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Workers in an industrial trading port in Australia are now at the forefront of the fight against war with China, demanding that jobs and environmental protections take precedence over militarism.

A protest in opposition to the AUKUS military agreement between Australia, the UK, and the United States. (Steven Saphore / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

On May Day, thousands of workers from in and around the industrial trading city of Port Kembla in New South Wales (NSW) rallied against the AUKUS deal. AUKUS will see Australia procure nuclear-powered submarines from the United States, and is designed to counter the rise of China as a global power. To date, this was the biggest demonstration against the pact held anywhere in the world.

AUKUS potentially involves Port Kembla hosting a US nuclear submarine base. This would come at the expense of the region’s developing green energy infrastructure. The protesting workers argued that the current drive to war will endanger the city and imperil the many thousands of union jobs that would be guaranteed by a green transformation.

International media outlets in AUKUS partner countries and China have begun to take notice. The workers of Port Kembla will now prove decisive in shaping not only their own futures, but Australia’s role in the biggest conflict of the era.

Jacobin spoke with Arthur Rorris, secretary of the South Coast Labour Council, to find out how this small city came to take the lead in the fight for jobs and peace.

Chris Dite

Why are the workers of Port Kembla and the wider region opposed to AUKUS?

Arthur Rorris

The vast majority of workers and the community in the region are opposed to this. We saw evidence of that on the weekend. Some context here is important. Port Kembla is a trading port in a coal mining region. About fourteen years ago it became very clear that decarbonization was not an if but a when. We were carbon central: our steelworks alone accounted for 7 percent of all greenhouse emissions for the state of NSW.

As union leaders we decided that “saving the planet is going to take a lot of work, and we want that work to be done in Port Kembla.” We built a successful coalition of workers and unionists who agreed on one key thing: this revolution is happening. The only choice we had to make was whether we got these new green jobs or let them go offshore like almost everything else.

According to NSW government analysis, there are now expressions of interest for more than $43 billion in wind, solar, and hydrogen, centered around our port. We’re looking at eight thousand jobs in this region alone in the next decade through renewable energy projects — not including the offshore wind farms! For that to happen we have to now start building our green hydrogen capacity. This requires renewable power generation: a combination of offshore wind and terrestrial-based solar industries. Our approach to this is very pragmatic; it’s a planned and costed way forward.

The proposed nuclear submarine base screws our region’s entire renewable agenda and industrial transformation. This is at the heart of a lot of the angst here. We can’t do both. It’s not a big trading port. Any space we do have left is earmarked for our renewable sector. And even if there was room in the port, the exclusion zones around any future base will rule out the wind farms we need to drive power into the industrial area.

Chris Dite

So the opposition is mostly centered around green jobs?

Arthur Rorris

The nuclear issue is also causing a storm here. Port Kembla was declared a nuclear-free port and city more than forty years ago; this was reaffirmed by city hall last year. We worked very hard to educate our community and are still educating them about the nuclear issue. We put up posters explaining how each one of these proposed submarines will have enough enriched uranium to account for three Hiroshimas. We rolled out the maps so people could work out how their homes, schools, and hospitals could be affected by a nuclear accident.

They’ll call us NIMBYs. But no one’s going to believe we’re prissy about things. We’ve got steelworks and every carcinogen known to humanity in our backyard. This is different. It’s an attempt to conscript our entire community into a war machine, then put a nuclear target on our backs for our troubles. That will not happen here under our watch.

Chris Dite

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on the weekend that AUKUS is more about jobs than national security. What’s your response to this?

Arthur Rorris

What jobs? The government says that AUKUS — which is set to cost close to half a trillion dollars — will only create twenty thousand jobs over thirty years. These claims haven’t been backed up. They’re not proposing to actually make the ships here in Port Kembla. They’re not even really proposing to service them. It’s not as if we’ll have apprentices from the steel mill allowed to work on these ships. No one believes we’ll be allowed anywhere near them.

Like the Rust Belt in America, we’ve been losing thousands of jobs for years. The steelworks used to employ twenty-three thousand people directly. It now employs three thousand directly, and we’ve got another ten thousand as contractors. Only renewables will get those jobs back and everyone knows it.

