Shell to sell Pakistan unit to Saudi firm

Reuters Published November 1, 2023

Shell Pakistan on Wednesday said its parent company’s unit, Shell Petroleum Company, has signed a deal with Saudi-based Wafi Energy to sell domestic operations.

Shell Petroleum Company, the international arm of Shell , said the sale is expected to complete by the fourth quarter of 2024, subject to regulatory approvals.

In June, Shell Petroleum Company said it would exit Pakistan with the sale of its 77 per cent shareholding.

The move comes after Shell made several announcements about its global operations and after Shell Pakistan (SPL) suffered losses in 2022 due to exchange rates, the devaluation of the Pakistani rupee, and overdue receivables, and as the country faces a financial crisis and economic slowdown.

“… the Board of Directors of Shell Pakistan Limited (SPL), in a meeting of its board held on June 14, 2023, have been notified by SPCo of its intent to sell its shareholding in SPL,” SPL said in a notice to the Pakistan Stock Exchange.

“This announcement does not impact SPL’s current business operations, which continue,” the notice said.

Wafi Energy is a wholly-owned affiliate of Asyad Holding Group, a fuel retailer in Saudi Arabia.

Shell Pakistan’s operations include more than 600 mobility sites, 10 fuel terminals, a lubricant oil blending plant and a 26pc shareholding in Pak-Arab Pipeline Company Limited.Follow Dawn Business on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook for insights on business, finance and tech from Pakistan and across the world.

Saudi firm eyes control of Shell Pakistan

Kazim Alam 

Published November 1, 2023

KARACHI: Shell Pakistan Ltd (SPL) said on Tuesday it has received a public announcement of intention from Saudi Arabia-based WAFI Energy LLC to buy up to 77.42 per cent of its shares, which are currently held by the oil firm’s foreign sponsor.

The potential acquirer is a Saudi retail gas station network and a sole licensee of Shell retail pumps in the Gulf nation.

Earlier in June, SPL told investors that its foreign sponsor planned to divest its entire 77.42pc stake in the oil marketing company (OMC) as part of “simplifying” its global portfolio.

Shell Petroleum Company Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Shell plc, is currently the single largest shareholder in the Pakistani firm. The general public owns 15.2pc shares while the rest is controlled by public-sector companies, banks and mutual funds etc.

Takeover regulations require that any share purchase agreement with a majority shareholder must follow a public offer to help small investors take advantage of the deal. Therefore, the second leg of the acquisition will consist of a public offer for half of the remaining shareholding in SPL that’s currently held by minority investors.

As such, the potential acquirer will make a public offer for 11.29pc shareholding in the target company at an equal or higher share price than the one quoted to the foreign sponsor for its majority stake.

At the going market rate of Rs163.92 a share, the value of the foreign sponsor’s entire shareholding in the OMC is around Rs27.1 billion.

The sale of the sponsor’s shareholding in SPL will include its downstream business as well as a 26pc stake in Pak-Arab Pipeline Company Ltd.

In July, Pakistan Refinery Ltd and Air Link Communication Ltd also expressed their interest in jointly buying majority shares of SPL. Last month, Bloomberg News reported that the world’s largest oil company Saudi Aramco is exploring the possibility of making a bid for SPL. Similarly, British investment firm Prax Overseas Holdings Ltd also expressed interest in buying the local OMC.

SPL posted a net profit of Rs6.4bn for the January-Sept­ember period, up 125.2pc from a year ago.

SPL is the third-largest OMC with a share of roughly 7.1pc in volumetric sales recorded in the first quarter of 2023-24. Its volumetric sales in July-September dropped 15pc year-on-year to 272,000 tonnes.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023

Follow Dawn Business on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook for insights on business, finance and tech from Pakistan and across the world.

 

People called on Starlink to provide internet to Gaza after Israeli blackout. But is that possible?

A telephone and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other over the weekend.

Dawn.com | Reuters Published October 30, 2023  

Gaza witnessed a total communications blackout over the weekend as Israel stepped up its operations in the besieged territory in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.

A telephone and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other, with calls to loved ones, ambulances or colleagues elsewhere all but impossible as Israel widened its air and ground assault.

