CNN reporter removed after covering Israel's offensive against Gaza
CNN correspondent Diana Magnay reported Thursday from a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip as Israelis cheered the bombing of the besieged enclave.
The American news network CNN has removed its correspondent Diana Magnay from covering Israel's deadly offensive against the besieged Gaza Strip after she covered Israelis' cheering of the bombing of Gaza.
A live Magnay report from a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip on Thursday showed Israelis who could be heard cheering as missiles were fired at innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Following the report, Magnay tweeted that the Israelis who were cheering the bombing threatened her.
"Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as bombs land on #gaza; threaten to 'destroy our car if I say a word wrong'. Scum," she tweeted.
While the tweet was quickly removed, CNN pulled Magnay out of her post covering Israel's offensive against Palestinians and assigned her to Moscow.
Magnay's removal from her post comes one day after another American news network, NBC News, pulled out its correspondent Ayman Mohyeddin from the Gaza Strip without any explanation, a move which sparked widespread criticism of the news outlet for censoring the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians.
The NBC News correspondent, who personally witnessed the Israeli military's brutal murdering of four Palestinian boys who were playing on a beach in Gaza on Wednesday, was ordered by the network's executives to leave the Palestinian territory immediately.
Mohyeddin's witness account of the killing of the four young boys by Israeli gunboat fire has gone viral online. On the air, Mohyeldin recounted how, moments before their death, he was kicking a soccer ball with the four boys, who were between the ages of 9 and 11 and all from the same family.
Israel's offensive against the Gaza Strip is in its eleventh day. At least 292 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's aerial and ground assaults on the besieged enclave.
Since the Tel Aviv regime's ground incursion into Gaza on Thursday night, 50 Gazans, including children, infants, women, and elderly people, have been killed.
On Friday, US President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House that he has assured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Washington's support for Tel Aviv's assault on the Gaza Strip.
Dozens injured as Israeli forces storm al-Aqsa Mosque
Dozens of people have been injured as Israeli forces attacked Palestinian protesters at the al-Aqsa Mosque in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
This comes as violent clashes erupted in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound after armed Israeli forces stormed the holy site to disperse Palestinians protesting the war on Gaza.
"Around 100 Israeli police officers stormed the al-Aqsa's courtyards and assaulted worshippers," media outlets quoted witnesses as saying, who also added that Israeli forces fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters.
Sources say more than 40 protesters were injured during the unrest.
Thousands of Palestinian worshippers were forced to perform Friday prayers outside the mosque compound because Israel has restricted access to al-Aqsa.
The al-Aqsa Mosque has been the scene of clashes in recent months following frequent visits by Israeli settlers and officials to the holy site.
Israel is facing mounting pressure to rein in a spiraling wave of hate crimes by Israelis, mainly in the form of vandalism and graffiti targeting mosques and churches.
This comes as Israeli authorities are systematically acting to change East al-Quds' identity and character.
A report published by the al-Aqsa Foundation in October, said the Israeli regime is planning to build a synagogue in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound as part of its efforts to further Judaize the occupied Palestinian territories.
Over the past decades, Israel has tried to change the demographic makeup of al-Quds by constructing illegal settlements, destroying historical sites, and expelling the local Palestinian population.
Over half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds. The international community considers the settlements as illegal.
South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu has condemned Israel's war on the Gaza Strip as reminiscent of the actions by the apartheid system.
"It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control," Tutu told a Friday news conference in Cape Town.
"As an old man, my appeal to my fellow laureates and peacemakers is to step into the leadership void, to make your voices heard from all corners of the globe, to advocate or pressure your government and institutions to cajole, to persuade," he said.
Tutu argued that the new flare-up in the Middle East crisis has been brought about by a void in global leadership.
Thousands of Israeli soldiers launched a ground invasion of Gaza on Thursday after days of strikes from air and sea on the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli regime began its latest attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on July 8. So far, some 320 Palestinians have been killed with about a third of the fatalities being women and children
Israeli soldier posts Instagram image of Palestinian child in crosshairs of rifle | World | The Guardian -
An Israeli soldier has sparked outrage by posting a photograph appearing to show the back of a Palestinian boy's head in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle on a social networking site.
The context of the picture, posted on the personal Instagram site of Mor Ostrovski, 20, could not be verified but the aggressive message is clear. The minarets and Arabic architecture of the village captured in the background suggest the boy and the town are Palestinian. Ostrovski is an Israeli soldier in a sniper unit.
There are many hands behind the Israeli army's onslaught on Gaza. America is not unhappy that Hamas is getting such a beating. As footage of the scenes of carnage on the streets of Shejaiya was coming through, John Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that Israel had every right to defend itself and the US ambassador Dan Shapiro told Israel's Channel 2 news that the US would seek to help moderate forces become stronger in Gaza, meaning the Palestinian Authority.