It’s the first time in my memory where we are not wedged in the labor movement between jobs or the environment. We’ve actually got jobs and the environment on one side.

Politically this is quite an amazing moment. It’s the first time in my memory where we are not wedged in the labor movement between jobs or the environment. We’ve actually got jobs and the environment on one side. On the other side are the imperialists, United States, and Australian navy. This is why both governments might be a bit nervous about this agenda now — particularly when it comes to Port Kembla. There’s no way you’re going to convince this community that both renewables and the nuclear base are possible.

Chris Dite

You’ve criticized military officials for making these huge decisions on behalf of the rest of us. You’ve also been critical of “spooks” and “arms dealers” for trying to lecture us into accepting them. How did ordinary workers get so shut out of this debate?

Arthur Rorris

Many Australians are starting to understand that the decision of whether or not to go to war has been taken away from the Australian government and, by virtue of that, the Australian people. There’s clearly been a coup in defense policy. We’ve seen how this works in Darwin. Very quickly and methodically they extended US troop rotations. Slowly but surely they shifted the focus of our defense from defending Australia to defending US economic interest in the South China Sea.

It’s critical for people to understand how these crazy decisions are made. It starts with military figures creating consultancies that call themselves independent, but have an agenda. Former prime minister John Howard used taxpayer funds to establish the Australian Strategic Policy institute (ASPI), one of the leading so-called independent strategic think tanks for the military. It’s funded in part by arms dealers, the Department of Defense, and others. This collusion isn’t even hidden. It’s justified on the basis that it is somehow in the national interest to have defense policy manufactured by people who have the most to gain from conflict.

These are the people that drove much of the AUKUS agenda at the start, as well as Scott Morrison in his dying political days. AUKUS was really his parting gift. Morrison and these spooks took the opposition leader — the current prime minister — into a security briefing that was big, scary, and allegedly clear enough to commit them all to AUKUS within a day. Twenty-four hours to hand over $368 billion and determine that China is our enemy — even though there’s no evidence that they’re about to attack Australia.

The US navy has always wanted an east coast base in Australia and under this plan they’re going to get one. Our laws say that you can’t have foreign bases in Australia, so they’ll call it a joint military installation. But the only thing Australian in this base will be the Australian flag. And ironically it’ll probably be made in China.

One of the things our movement should do is bring the beneficiaries of war into the daylight. We should shed light on who they are, who pays them, and where they come from. Here in this region we’re very determined to tell our community on which side these people’s bread is buttered.

Chris Dite

The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) has been a consistent voice against AUKUS and the drive to war. Conservatives regularly argue that the unionization of the ports is a threat to national security. Could you explain the MUA’s long-standing argument that it’s actually privatization and profit-seeking that threatens livelihoods?

Arthur Rorris

Obviously, the conservatives will take any opportunity they can to have a bit of a swipe. This line that unions are somehow a threat to national security is disgraceful. Proportionally more unionized seafarers died than navy sailors in World War II in Australia. That was all part of the war effort against fascism.

The conservatives have been ideologically driven to keep unionized Australian labor out of the coastal trade. They actually passed laws to stop Australians getting jobs in Australian coastal waters. They now have weaker security requirements for much of the exploited international labor working on “flag of convenience” ships than they do for Australian seafarers and maritime workers. So there’s an argument that the conservatives are the ones compromising national security.

Having unionized local seafarers on domestic coastal routes — cabotage as they call it — is an idea that our friends in the United States know all too well ever since the Jones Act. Virtually every other country around the world operates with the idea that your coastal waters are best served by your nationals. Domestic routes are highly unionized almost everywhere. Australia is a weird exception. That’s been driven politically, mostly by conservative governments.

But some of the military chiefs recognize aspects of all this, and some conservatives sort of have a foot in both camps. The current Labor government has committed to an Australian strategic cargo fleet. The maritime unions have been asking for this for a very long time. We know from numerous reports about the current state of exploitation of foreign labor around the coastal trades. It is to the benefit of everyone to have a domestic fleet, and strong, unionized labor working those routes.

Chris Dite

There’s been a lot of opposition to the MUA’s proposal to create a modest Australian shipping fleet. But Australia’s second-richest person, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has spent the last ten years building his own small independent armada. Clearly he sees a business case for owning your own cargo ships in a volatile time. Is this a case of one rule for the bosses and another for the workers?