International humanitarian organisations said the blackout, which began late on Friday, worsened an already desperate situation by impeding life-saving operations and preventing contact with their staff on the ground.

Following the blackout, #StarlinkforGaza became a top trend on social media platform X, with people calling for the Elon Musk-owned company to provide internet services for the besieged enclave.

On Saturday, Musk said that Starlink would support communication links in Gaza with “internationally recognised aid organisations”, prompting Israel’s communication minister to say Israel would fight the move.

Musk said that it was not clear who had authority for ground links in Gaza, but we do know that “no terminal has requested a connection in that area”.

Responding to Musk’s post on X, Israel’s communication minister Shlomo Karhi said Israel “will use all means at its disposal to fight this.”

“Hamas will use it for terrorist activities,” Karhi wrote. “Perhaps Musk would be willing to condition it with the release of our abducted babies, sons, daughters, elderly people. All of them! By then, my office will cut any ties with Starlink.”

While communications have been restored since then, analysts are uncertain if Starlink — the website of which says “available almost anywhere on Earth” — can work in Gaza.

Marc Owen Jones, associate professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University based in Doha, told Al Jazeera, “We’ve seen 500,000 posts on X saying Starlink should power Gaza. But people don’t actually appreciate that ‘Starlink for Gaza’ is an impossibility.”

“Starlink terminals or dishes in Gaza would be difficult to smuggle in and distribute at scale. The Israeli government is unlikely to allow legal imports of it,” he said.

“But let’s say Starlink got in. How will it be powered? There is no fuel in Gaza right now,” Jones said.

According to Al Jazeera, Jones noted that the Starlink network relies on ground stations that would need approval within Gaza, which he says is unlikely to get under the current situation.

“Owning a Starlink terminal with two-way transmission could endanger Gazans if detected by Israeli authorities,” he said, adding that the internet provision would likely meet opposition from the United States and Israel administrations.

The report also noted that if such a scenario does happen, it would not be the first. It said that following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, Musk “ensured Starlink terminals would be made available to help people and the army in Ukraine after internet services were disrupted due to the war”.

Commenting on whether Starlink could set up terminals at the Rafah border with Egypt, Jones told Al Jazeera that even if they [Egypt] allowed it or were allowed to set up Starlink terminals, “it would have limited efficacy”.

They called Mandela a terrorist

Jawed Naqvi 

Published October 31, 2023

WHEN the lights suddenly go off, we mostly lean on our primordial instincts to negotiate the darkened room with memory of passage through the maze of obstacles and locate, say, a candle.

Memory can similarly help sift fact from fiction of the tragedy unfolding in the darkened Gaza Strip where Israel is killing and displacing an occupied people and muffling their remonstrations to an outraged world.

It’s an old tactic though, experienced in Jammu and Kashmir, and more recently in Manipur in India. It’s another matter that it could never deter the keen observer from gleaning the facts, some chilling and forbidding, others pulsating with life and hope.

This Saturday would mark 28 years since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The Israeli prime minister was killed by a Jewish gunman on Nov 4, 1995, at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. The killer, an angry law student, belonged to a pack of right-wing Israelis, including those that currently rule the country, who opposed the Oslo peace accords.



Rabin signed the pact with Yasser Arafat in 1993, and Bill Clinton presided over the ceremony that offered land to Palestinians in the West Bank. And though it wasn’t the greatest remedy to vacate Israel’s occupation of Palestinian homeland, Oslo, at least, took a step in the direction.


In the swirling darkness of Gaza, Netanyahu’s words from 2020 shine a light on his military campaign.

To rub salt into the wounds of its opponents, Rabin and Arafat got the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Israel’s then foreign minister Shimon Peres “for their effort to create peace in the Middle East”.




The stage was set for ensuing mayhem. It would reveal itself over the next decades in the daily killings and dislocation of Palestinian civilians by Jewish settlers, nudged and armed by those who opposed the Oslo rapprochement.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, opposed Oslo and has been frequently accused of complicity in Rabin’s murder, not directly but in a manner that resembles charges against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for the assassination of Gandhiji at a prayer meeting in Delhi in 1948.