Nor is Egypt overcome with grief. Its foreign minister Sameh Shoukry held Hamas responsible for civilian deaths after their rejection of the ceasefire.
Neither matter to Netanyahu as much as the third undeclared partner in this unholy alliance, for neither on their own could give him the cover he needs for a military operation of this ferocity. And that can come not from a handwringing but impotent parent like the US. Such permission can only come from a brother Arab.
The attack on Gaza comes by Saudi Royal Appointment. This royal warrant is nothing less than an open secret in Israel, and both former and serving defense officials are relaxed when they talk about it. Former Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz surprised the presenter on Channel 10 by saying Israel had to specify a role for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in the demilitarization of Hamas. Asked what he meant by that, he added that Saudi and Emirati funds should be used to rebuild Gaza after Hamas had been defanged.
Amos Gilad, the Israeli defense establishment's point man with Mubarak's Egypt and now director of the Israeli defense ministry's policy and political-military relations department told the academic James Dorsey recently : "Everything is underground, nothing is public. But our security cooperation with Egypt and the Gulf states is unique. This is the best period of security and diplomatic relations with the Arab."
The celebration is mutual. King Abdullah let it be known that he had phoned President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to approve of an Egyptian ceasefire initiative which had not been put to Hamas, and had the Jerusalem Post quoting analysts about whether a ceasefire was ever seriously intended.
Mossad and Saudi intelligence officials meet regularly: The two sides conferred when the former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was about to be deposed in Egypt and they are hand in glove on Iran, both in preparing for an Israel strike over Saudi airspace and in sabotaging the existing nuclear program. There has even been a well sourced claim that the Saudis are financing most of Israel's very expensive campaign against Iran.
Why do Saudi Arabia and Israel make such comfortable bedfellows? For decades each country has had a similar feeling in their gut when they look around them: fear. Their reaction was similar. Each felt they could only insure themselves against their neighbors by invading them (Lebanon, Yemen) or by funding proxy wars and coups (Syria, Egypt, Libya). They have enemies or rivals in common - Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Hamas in Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood. And they have common allies, too - the US and British military industrial establishments, Fatah strongman and US asset Mohammed Dahlan who tried to take over Gaza once, and will probably be at hand when next required.
The difference today is that for the first time in their two countries' history, there is open co-ordination between the two military powers. Abdullah's nephew Prince Turki has been the public face of this rapprochement, which was first signaled by the Saudi publication of a book by an Israeli academic. The prince flew to Brussels in May to meet General Amos Yadlin, the former intelligence chief who has been indicted by a court in Turkey for his role in the storming of the Mavi Marmara.
It could be argued that there is nothing sinister about Prince Turki's wish to overcome ancient taboos that his motives are both peaceful and laudable. The prince is a staunch supporter of a laudable peace initiative proposed by the Saudi King Abdullah. The Arab Peace Initiative supported by 22 Arab States and 56 Muslim countries would indeed have been a basis for peace had Israel not ignored it some 12 years ago.
Prince Turki waxed lyrical about the prospect of peace in an article published by Haaretz. In it he wrote:
And what a pleasure it would be to be able to invite not just the Palestinians but also the Israelis I would meet to come and visit me in Riyadh, where they can visit my ancestral home in Dir'iyyah, which suffered at the hands of Ibrahim Pasha the same fate as Jerusalem did at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Romans.
Its the means, not the end, which expose the true cost of this alliance. Prince Turki's promotion of the Arab Peace Initiative comes at the cost of abandoning the kingdom's historical support of Palestinian resistance.
The well connected Saudi analyst Jamal Khashogji made this very point when he talked in coded language about the number of intellectuals who attack the notion of resistance:
Regrettably, the number of such intellectuals here in Saudi Arabia is higher than average. If such a trend continues it will destroy the kingdom's honorable claim to support and defend the Palestinian cause since the time of its founder, King Abd Al-Aziz Al-Saud.
Peace would indeed be welcome to everyone, not least Gaza at the moment. The means by which Israel's allies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt are going about achieving it, by encouraging Israel to deal Hamas a crippling blow, calls into question what is really going on here. Turki's father King Faisal bin Abdulaziz would be turning in his grave at what the son is putting his name to.
This Saudi Israeli alliance is forged in blood, Palestinian blood, the blood on Sunday of over 100 souls in Shejaiya.
Sahih International And when it is said to them, "Do not cause corruption on the earth," they say, "We are but reformers."
Muhsin Khan And when it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "We are only peacemakers."
Pickthall And when it is said unto them: Make not mischief in the earth, they say: We are peacemakers only.
Yusuf Ali When it is said to them: "Make not mischief on the earth," they say: "Why, we only Want to make peace!"
Shakir And when it is said to them, Do not make mischief in the land, they say: We are but peace-makers.
Dr. Ghali And when it is said to them, "Do not corrupt in the earth, " they say, "Surely we are only doers of righteousness." (i.e. reformers, peacemakers)
This cannot be undone and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
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