Arthur Rorris

The business cases are different. At the end of the day, whether it’s at sea or on land, private corporations legally have to put their shareholders in front of all other interests — including the national interest. The steelmaker here in Port Kembla is a multinational company with interests in the United States, Vietnam, and China. It’s threatened to shut down the Australian industry on more than one occasion.

Their business is making money, not making steel. Whether they make it here or elsewhere is not their primary concern. If making money for their shareholders means shutting up shop in Port Kembla, then that’s what they’ll do. That’s the reason we can’t let the market determine strategic industrial development and retention — particularly when it comes to steel. I, for one, think, and many others here would agree, that if corporations hold communities to ransom, then the government has an obligation to nationalize them.

At the end of the day, whether it’s at sea or on land, private corporations legally have to put their shareholders in front of all other interests — including the national interest.

Chris Dite

Workers in the region you represent now find themselves in the leadership of something huge. They’re at the center of a coming storm and the world is paying attention. What’s next for the movement?

Arthur Rorris

My brief from the labor council is Port Kembla. And as a leader of the council, part of my job is to analyze how all these things relate to one another. The government says a decision hasn’t been made and won’t be made for ten years. Well, we were born at night but not last night. The notion that this government can promise us ten years — when they face federal elections every three years — is just not credible. The conservatives have already told us that if they get in power, the base is going to be here faster than you can say San Diego. So no one buys this idea that it’s been kicked down the road.

The base in Port Kembla has to be ruled out. That is our chief focus. But I can well understand that other ports around the country might feel the same way as us. Our next step is to escalate this push by creating a fraternal alliance with other central labor councils in ports around the country. We started that process on the weekend at our rally. We had representatives from other ports, from Sydney, the mountains, and elsewhere. We want to accelerate this process.

There should be a national conversation about this. It should be on the national agenda of the union movement. Our thinking is that we start with our fraternal relationships with other regions. Knowledge is very important, history is very important, analysis is very important. All this can only be done through rallies, conferences, seminars, and building alliances. Most importantly, this all has to be driven by the rank and file.

Opinion polls now tell us that despite the Sinophobic campaign of recent years, only one in five Australians sees China as an imminent threat. That’s a spectacular failure from the war hawks. Whether these four out of five people will see the situation as alarming enough to mobilize is the challenge for our movement.

Chris Dite

Do past struggles at the port inform your approach at all?

Arthur Rorris

Port Kembla has been a very militant port, an internationalist port, very strong on issues of social conscience. It was the site of one of the world’s first social movement strikes, the Dalfram dispute in 1938. The wharfies refused to load pig iron bound for Japan. They knew it was going to be used as bullets and bombs against the Chinese in the first instance and then against us. Everyone could see war was coming.

All of Wollongong supported the strikers. The bosses tried to get the steelworkers to scab on the wharfies but they refused. So the bosses shut down the entire steelworks as payback. We had market gardeners from Sydney — the Chinese community in particular, but also others — who fed Wollongong during that entire dispute. It ended up with Attorney General Robert Menzies from the then-government coming down to Wollongong to “sort out the communists.” He left with rotten tomato stains on his back and a nickname that lasted his entire lifetime — Pig Iron Bob.

I’m not saying the community hasn’t changed at all since then, or that history compels us or determines our policy. But it certainly gives us confidence, strength, and insight into how these things can be won. It also helps to put a bit of fear into our opponents. We have been rolling it out lately for everyone who will listen. People like what they hear. A journalist asked us, “What happens if the government keeps going?” We said they’ll have to fight Port Kembla before they even get to China. And we mean it. The mood is that strong down here — we are not going to let this happen.

On Thursday, May 11th, 2023, an unthinkable tragedy unfolded in Sindelfingen, Germany, when two lives were taken in a shooting at Mercedes-Benz’s sprawling factory.

The news of the shooting came to police around 7:45 am when emergency personnel rushed to the scene and found two victims, one of whom had already passed away. Unfortunately, the second victim was taken to the hospital and eventually succumbed to their wounds and died as well.

Footage on the scene showed a multitude of police vehicles and ambulances arriving at the car plant. Witnesses stated that, while the site was filled with shock and sadness, there was no risk to the population at-large.