The RSS got the proverbial clean chit in the plot. But Hindutva’s all-time favourite icon from the Congress party, Sardar Patel, did note that Gandhi’s murder “was welcomed by those of the RSS and the Mahasabha who were strongly opposed to his way of thinking”.

One such ‘way’ of Gandhi’s thinking that riles Hindutva remains enshrined in his article in Harijan of Nov 26, 1938. “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the French.” Patel recalled that RSS members had distributed sweets over Gandhi’s murder. What about Rabin’s death?

Observing the anniversary last year of the assassination, Israel’s Labour Party chief Merav Michaeli singled out Netanyahu and Ben Gvir, the rabid right-winger and current national security minister, for mention.

“Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in a political assassination. He was murdered in a political assassination with the cooperation of Benjamin Netanyahu and [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” Michaeli said.

The Times of Israel recalled that Ben Gvir captured the national limelight when he gloated as a teen about stealing an emblem from Rabin’s car a short time before the assassination. “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too,” he said in televised comments.

The claims are routinely denied by Netanyahu. Reports recall, however, how in the weeks before the assassination, Netanyahu, then head of the opposition, and other senior Likud members attended a right-wing political rally in Jerusalem where protesters branded Rabin a ‘traitor’, ‘murderer’, and ‘Nazi’ for signing the peace agreement with the Palestinians earlier that year. Netanyahu also marched in a Ra’anana protest as demonstrators behind him carried a mock coffin.

In the swirling darkness of Gaza, Netanyahu’s words from 2020 do shine a light on his military campaign, now into its fourth week. “I asserted my right to express a different position. It was not only my right, but also my duty,” he said at the time. “I vehemently opposed the calls of ‘traitor’ directed towards [Rabin] but I thought he was wrong and mistaken in the direction he took. It was an error to make peace with the enemy.”



Had making peace with ‘the enemy’ been such a revolting idea, we would be still watching unending violence over Ireland, while the Irish Republican Army would remain damned as a terrorist group by those that now embrace it. Remember also that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had both decried African National Congress and Nelson Mandela as terrorists. Mandela remained on the US terror watch nearly until his death.

As news from Gaza remains blocked, it’s redeeming to know that journalists are still staking their lives to present the truth from ground zero. UN workers, among others, will too bear witness as aid givers.

As we wait anxiously for independent sources from Gaza for the other side of the narrative, there is a bold interview to lean on. The intrepid Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani interviewed a Hamas spokesman for India’s respected Frontline magazine.

That should help break the silence on behalf of Gaza’s unheard and oppressed. Moussa Abu Marzouk who heads Hamas’ international relations office from Doha was asked whether the killing of Israeli civilians was not a prelude to the destruction of Gaza itself.

The stand-off did not begin on Oct 7, Marzouk reminded Gilani. Point taken. Granted the root of the problem was the decades-long occupation, why kill civilians, Marzouk was asked. He denied as propaganda the popular version of the events.

“There are false Israeli narratives about civilian deaths. According to the testimony of the Israelis who lived through the events, our freedom-fighters did not kill them. Rather, some video clips prove that the fighters cared for Israeli children. An Israeli woman said that a fighter asked her permission to take a banana and eat it. Can someone who asks for permission to eat kill civilians?” That said, we still need to keep groping in the dark for the elusive candle.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2023

The other war

THERE is a conflict going on in the Middle East, which continues to occupy centre stage in global politics. Every headline and news story, every discussion is about it.

Arifa Noor 

Published October 31, 2023 

Even in an insular society such as ours where we continue to be consumed by questions about elections, whether they will happen or not, or whether or not Nawaz Sharif will be prime minister, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict crops up inevitably. It has penetrated even the naval gazing which passes for political discussions in Pakistan.

Why haven’t you written about the war, I have been asked many times in these past weeks. Because I don’t feel equipped enough, is the embarrassed admission — rarely made publicly. Journalists, after all, should have mastery over a wide range of subjects — mastery enough to churn out a thousand words of wisdom. Perhaps, if I keep at this business of op-ed writing, in another decade or so, I may just get there.

But I digress. Over the weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to read the Western publications which have been part of the morning routine for long. Frankly, the coverage was too biased or didn’t cater to my bias.

