South Korean authorities fail to arrest impeached President Yoon due to security stand-off

Police officers and investigators leave impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's official residence, as investigators were unable to execute an arrest warrant on Friday for Yoon according to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials, in Seoul, South Korea, Jan 3, 2025.

January 02, 2025 


SEOUL — South Korean authorities failed to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday (Jan 3) over his martial law declaration, after evading a crowd of protesters outside his compound but coming to a standoff with presidential security forces inside.

Yoon supporters gathered in the pre-dawn hours near the presidential residence, with the numbers swelling into the hundreds as they vowed to block any attempt to arrest Yoon.

Officials from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading a joint team of investigators into Yoon's brief declaration of martial law on Dec 3, arrived at the gates of the presidential compound shortly after 7am local time (2200 GMT Thursday) and entered on foot.

Buses block the entrance of the impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's official residence, as Yoon faces potential arrest after a court on Tuesday approved a warrant for his arrest, in Seoul, South Korea.
PHOTO: Yonhap via Reuters

Once inside the compound, the CIO and accompanying police faced cordons of Presidential Security Service (PSS) personnel, as well as military troops seconded to presidential security, media reported. South Korea's Ministry of National Defence said the troops were under the control of the PSS.

The CIO called off the effort to arrest Yoon around 1.30pm due to concerns over the safety of its personnel due to obstruction, and said it "deeply regretted" Yoon's attitude of non-compliance.

"It was judged that it was virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant due to the ongoing standoff," the CIO said in a statement.

Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's lawyer Yoon Kab-keun arrives in front of the impeached Yeol's official residence, as Yoon faces potential arrest after a court on Tuesday approved a warrant for his arrest, in Seoul, South Korea, Jan 3, 2025.
PHOTO: Reuters

Yoon's lawyer said in an earlier statement on Friday that execution of an invalid arrest warrant against Yoon is unlawful, and that they would take legal action, without elaborating.

The arrest warrant, approved by a court on Tuesday after Yoon ignored multiple summons to appear for questioning, is viable until Jan 6, and gives investigators only 48 hours to hold Yoon after he is arrested. Investigators must then decide whether to request a detention warrant or release him.


The CIO said on Friday it would review the situation and decide on possible next steps.

Korean authorities fail to arrest suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol 

By bno - Taipei Office January 3, 2025

South Korean investigators have given up on efforts to arrest suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol following a six-hour standoff with his security team outside his home in central Seoul.

The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO), which has been probing Yoon's brief martial law declaration, has since cited the practical impossibility of the arrest and concerns for the safety of its team as key factors in the decision.

The agency said it would now review the situation before deciding on further actions as they face supporters of Yoon, who had gathered outside the presidential residence and were left chanting slogans and singing in jubilation at the failure of the CIO to arrest the suspended president.

The arrest team numbered around 140-150 by the time it moved towards the compound at 08:00 local time according to reports, and although some members succeeded in entering the premises, they then faced resistance from Yoon’s security detail and a military unit assigned to protect Seoul.

As a result, a standoff ensued which included negotiations between investigators and Yoon’s security team but to no avail.

A court in the South Korean capital had issued the warrant earlier in the week after Yoon failed to comply with three summonses for questioning and investigators only have until January 6 to act on the current warrant, although they could apply for a new one to attempt another arrest.

Greenland's leader steps up push for independence from Denmark

Greenland's Prime Minister Mute Egede emphasised his desire to pursue independence from Denmark, its former colonial ruler, during his New Year speech, marking a significant change in the rhetoric surrounding the Arctic island's future.

Egede's speech, which comes on the heels of comments by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump expressing his wish for "ownership and control" of Greenland, also expressed a desire to strengthen Greenland's cooperation with other countries.

"It is about time that we ourselves take a step and shape our future, also with regard to who we will cooperate closely with, and who our trading partners will be," he said.

An independence movement has gained traction in Greenland in recent years in part due to revelations of misconduct by Danish authorities during the 20th century, including an involuntary birth control campaign launched in the 1960s.

Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953 but is now a self-governing territory of Denmark and in 2009 achieved the right to claim independence through a vote. In 2023, Greenland's government presented its first draft constitution.

"The history and current conditions have shown that our cooperation with the Kingdom of Denmark has not succeeded in creating full equality," Egede said.

"It is now time for our country to take the next step. Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation - which we can describe as the shackles of colonialism - and move forward," he said.

He added that it was up to the people of Greenland to decide on independence but did not say when a vote could be held.

While a majority of Greenland's 57,000 inhabitants support independence, there is division over the timing and potential impact on living standards.

Greenland's government has twice rejected offers by Trump to purchase the island, in 2019 and again last year, with Egede asserting that "Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale."

The speech did not mention Trump or the United States. Greenland's capital Nuuk is closer to New York than the Danish capital Copenhagen.

Despite the wealth of mineral, oil, and natural gas resources, Greenland's economy remains fragile, heavily dependent on fishing and annual grants from Denmark.