The suspect of the shooting was later identified as a 53-year-old employee at the plant. He was taken into custody without further incident, though his motive for the crime has yet to be revealed.

The company was quick to respond to the tragedy with a statement expressing their shock and sadness and offering condolences to the victims, their families, as well as all of their colleagues on site.

The shooting at the Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen, Germany, has left many people in a state of distress and grief. The victims’ families, as well as all colleagues at the plant, have received condolences from the car manufacturer. As of yet, the suspect’s motive is still unclear.

Palestinian terrorists have launched more than 800 rockets and mortars at Israel in a 36-hour period.

By World Israel News Staff

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group issued a statement urging children in Gaza to go onto their rooftops at 9 p.m. to celebrate the death of the first Israeli by rocket fire.

Three hours earlier, one person died and at least five were injured when building in Rehovot collapsed after sustaining a direct hit from rocket fire.

Palestinian terrorists launched more than 800 rockets and mortars at Israel in a period of 36 hours, the IDF said.

Missile defense systems intercepted 179 of the 620 rockets that made it over border. 152 fell short in Gaza.

The IDF continued to take out terror targets in Gaza on Thursday evening, including an Islamic Jihad observation post, a mortar launching position and underground rocket launchers.

The airstrikes did not deter the PIJ from encouraging children to head for the roofs.

Senior PIJ leaders who were killed in Israeli raids also gathered their children around them in the hope of using them as human shields.

Watch the video below as the Israel Air Force aborts an airstrike after two children were spotted near the target.

The post Islamic Jihad to Gaza children: Head to roofs to celebrate first Israeli death appeared first on World Israel News.

Dismissing Canada’s rental crisis as nothing but a supply-demand issue overlooks the fact that a small group of landlords dominates the rental market and exploits tenants. As rents become extortionate, Canadian landlords are reaping record profits.

Nearly 20 percent of renters in Toronto are forced into overcrowded housing units. (Roberto Machado Noa / LightRocket via Getty Images)

Canada’s rental crisis is often dismissed by the corporate media as a “mismatch” between supply and demand. But a deeper analysis of the country’s rental market — where tenants face some of the highest housing costs on the planet — reveals that a tiny percentage of landlords are controlling the sector and exploiting tenants for their own gain.

None of Canada’s five million tenants need to read Canada’s mainstream media to know that the county is facing a rental crisis. Over the past year, according to an RBC Economics study, the country saw its “highest annual increase in rent growth on record.” These skyrocketing rents have also caused homelessness to explode in nearly all of Canada’s major cities. Housing congestion is a growing issue as well, with nearly 20 percent of renters in Toronto, 21 percent in Mississauga, 11 percent in Montreal, 13 percent in Edmonton, and 11 percent in Vancouver are forced into overcrowded housing units “not suitable for their household size.”

However, a significant portion of media coverage simplistically attributes the housing crisis to a mere incongruity between the demand for rental housing and its supply, removing from the equation the landlords who are charging excessive rents. On this view, housing crises are not examples of profiteers leveraging market failure, but rather a fleeting problem that people should accept and move beyond.

With five million renters competing for two million purpose-built units, we’re told, double-digit rent hikes are unavoidable. Various politicians and corporate media outlets suggest that scrapping rent control and other tenant protections will somehow lower “housing costs.”

Against the backdrop of the housing crisis, some members of the ruling elite have used it as a justification to call for an overhaul of Canada’s immigration system. News outlets like BNN Bloomberg have run with headlines like: “Rents are soaring in Canada as surge of people goes undercounted.”

Blame for record-high rents seems to be placed on everything and everyone — except landlords and speculators. Lamenting that it “has become cool” to “disparage” real estate speculation, the Toronto Sun claimed earlier this year: “If it wasn’t profitable for investors to own rental properties, investors would take their capital elsewhere and supply would diminish. We need them.”

It’s true enough that Canada’s major cities are experiencing population growth, as a result of both immigration abroad and from the residential reclamation of ex-industrial urban corridors. It is also true that housing is being absorbed, both by ordinary people — and speculators.