It was this gap which was addressed by the polarising social media; it provided a different view. A view perhaps that I was searching for. But while looking for the voices of Palestinians or Gazans, there were also images, unfiltered, and un-editorialised, which were riveting.

It is hard to remember the last time a conflict played out in such detail on social media.

It is hard to remember the last time a conflict, even in the Middle East, played out in such detail on social media; and there have been many in recent times. Yemen is an example; it passed perhaps unnoticed here, expect for a few headlines.

For obvious reasons, Palestine resonates more globally including in Pakistan. This time around, though, the coverage or attention it has garnered through social media appears unprecedented.

The visuals of destroyed buildings, the rescues as people are pulled out from beneath the rubble, men, women and children mourning their killed loved ones dominate timelines. The moment a journalist learns of his family being killed in a bombing or doctors holding a press conference in the middle of bodies or a child screaming in fear are being shared on platform after platform.

And the impact this will have on Muslim societies, the world over, may be worth keeping an eye on. This includes not just Muslim-majority countries but also those settled in the West. The huge protests in many Western cities are simply one indication of this, as are the small stories about Muslims being attacked or Jewish people being taken hostage.

But as a journalist, what is more thought-provoking is the use of social media by a side which feels its voice or version of the story is not heard or represented well enough in the powerful mainstream media. Or should it be the mainstream media of the powerful? However, now social media, with all its limitations, allows the voices, the stories and the images to be amplified.

And perhaps this is one reason, in recent weeks, people have spoken of the polarisation on social media as well as the incorrect information being spread by all sides. Words which are so familiar to someone who is constantly grappling with similar issues in Pakistan.

While these critiques are not incorrect, the larger point is that polarisation is perhaps inevitable when the dominant narrative (regardless of its accuracy or fairness) is challenged. For the real challenge comes from those who are not yet part of the system and hence don’t play by its rules. Those rules may vary from society to society and press to press but they exist. However, they exist for those within the tent. And what is difficult for those inside to understand is that those outside have no reason to follow those rules.

It is perhaps important here to remember earlier examples when the dominant account was challenged, due to new technologies. The printing press was the first such example. It led to not just the first bible but also Martin Luther, who questioned the church.

At the same time, say historians, it provided a voice to all those who had been silenced earlier, including the more radical and fringe groups. Exactly when it became clear that Luther was not just a radical, fringe writer is something researchers would know more about.

The reaction back then was also to censor but it proved impossible to reverse the clock; apparently however hard one tries to burn all the copies of an unsuitable book, an odd copy here or there tends to survive. And because it has been censored, it’s a book people are interested in reading and there is also a bookseller who is willing to take a risk because he wants to make a profit.

There are more recent examples, which journalists of today are more familiar with. Consider the impact CNN and then Al Jazeera had on the world in terms of politics and reporting. Television in general was derided in the beginning as a medium which would force politicians to make hasty decisions and this is more or less what the CNN effect was described as.

Al Jazeera perhaps took the world closer to what social media is doing now, in terms of ending the long-established rule of how information flew from the West to the rest of the world.

Social media has taken this further. And as in the past, it is matched by an effort to control the challenge; ‘shadowbanning’ is a word being used frequently these days.

How far these efforts to control the spread of information will succeed is hard to tell. But it will eventually fail, if history is any guide. The, polarisation, however can be curbed to an extent if some of the voices are engaged with and brought into the tent, so to speak. But this is not easy to achieve, when the instinctive reaction is to simply silence.

The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2023

Global impotence

DAWN
Editorial 

Published October 31, 2023 

AS Israel continues its extermination project in Gaza, the global community — particularly the UN, OIC and Arab League — have displayed a shocking inability to stop the slaughter.

While these multilateral bodies issue statements of outrage, Israel has murdered over 8,000 Palestinians, many of them children, since the outbreak of hostilities on Oct 7.

There appears to be no one on the global stage with the moral courage to take Tel Aviv to task for its barbaric violence targeting Palestinian civilians, especially with the US and other Western states shielding it from all censure.

