Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui, however, said: “Russia’s protracted invasion of Ukraine and the worsening situation between Israel and Palestine are claiming the lives of countless innocent people, shattering normal life.”
Hiroshima’s invite to Israel has been slammed as double standards as Japan has refused to invite Russia and Belarus since Moscow launched its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
It has not invited any representative from the Palestinian Embassy either.
Ambassador Waleed Siam, however, has been invited to virtually address an alternate peace event.
“It seems to me that these global tragedies are deepening distrust and fear among nations, reinforcing the public assumption that, to solve international problems, we have to rely on military force, which we should be rejecting,” he added.
Since Japan was the only nation to be hit by nuclear bombing, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said it was Tokyo’s “duty” to “steadily work toward realizing a world without nuclear weapons.”
According to @kojiskojis social media user on X, some pro-Palestine protesters in Tokyo also held placards, urging boycott of the Israeli products.
A “die-in” protest was also held outside Israeli Embassy in Tokyo, according to @mkimpo_kid.
The protest was held around the same time when moments of silence were observed in Hiroshima to commemorate the victims of US nuclear bombing according to the Turkish news agency.
CrossFireArabia
On day 304 of the Israeli genocide the Ministry of Health in Gaza provides the following statistics:
The Israeli occupation carried out 3 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours, resulting in 40 documented fatalities and 71 injuries.
The documented Palestinian death toll has risen to 39,623 martyrs and 91,469 injuries since 7 October, 2023.
The figures above solely refer to the cases transported to hospitals and registered in the records of the Ministry of Health.
An unknown number of victims are still unaccounted for or missing under the rubble, as ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them due to Israeli military attacks.
CrossFireArabia
Last January, The Wall Street Journal reported that 12 UNRWA staffers were involved in the 7 October operation, and 10% of its 12,000 Gaza employees had ties to militant groups. This led to immediate defunding by the U.S. and other countries, totaling $450 million as reported in the Quds News Network.
Months later, the Journal’s top editor admitted that the paper couldn’t verify these claims. Elena Cherney, the chief news editor, stated: “The fact that the Israeli claims haven’t been backed up by solid evidence doesn’t mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading.”
Despite this, the Journal continues to stand by its story, emphasizing that their reporting has consistently highlighted that the allegations came from Israeli intelligence and provided ample opportunity for UNRWA to respond.
The Journal’s story has had a significant impact, but internal and external pressures have raised concerns about its accuracy and the broader coverage of the war.