The country’s extortionate rent hikes are hardly an accident of mismatched supply and demand. Housing scarcity is undoubtedly a problem. But using it to hand-wave away eye-watering rental costs is obtuse or disingenuous. Canada’s landlords are not simply having their hands forced. Empowered by Canada’s governments, landlords are reaping record profits at their tenants’ expense.

The Chimera of the Mom-and-Pop Landlord

Senior economist Ricardo Tranjan from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) provides an insightful analysis of the concentration of Canada’s rental units in his remarkable new book, The Tenant Class. The book breaks the rental supply down into four segments: 12 percent of renters occupy nonmarket housing, 38 percent rent non-purpose-built units from private landlords, and the remaining half rent from corporate and financial landlords.

Despite the media’s focus on Canada’s so-called “small landlords,” Tranjan observes:

The widespread notion of “struggling landlords” is a grave mischaracterization of the rental market. In fact, Canada’s landlord class comprises wealthy families, small businesses, corporations, and financial investors. Rent revenue increases their wealth and political influence, allowing them to extract more income from more tenants, amass more wealth, and do it again.

The private rental market generally refers to individual landlords who own one or a few rental properties. It can be challenging to keep track of the total number of units as they can include not only private homes and condos but also their individual rooms, garages, basements, and closets. But the concentration of wealth in this market is increasing too.

Empowered by Canada’s governments, landlords are reaping record profits at their tenants’ expense.

The book calculates that units in the private rental market account for roughly 38 percent of the overall rental market. Tranjan estimates that multiple-property owners have an average net worth of around $1.7 million. As he notes, these owners are hardly “scraping to get by.”

Statistics Canada estimates that the relatively small number of homeowners, who have invested in multiple units, account for nearly one-third of total home ownership.

In 2021, half of the dwellings in the downtowns of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver were condos. But, as Statistics Canada notes, more than half of these condominiums were owned by investors — comprising a total 840,045 units overall. These investors have, on average, managed to obtain up to a 30 percent increase in the value of their assets while renting them out to desperate tenants in Canada’s major cities.

Corporate Landlords and Financial Landlords

Among Canada’s purpose-built rental housing units, the concentration is even more enormous. In 2017, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) economist Gustavo Durango noted: that “Roughly 90 percent of purpose-built rental apartment units in Canada are owned by individual investors and private corporations.”

The book breaks the concentration down further. Tranjan estimates that 22 percent of the country’s rental housing units are owned by small business landlords — individual investors and joint ventures. On average, these landlords own 44 units each nationally and up to 151 each in Toronto. The remaining 28 percent of units is split between corporate and financial landlords. Typically, corporate landlords own and manage rental properties as part of a larger real estate investment portfolio, while financial landlords are entities such as pension funds, insurance companies, and investment trusts.

According to University of Waterloo professor Martine August, Canada’s twenty-five largest landlords, split between corporate and financial landlords, held about 330,000 units in 2020 — nearly 20 percent of the country’s private purpose-built stock of rental apartments. These include rental juggernauts like Starlight Investments, CAPREIT, Boardwalk REIT, Skyline Apartment REIT, Killam Apartment REIT, and Mainstreet Equity.

‘We think there is a definite housing shortage, or almost a crisis level in Canada,’ said then CEO Dale Drimmer in 2019, ‘and the good news for investors is there is no easy solution in sight.’

Since 2020, in turn, there is every reason to believe this concentration has gotten worse. As August wrote in Policy Options, “In some communities, financial firms have effective monopolies over the local market.”

How They Make Their Millions

These corporate and financial landlords are upfront about where their revenue comes from — by extracting rents from squeezed and beleaguered tenants. In the final quarter of 2022, CAPREIT, with over sixty-seven thousand units, was named one of Canada’s safest dividends. As noted by BNN, the company itself explicitly stated the source of its profits. “A record 24.3 percent average rent increase on turnover.” This increase is above average, but not by much. A report by CMHC found that after a tenant moves out of a two-bedroom apartment, the average rent increases by 18.2 percent.

Despite the claims of Canada’s landlord lobby groups, rent hikes have almost nothing to do with “increased expenses,” maintenance costs, or utility rates.

Starlight Investments has openly declared its intention to profit from the rental shortage in Canada. “We think there is a definite housing shortage, or almost a crisis level in Canada,” said then CEO Dale Drimmer in 2019, “and the good news for investors is there is no easy solution in sight.”