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Within the hallowed halls of the UN, the US, using its veto power, has thwarted calls for a ceasefire in the Security Council, while also voting against a Jordanian resolution in the General Assembly demanding a humanitarian truce. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders and diplomats have openly expressed disdain for the UN.

With regard to the Arab/Islamic world, the paralysis is even more glaring. Apart from a few voices — Iran, Qatar, Turkiye — that have forcefully demanded an end to the slaughter in Gaza, the Arab League and OIC are barely audible.

For many Arab states and Islamic countries, it is business as usual as Israel unleashes hell upon the Palestinians. A similar disinterest has been witnessed for decades as India pummelled the Kashmiris in the occupied territory. The resource-rich Arab states are not without agency.

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Recall the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, when Arab petroleum producers deployed the ‘oil weapon’ against all those states that supported Israel. Oil prices went through the roof, as many Western states realised that there were costs to pay for blindly supporting Israel. Can such an economic boycott be considered today in solidarity with Gaza’s defenceless people?

With most Arab rulers supported either economically or militarily by the West, such a proposition would not be endorsed. Moreover, Muslim states that have established diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv have not even considered suspending these until the Gaza massacre stops.

When it comes to the elites in the East and the West, cruel realpolitik trumps human empathy.

However, for many common people across the globe, the tragedy in Gaza is an unmitigated humanitarian disaster, and Israel is clearly the guilty party, responsible for the mass murder of Palestinian innocents.

Hundreds of thousands have marched in Europe and North America demanding an end to Israel’s vicious military campaign. This is despite the fact that many of these ‘democratic’ states have threatened to take legal action against supporters of Palestine, while witch-hunts of pro-Palestine activists have also been reported.

Yet the bravery of the common citizen marching in support of justice for Palestine and demanding an end to the slaughter, needs to be saluted, while the global elite’s shameful inaction on the Gazan massacre deserves nothing but opprobrium.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2023

 Red hands raised in Congress as US seeks more funds for wars

Anwar Iqbal 

DAWN

Published November 1, 2023

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin testifies as protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza raise their hands, painted in red, during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Austin, on Tuesday.—AFP


WASHINGTON: As US secretaries of state and defence began to brief the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday on the Biden administration’s request for more money to fund the wars in Israel and Ukraine, a line of anti-war protesters got up and raised red-stained hands in the air.

They shouted: “Ceasefire Now, Protect the Children of Gaza and Stop Funding Genocide” before they were removed from the room.



Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee on the Biden administration’s request for an additional $106 billion, which includes $14.3 billion for Israel, $9 billion for humanitarian relief — including for Israel and Gaza.

A press release sent to various media outlets said the protesters were from an organisation called CODEPINK.

The organisation said multiple members, including 29-year US Army veteran and former diplomat Col. Ann Wright and peace activist David Barrows, were arrested for their actions. CODEPINK said the red-painted hands of the silent audience members were meant to symbolise blood.

The protesters also said they attended the hearing to denounce the Biden administration’s support for “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.

Secretary Blinken did not respond to the protesters, but when he was asked later about the possibility of a ceasefire, he said that would only help Hamas regroup. A pause, however, for humanitarian reasons can be considered, he added.

Also on Tuesday, a prominent Jewish intellectual and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in his column, “Israel, it’s time to consider a ceasefire”.

Similar sentiments were echoed by thousands of Jewish peace activists across the US who called for immediate ceasefire and justice for Palestinians. Rabbi Alissa Wise, a rabbinical council member with Jewish Voice for Peace, told CNN she wakes “up every single morning with tears in my eyes, rage in my heart and I channel it into action”.

Wise, who has distributed hundreds of messages demanding peace in the Middle East, said: “My coping mechanism is to yell into the void, yell into the halls of Congress.”




Earlier this week, thousands of Jews and other peace activists marched on Capitol Hill, where they carried Palestinian flags and rallied in support of Palestinian rights.

Rabbi Wise led a smaller sit-in with hundreds of activists inside one of the Capitol buildings. The action was organised by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow, two of the largest US Jewish groups calling for a just and peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

Last week, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, which was angrily dismissed by Israel.