Greenland is due to hold parliamentary elections before 6 April.

- Reuters

Greenland’s leader wants independence from Denmark as Trump hovers over Arctic island

“It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede says in hinting at 2025 referendum.

Múte Egede has led Greenland since 2021 and hails from the pro-independence Community of the People (IA) party. |

 Leiff Josefsen/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images

January 3, 2025 
By Seb Starcevic

POLITICO EU

The prime minister of Greenland called for independence from Denmark and removing the “shackles” of colonialism in a strident New Year’s address this week.

Greenland, the world’s largest island with a population of around 60,000, was a Danish colony until it became self-ruling with its own parliament in 1979. It remains a territory of Denmark, with Copenhagen exercising control over its foreign and defense policy.

The renewed call comes after United States President-elect Donald Trump once again suggested buying Greenland from Denmark — a proposal he made during his first term and reiterated last month, calling the U.S. acquiring the Arctic territory an “absolute necessity.”

“It is now time to take the next step for our country,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Egede said.

“Like other countries in the world, we must work to remove the obstacles to cooperation — which we can describe as the shackles of the colonial era — and move on,” he added.

Egede, who has led Greenland since 2021 and hails from the pro-independence Community of the People (IA) party, said Denmark’s relations with Greenland had not created “full equality,” and that the island deserves to represent itself on the world stage.

“Our cooperation with other countries, and our trade relations, cannot continue to take place solely through Denmark,” he said.

Under a 2009 agreement with Denmark, Greenland can declare independence only after a successful referendum — which Egede appeared to hint at holding in tandem with the island’s upcoming parliamentary election in April.

“Work has already begun on creating the framework for Greenland as an independent state,” he said. “It is necessary to take major steps … The upcoming new election period must, together with the citizens, create these new steps.

As global powers seek to expand their reach and footprint in the Arctic, mineral-rich Greenland — which hosts a U.S. military base — is coveted for its strategic value in security and trade.

Trump’s imperialist musings attracted a sharp rebuke from Egede, who declared that Greenland is “not for sale.” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in 2019 called the U.S. bid “absurd.”

Hours after Trump posted his recent remarks, Denmark announced it would boost defense spending in Greenland by at least €1.3 billion — although Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the timing was merely an “irony of fate.”

Despite its rich mineral resources, Greenland relies on Copenhagen for significant financial assistance, receiving an annual subsidy of around €500 million.

Greenland Untapped: Breaking China's Mineral Monopoly (Video)

Country:  Greenland

Author: Tom Vaillant

Granteesident-elect Donald Trump's Greenland purchase plan is back in the headlines. The reason? A supply crisis, for the minerals that power our world. Greenland holds 10% of global rare earth deposits—minerals that China currently monopolizes and just banned from export to the U.S.

Greenland Untapped

Country:
GREENLAND

Author:

Tom Vaillant
GRANTEE

PULITZER CENTER

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

This project examines the challenges and opportunities of developing Greenland's rare earth element (REE) deposits, which are critical for modern societies and increasingly in demand due to the green energy transition.

Arctic shipping traffic is rising, making remote deposits more accessible. Data reveals a 120% increase in shipping around Greenland from 2014 to 2023, with a significant portion being cruise ships. This surge raises concerns about increased black carbon deposition and potential impacts on local ecosystems.

Interviews and research explain the practical difficulties of Arctic mining, such as lack of infrastructure, labor shortages and most importantly remoteness. The market remains dominated by the Chinese supply of rare earth elements, which discourages private investment in Greenlandic mining.

Despite these challenges, the analysis suggests that mining in Greenland is becoming increasingly probable. This is due to local changes in accessibility and government strategy, as well as global factors such as growing demand and the geopolitical need for a secure supply outside of China's influence.

By presenting data on mineral deposits, economic projections, and policy developments, this project offers a comprehensive overview of the complex tradeoffs involved in developing Greenland's mineral resources. It provides valuable insights into the ongoing debate about sustainable and strategic resource development in the Arctic.

TikTok knew live video feature ‘groomed’ minors, Utah AG claims

The unredacted complaint comes just over two weeks before TikTok could be banned in the US

Last updated: January 03, 2025 
Bloomberg Wire

Bipartisan attorneys general from more than a dozen states sued TikTok last fall, accusing the app of financially and sexually exploiting minorsAFP

TikTok has long known that its popular video livestreams encourage sexual content, including streams exploiting and “grooming” minors, according to a lawsuit from the state of Utah that was unredacted on Friday.

TikTok also discovered through an internal investigation that the feature, called TikTok Live, facilitated money laundering and allowed users to sell drugs and fund terrorism, the lawsuit alleges.

Bipartisan attorneys general from more than a dozen states sued TikTok last fall, accusing the app of financially and sexually exploiting minors. Utah also sued TikTok on similar grounds in June. Several of those lawsuits — including those from Utah, Vermont, New Hampshire, Kentucky and the District of Columbia — focused on TikTok Live. The suits cited investigative reporting from Forbes that found adult men regularly use the livestreams to coax teen girls to perform racy, sometimes sexual acts in exchange for digital “gifts” that can be redeemed for money.