Similarly, last year, Hazelview Investments vowed to “create value” by massively hiking rents. “We believe the key to creating value will be identifying companies with pricing power that are able to raise rents on new leases and pass-through higher rental rates on existing leases.”

In 2012, fellow behemoth landlord Timbercreek listed “evictions,” as one of its strategies for hiking rents. As quoted to Canada’s human rights tribunal the company’s “value-add repositioning” program starts by reducing expenses and then “stabilizing revenue” through methods such as “improving the quality of the tenant and tenant profitability,” as well as implementing “stronger disciplinary measures for problem tenants, including evictions.”

“We Only Want the Earth”

In a recent report, Canada’s central bank tracked the flow of capital, focusing on 2008 to 2022, away from productive investment and into housing speculation, housing debt, and rental housing. This reallocation of capital was marked, the report notes, chiefly by the growth of real estate and rental and leasing (RERL) firms, “high-yield debt markets,” the mortgage-backed securities made famous by the 2008 meltdown, and by ever-rising rents. Crucially, the bank notes, none of these entities are really reaping their returns from housing as such — they’re reaping their returns chiefly in areas where “land is scarce” — from their monopoly over a portion of the Earth.

The CCPA likewise notes:

In Canada, housing prices have been driven higher largely by land appreciation; it is not uncommon in major cities for the structures built on land to comprise just a small sliver of the value of a property. For example, between 2007 and 2018, real estate in British Columbia doubled in value, appreciating by nearly $1 trillion in inflation-adjusted terms, the vast majority of that a result of higher land values.

This is “ground rent” — profit that reflects investor’s state-sanctioned monopoly over a natural resource. Land prices are, naturally, monopoly prices. And they make housing unlike any other investment item.

The top fifth of Canadian households own 63 percent of Canadian real estate’s net worth, while the bottom 40 percent own just 2 percent.

As the New Economics Foundation notes: “Most capital assets depreciate in value over time due to natural wear and tear but land tends to appreciate.” This is, in large part, as they observe, because “The permanence and inherent scarcity of land make it a good asset for the storing of value.” Liberalized credit markets across the Western world since the 1970s, they further note, “have also incentivized banks to favor property-related lending over other types of loans and so contributed to keeping property and land prices up.”

This helps to explain why, just before the pandemic, Statistics Canada found that $8.752 trillion or 76 percent of Canada’s $11 trillion national wealth, was caught up in real estate. It also helps to explain why Statistics Canada found, in 2016, that the top fifth of Canadian households own 63 percent of Canadian real estate’s net worth, while the bottom 40 percent own just 2 percent. Among properties that are not principal residences, the top quintile owns 81 percent of the net worth.

As land values rise, more people are left struggling to find affordable housing. This creates an opportunity for landlords to exploit their tenants by increasing rents at an exorbitant rate, thereby securing a steady stream of passive income. It’s a vicious circle and landlords always win.

The “rental crisis” is not simply a scarcity problem, it’s also a policy failure. To ease the crisis, the most parasitic wing of the capitalist class — landlords — must have their power broken. Large cities everywhere should follow the lead of Berlin and expropriate their most powerful landlords. These vast holdings should be turned over to public housing for human need and not for speculation. And once the inevitable elite backlash occurs, doubling down on such expropriations should be the way forward, with no concessions made.

The event commemorating the “Catastrophe” of Israel’s founding came as Palestinian terrorists fired hundreds of rockets on civilians.

By World Israel News Staff

US Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont) on Wednesday redeemed a nixed Palestinian “Nakba Day” event organized by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) that was initially slated to take place at the U.S. Capitol.

Sanders allowed Tlaib to hold the event, which took place as Palestinian terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at civilian populations in Israel, in room belonging to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, a congressional committee he chairs.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday canceled the original event, which was supposed to be held at a 400-person auditorium at the Capitol Building and would commemorate the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — which condemns the founding of the Jewish state.

McCarthy said that instead, he would host a bipartisan discussion on Israel-U.S. ties to mark 75 years since Israel’s founding.

The event, titled “Nakba 75 & The Palestinian People,” was planned in collaboration with several organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP, as well as NGOs that have expressed support for terrorism.