“We’re watching a genocide unfold in real time. In just three weeks, the Israeli military has killed over 8,000 Palestinians in Gaza, among them over 3,000 children,” JVP said in a statement. “That’s more than the annual number of children killed in conflicts across the globe since 2019.”

JVP and its supporters shut down the Grand Central station in New York this weekend to emphasise the need for a ceasefire in Gaza.



“Ceasefire now.” “Let Gaza live,” Banners covering train schedules at Grand Central declared. “Never again for anyone” and “Palestinians should be free.”

JVP said that thousands attended the protest, about 500 participated in civil disobedience, and over 350 people were arrested, including rabbis, elected officials, elders, and celebrities. The sit-in was the largest act of civil disobedience in New York City since the Iraq invasion.

Recent opinion surveys show that the protests are having an impact on American public opinion, even though not as much as the protesters expect.

A News-Nation/Decision Desk HQ poll released on Monday found 49 per cent of respondents said their sympathies lie more with Israelis, while 10pc said their sympathies lie more with Palestinians. Another 26pc said they sympathised “about equal” between both Israelis and Palestinians, and 15pc said they weren’t sure.

Younger voters — aged 18-34 — were more likely than older voters to say they sympathise more with Palestinians as 24pc of that age group said they were with the Palestinians. While 52pc of Americans approve of President Biden’s handling of the conflict, 48pc disapprove.

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023

Intertwined struggles

BLM activists see many similarities between victimisation of Palestinian and young African-American men

Rafia Zakaria 

Published November 1, 2023 

A LOT of things about the current conflict between the state of Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine reflect past positions. Just like it always does, the US has thrown its support behind the Israeli state.

And as has been typical of it, the US stood with Israel by voting against the UN resolution calling for a humanitarian truce this past weekend. President Joe Biden has reiterated his support numerous times and has also shown scepticism about the number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks.

Many other US lawmakers, both Democrat and Republicans, have fallen in line behind him; echoing their support in accordance with the sums of money they draw from the Israeli lobby. The exception to this rule has been a group of progressive Congresswomen, including Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib and Somali-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, but there are very few politicians who have agreed with their point of view.

However, at the same time, there is something remarkably different about the way this particular Palestinian-Israeli conflict is being perceived in the US. It is an important factor because if anyone at all can defeat the powerful pro-Israel lobbyists who have done everything they can to shore up support, it would be a swing in opinion in the American voting public. Of late, there has been evidence of just that.

Over the past several weeks, demonstrations in support of Gaza have been taking place non-stop all over America. In larger cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit, these demonstrations have drawn many thousands of participants.

One of them, organised by the Jewish group Jewish Voices for Peace, that was demanding a ceasefire, occupied all of Grand Central Station this past weekend, forcing police to shut down the rail terminal. “Not in our name,” the protesters chanted, underscoring how the ceaseless bombardment of the Gaza Strip was not something that they, as Jewish people themselves, supported.

Crucial to the new protests has been a translation of the Palestinian cause and the occupation of Muslim lands into a language that Americans understand. In recent years, or at least as far back as 2021, pro-Palestinian activists began collaborating with organisers from the Black Lives Matter movement.

Crucial to the new protests has been a translation of the Palestinian cause into a language that Americans understand.

Reporting on pro-Palestinian protests that were held in 2021 — another time clashes between Hamas and the Israeli state were taking place — National Public Radio reported on how collaboration between pro-Palestine supporters and African-American civil rights activists happened in two phases.

Prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, African-Americans many of them evangelical Christians, had supported Christian Zionism and along with that the establishment of the Israeli state. Following the 1967 war, and Israel’s military takeover of Palestinian land this perspective began to change.

Today, the actions of the Israeli state are being seen as acts of settler-colonialism in which white people largely from Europe took over the land of the Palestinians using the power of the British Empire.

Another way to put it would be that Europeans still unwilling to deal with sizeable population of Jews in Europe decided to settle them on land owned, loved and tended by non-Europeans and Muslim people. In the first few decades following 1967, such a perspective was being described as anti-Semitic.

That accusation, where any criticism of the state of Israel is termed ‘anti-Semitic’, is still being levelled by many Jewish-Americans who are aghast at the sudden support for the Palestinian cause.

However, the work done by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement on American campuses has been successful in highlighting how the support US lawmakers have given to Israel is akin to providing the state with a moral carte blanche to kill and occupy with impunity.

BDS is still coming under tremendous fire, its supporters or really any pro-Palestinian college students at Ivy League colleges in the US have faced threats and intimidation this time as well.

Other student groups, such as those involved with Black Lives Matter, have seen for themselves how powerful Jewish interests, who want to deflect attention away from anything Israel decides to do, come after BDS supporters.

Over the years, the Israel-Palestine conflict has been seen from the perspective of the oppressive politics of white supremacy. Black Lives Matter activists see many similarities between the victimisation of Palestinian men by Israeli authorities and the victimisation of young African-American men by the police in the US.

TikTok, particularly TikTokLive, has provided a platform for some of these conversations. In one recent one, African-American civil rights activists and Zionist Jews attempted a dialogue. The former were quick to question the entitlement of the latter along with their use of phrases similar to the ones racist whites have long used against them.

One of these, ‘I have Palestinian friends’, came under scrutiny in its suggestion that everyday interactions somehow take away the reality of Jewish Israelis being the oppressors or at least complicit in oppression and the Palestinian Arabs being largely defenceless.

It is not just African-Americans. One poll taken after Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks revealed that 25 per cent of Americans in their early 30s have positive views about the Palestinian struggle against occupation. The volume of people at protests and at other such online forums suggests that the percentage is an accurate reflection of changing views.

If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is translated via the lens of the American civil rights movement, it is very likely that support for it will continue to increase. If this is the case, closer to the US presidential election, it may change calculations about support for Israel.

That would be a very tall order for a country that sends billions to Israel every year as even a small shift can lead to a very different vision of the future.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023

The Arab inaction

The ongoing Israeli war in Gaza has compounded the predicament of Arab countries

Zahid Hussain 

Published November 1, 2023 

WITH the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, public opinion around the world is turning against the Israeli invasion. While protest rallies are sweeping across the globe, Western countries have remained steadfast in their backing for Israel’s war crimes.

Ignoring calls to obey the laws of war, Israeli jets hit the Jabalia refugee camp on Tuesday, massacring dozens of civilians sheltered there. The relentless Israeli bombings have killed over 8,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, but the US and some of its Western allies are still not willing to call for a ceasefire.

Now, with the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza underway, an already catastrophic situation in the occupied territory is worsening. It is not just an unfolding humanitarian crisis; the use of brutal military power, in fact, threatens the entire region.

The theatre of conflict is expanding with the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and Syria and the extension of military action to the West Bank.

Despite incessant Israeli bombing over the last few weeks, which has reduced a large part of Gaza to rubble, the Palestinian resistance has not been crushed. The Israeli prime minister has warned that the war in Gaza will be a protracted one.

It is already perhaps the longest war Israel has fought since it became a state. It has also exposed the vulnerability of the Zionist state, notwithstanding its massive military power. Even the complete destruction of the Gaza Strip would not make this colonial power secure.

Meanwhile, the US has increased its military presence in the region, heightening the danger of an American-backed Israeli invasion turning into a wider conflagration. That will not only have implications for the Middle East, it will also impact global geopolitics.


The ongoing Israeli war in Gaza has compounded the predicament of the Arab countries.

The ongoing Israeli war has compounded the predicament of the Arab countries, some of whom had made peace with Israel. Initially, the response of most of these countries was guarded, and they avoided direct condemnation of the Israeli aggression.

It was not surprising, given their receding support for the Palestinian struggle against occupation and their move to normalise relations with the Zionist state despite its policy of expansionism and apartheid.

But with public outrage at the massacre of the Palestinian population rising at home, these governments have come under intense pressure, causing some tangible shift in stance. The Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of people, has particularly heightened tensions, forcing Arab states to cancel their summit meeting with President Joe Biden in Amman.

The American president was then visiting Israel to show solidarity with its leaders over the Oct 7 attack by Hamas that killed hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians. There, he justified Israel’s massive military response as the country’s ‘right to defend itself’.