Tlaib thanked Sanders for his help to restore the event, calling him her “aamu,” Arabic for uncle, in the Senate.

“We have a right to tell our stories of the Nakba of 1948… because the Nakba never ended,” Tlaib said, according to The Jewish Insider .

“No child should ever have to worry what will fall from the sky,” Tlaib said.

She charged Israeli police with enacting a “sustained campaign of terror,” and said that Israel is an apartheid state and that U.S. aid supports ethnic cleansing.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri), a fellow “Squad” member who attended the event, tweeted earlier this week: “Not a single dollar of US aid should go to funding Israeli apartheid.”

Tlaib tweeted photos from the event with the caption: “Let the headlines read, ‘McCarthy tries to erase Palestine but fails.’”

Let the headlines read “McCarthy tries to erase Palestine but fails.” https://t.co/iyUX9AVY4p pic.twitter.com/iMxCAMTVWy

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 11, 2023

 

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement: “It is disgraceful that Sen. Sanders allowed this event by Rep. Rashida to be held in our nation’s Capitol. Real conversations are needed around a path to peace, but not with groups & individuals who espouse antisemitism. We call on the Senate to condemn this event.”

The event, which billed itself as an opportunity to “educate members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians,” was full of lies. Even the invitation said the IDF “violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians.”

Bernie Sanders is approximately as Jewish as a ham sandwich topped with shrimp on lard bread https://t.co/LFEh4ovAIg

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 11, 2023

Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, routinely refers to Israel as an apartheid state and has made statements that perpetuate the antisemitic stereotype of Jews controlling the world.

Last week, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan said Tlaib’s “ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds” after she posted a tweet about the Nakba, calling Israel an “apartheid state” that “was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.

“Tlaib’s ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds. The facts are clear: the Arabs rejected the U.N.’s resolution to establish a Jewish state and started a war to annihilate it,” wrote Erdan, referencing the fact that in 1948, five Arab armies attacked the nascent state, with full support from the Palestinian leadership.

“Palestinian leadership is leading its people to catastrophe by inciting hate/terror and rejecting peace,” Erdan wrote.

The post ‘The Nakba never ended:’ Bernie Sanders helps Rashida Tlaib host anti-Israel event in the Senate appeared first on World Israel News.

The opposition leader pledged to support the government in its war against Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, but it seems he couldn’t wait more than a couple of days to counter current policy.

By Atara Beck, World Israel News

After months of leading massive protests against the Netanyahu government ostensibly over the controversial judicial reform, which has been put on hold for now, Opposition leader Yair Lapid vowed to give his full backing to the government’s war on terror.

“The opposition will support the government in any military action that will bring peace and security to the residents of the south,” he tweeted last week, when the IDF struck back at Gaza terrorists who had fired rockets into Israeli territory following the death of hunger-striking terrorist Khader Adnan.

Again this week, with the start of the IDF’s Operation Shield and Arrow, Lapid pledged unity, saying that “a firm Israeli response at a time and place that is good for us is the way to deal with terror from Gaza. We will back all operational activity to protect the residents of the south.”

Just two days later, however, on Thursday morning, Lapid said in an interview with Kan Radio that it’s time to stop the operation – in contrast to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to the nation the previous evening that “the campaign is not yet over.”

“The operation is justified. A few days ago, they fired hundreds of rockets, and to repair deterrence, we must respond. There are no political gains that Israel needs at the moment from this operation. The operation had nice results, and we must stop now,” Lapid told the radio station.

It isn’t clear what “political gains” he was referring to, as the operation is in fact a defense measure for the security of Israeli civilians, particularly those living in the Gaza envelope.

The threat is far from over, as was seen later in the evening when a rocket achieved a direct hit on a building in Rehovot, killing one man and wounding several others.

As of 8 p.m. Thursday, since the start of the operation Tuesday morning against both the leadership and the infrastructure of the PIJ, the IDF has struck 191 targets, including facilities for the production of weapons, underground tunnels and leading terrorists, TPS reported.

The post Unity in war? Lapid calls for end to IDF operation in Gaza after Netanyahu says ‘campaign not over’ appeared first on World Israel News.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement published a video of terrorist Khalil Al-Bahtini, one of the three Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) top leaders that Israel killed earlier this week.

In the video, Al-Bahtini calls for Jihad against Israel, praises “Martyrdom” for Allah, vows to educate Palestinian children to “hate the Zionist entity,” and urges to “blow up all of this Zionist entity’s cities.” Al-Bahtini also stressed that “negotiations” are not an option.

“What we were educated on, and [what] our culture is, is that whoever lives on this land and does not merit Martyrdom, he has lost out,” he said, according to a translation of his remarks by monitoring group Palestinian Media Watch.

“We have no role in this blessed land other than Jihad.It is our honor, all the honor, that we are fighting against Israel, this thieving entity, and that we are educating our sons to hate this entity.It is our honor that we are continuing with all our days, efforts, and intentions to blow up all of this Zionist entity’s cities,” he said, adding that Gaza and the Palestinian areas in Judea and Samaria would be a “thorn” in Israel’s side.

The post WATCH – Dead terror chief: Our only role is Jihad, blowing up all Zionist entity cities appeared first on World Israel News.

President Christodoulides said that he wanted to send a strong and clear message about the strategic nature of the relationship between the two countries.

By TPS

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursday met at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. The meeting was held as part of a new relationship between Israel, Greece and Cyprus.

“We built together an Eastern Mediterranean alliance of democracies – Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. We put our American friends in the loop as well,” Netanyahu said.

“It’s a very stable and very promising alliance,” he added. “We should continue to build it: economically, in terms of our intelligence services, defense and political partnership, also in international forums. We welcome this, and we should continue.”

President Christodoulides said that he came to Israel despite the ongoing Islamic Jihad terrorist attacks that he said his government “fully condemns” because he wanted to send a strong and clear message about the strategic nature of the relationship between the two countries.

“We worked together in the past,” said the President. “I’m here to see how we can enhance even more our excellent bilateral relations, but also – and that is something that I always enjoy discussing with you, dear Benjamin – the regional developments and how we can work together, two democracies in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Middle East; how we can work together in order to get the stable future.”

President Christodoulides was accompanied by the Cypriot ministers of Foreign affairs and Energy, Commerce and Industry. Also participating in the meeting were the Director of the National Security Council, the Prime Minister’s Chief-of-Staff, the Prime Minister’s Military Secretary, the Prime Minister’s Diplomatic Adviser and the ambassadors of both countries.

The post Cypriot president meets with Netanyahu in Jerusalem in spite of rocket attacks appeared first on World Israel News.

In March 2023, over one million people marched throughout France to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to raise the retirement age. In an article published by CBS News, Elaine Cobbe described how the “the massive strikes” severely impacted “rail, road and air transport . . . causing widespread delays and cancellations. They also forced some […]

After a long and arduous search for justice, Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, is to be extradited to the United States from Peru. This news was announced by Holloway’s mother, Beth Holloway, in an emotional statement. Van der Sloot, who is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence for the murder of 21-year-old Peruvian Stephany Flores in 2010, is being extradited to the US to face extortion and fraud charges.

The events leading up to Holloway’s disappearance saw her last seen leaving a bar in Aruba with Van der Sloot early on May 30, 2005. An extensive public search took place with media coverage and worldwide attention, but Natalee’s body was not found, and she was eventually declared legally dead in 2014. Although Van der Sloot was arrested in connection with her disappearance, he was released due to lack of evidence.

The Peruvian government approves the US-bound transfer, with Peru Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Daniel Maurate Romero, saying that “this action will enable a process that will help to bring peace to Mrs. Holloway and to her family.” Criminal defense attorney Ted Williams, who has been covering the case since 2005, commented on the news, saying it was “fantastic” but that the legal process could be “long and drawn out” depending on the charges.

Van der Sloot had previously told the police he killed Flores in a fit of rage after she found evidence on his laptop of his involvement in the Holloway case. Yet police forensic experts disputed this account. In her statement, Beth Holloway noted that her deceased daughter Natalee would have been 36 this year and expressed gratitude that justice may finally be possible.

The extradition of Joran van der Sloot to answer for his alleged crimes is a significant step in the search for justice for Natalee Holloway and her family. After almost eighteen years, their persistence is finally paying off, and it is to be hoped that their suffering will come to an end with a resolution for the case.