No step has been taken by Israel thus far to stop its invasion. There is not even any move by the Arab countries to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel, which is the least they could have done to increase the pressure on that country.

The Arab League meeting in Cairo on Oct 11 condemned the killing and targeting of civilians “on both sides”, equating the occupied and the occupation force. The Arab foreign ministers, who attended the meeting, vaguely talked about the need for peace, even as Israel relentlessly bombed the occupied territory in an action that has no parallel in recent years.

There was no mention of Israel’s long blockade of the enclave, which is home to over two million Palestinians, and the virtual ethnic cleansing that led to the Oct 7 incident. Surely, the killing of Israeli civilians cannot be condoned; but equating it with the ongoing massacre in Gaza is sheer hypocrisy. The response of the OIC countries has been equally feeble and flimsy.

But the widespread public protests triggered by the attack on the hospital have compelled the Arab states to play a more proactive role. Recently, Arab foreign ministers succeeded in lobbying UN member states to pass a UN General Assembly resolution condemning both the Oct 7 attacks and Israel’s atrocities, and calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities”.

The watered-down, non-binding resolution was passed by the UNGA by an overwhelming majority, demonstrating Israel’s growing isolation in the international community.

Along with Israel, the US voted against the resolution, rejecting any restraint in the use of military power. Soon after the resolution, Israel launched the ground invasion of Gaza, cutting off all communication lines. Hundreds more children have been killed in Gaza since then.

What has provided Israel complete impunity is the increasing indifference of Arab countries towards the Palestinian right to a state. Several Arab countries have recognised Israel under the US-sponsored Abraham Accords of 2020, including the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

The name of the Abraham Accords is meant to reflect the shared belief of the Abrahamic faiths, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, regarding the role of Abraham as spiritual patriarch.

The UAE and other Gulf countries saw commercial and other benefits in the field of technology in the agreement, which is also envisaged as an anti-Iran front. Interestingly, Sudan agreed to join the accord on the American assurance that the country would be removed from the list of states promoting terrorism.

Huge financial benefits were also promised to the impoverished nation. Similarly, Morocco signed the normalisation agreement with Israel in exchange for US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over disputed Western Sahara.

Although Saudi Arabia didn’t sign the accord, it gave its tacit approval to the deal. The kingdom, however, had come close to recognising the Zionist state just before the start of the latest Israeli war on Gaza.

The accord certainly helped Israel ease its isolation and there was nothing in the deal about Palestinian rights and the end of Israeli expansionism. Israel even continued to build settlements on the occupied land with no end in sight to the apartheid.

The so-called peace agreement is one-sided. In fact, it allows Israel to further suppress the Palestinian population. Now, coming under growing public pressure, some Arab leaders are condemning the Israeli aggression but are not ready to go beyond that. In fact, they don’t mean what they say.

The writer is an author and journalist.
zhussain100@yahoo.com
X (formerly Twitter): @hidhussain

Published in Dawn, November 1st, 2023

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

Child deaths in Gaza exceed global rate: NGO
Monitoring Desk 

Published October 31, 2023 

Damaged residential buildings are seen in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, near Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City October 30, 2023. - Reuters

THE number of children who have lost their lives during the recent Israeli military campaign over the past three weeks in Gaza has exceeded the annual child mortality rate in armed conflicts worldwide for each of the past four years, Save The Children said.

Gaza’s health authorities have reported that over 3,000 children have been killed since October 7.

“Decades of conflict and the ongoing military occupation and blockade of Gaza hinder the right to self-determination and consequently, has adverse impacts on the development of Palestinian communities, greatly increasing the vulnerability of children, particularly children most impacted by inequality and discrimination,” the report by Save The Children said.

“Palestinian children and their families continue to live in an environment characterised by violence, poverty and insecurity,” it added.

The report also underscores that children with disabilities encounter extra hurdles because of physical barriers and discrimination in society. The impact of war on them means their traumas will require a significant amount of time to heal.

The United Nations secretary general’s annual report on children and armed conflict, cited by Save the Children, reveals that in 2022, a total of 2,985 children were killed in 24 countries, with 2,515 in 2021 and 2,674 in 2020. In 2019, the UN reported 4,019 children killed in global conflicts.

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2023