The newly unredacted lawsuit also details Project Jupiter, a separate internal investigation into the prevalence of money laundering on the platform. That investigation, which has not been previously reported, found that TikTok Live and its gifting feature were being used to illegally launder money used to sell drugs and commit other crimes. That investigation was launched in 2021. TikTok employees have also discussed ways Live has been used to fund terrorist organizations overseas, including the Islamic State, the lawsuit claims.

Utah and other states built their complaints on a trove of internal TikTok documents obtained via subpoena, but many of the specific allegations were redacted in public filings. Despite TikTok’s efforts to keep the records confidential, a Utah district court judge ruled on Dec. 19 to unseal much of the material in the lawsuit.

A TikTok spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a prior statement about the Utah lawsuit, a TikTok spokesperson said the company “has industry-leading policies and measures to help protect the safety and well-being of teens” and that it removes livestreams found in violation of its policies.

The unredacted complaint comes just over two weeks before TikTok could be banned in the US under a new national security law signed in April by President Joe Biden. The measure aims to address longstanding fears that the TikTok app, owned by China-based parent ByteDance Ltd., could be used to gather sensitive intelligence on Americans, or manipulate the content people see related to key political and social issues. TikTok’s popularity with minors, and the well-documented dangers it can pose to them, has only exacerbated those concerns.

Utah’s lawsuit quotes chat logs from TikTok employees, slides from internal presentations and other communications showing the company conducted a sweeping internal investigation into TikTok Live following the Forbes reporting. The investigation, codenamed Project Meramec, confirmed the app facilitated potentially illegal financial transactions and problematic livestreams in which underage users would perform sexualized acts in exchange for virtual gifts from viewers.

In many cases, those users were too young to be allowed on the livestreams. At the time, TikTok’s policies forbade people under 16 from streaming live, and those under 18 from sending or receiving virtual gifts. Still, the investigation found that 112,000 underage users hosted livestreams in a single month in 2022, the lawsuit alleges.

TikTok also found that its algorithm boosted these types of sexualized videos so that they were more widely distributed. TikTok takes a financial cut when virtual gifts are shared on the app.

Margaret Busse, executive director of Utah’s Department of Commerce, who sits on the cabinet of Utah Governor Spencer Cox, said that while the risks social media can pose to minors are well known, the revelations about TikTok Live – and the ways the dangers are multiplied when money is changing hands – add a new layer of complexity to the problem.

“When they understood what was happening, they also understood the amount of money it was making, and they did not want to do anything about it,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg. “That’s just what is so incredibly damning in my mind.”

Accra fire destroys Ghana's largest used clothes market

Ghana's informal economy suffered an enormous blow after a fire engulfed the Kantamanto used clothes market late Wednesday, displacing thousands of traders and destroying goods worth millions of the local cedi currency.


Issued on: 03/01/2025 -
By: NEWS WIRES

A general view of the burned down secondhand clothing market at Kantamanto in Accra, Ghana, on January 2, 2025. © Nipah Dennis, AFP

A raging inferno that swept through the bustling Kantamanto Market in the Ghanaian capital Accra has reduced the sprawling hub of the country's informal economy to ashes, officials said.

The fire, which erupted late on Wednesday, consumed vast sections of the largest used clothes market in the West African country, displacing thousands of traders, disaster officials said.

The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) deployed 13 fire tenders to put out the flames. But on Thursday morning, ruins smouldered where rows of stalls once bustled with activities.

Goods worth millions of the local cedi currency have been destroyed, the GNFS said.

"This is devastating," said Alex King Nartey, a GNFS spokesperson. "We've not recorded severe casualties, but the economic loss is enormous."

"Preliminary investigations suggest faulty electrical connections might have sparked the blaze, although we are not ruling out arson," Nartey told AFP.

He added that efforts to completely extinguish the fire could stretch into Friday.
'Everything I own'

Hundreds of traders, many specialising in the resale of used clothes, now face an uncertain future.

For traders like 45-year-old Fred Asiedu, the fire is a life-altering disaster.

"Everything I own was here -- my wares, my savings, my future. Now, it's all gone," Asiedu said.

"How do I start over? The government must step in. Without help, life will be unbearable."

Adjoa Amu, a 39-year-old mother of three, described the fire as a crushing blow.

"I have been selling here for 12 years. This market feeds my children, pays their school fees. Now, I am left with nothing but ashes," Amu told AFP, also pleading for government support to rebuild.

Richard Amo Yartey, an official with the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), said that probes into what prompted the incident had begun in collaboration with other agencies.

"The scale of destruction is heart-wrenching, but we are committed to identifying the root cause and providing immediate relief to affected traders," he said.

The president of the Traders Advocacy Group Ghana (TAGG), David Kwadwo Amoateng, urged the government to act swiftly, adding that the "market is a vital part of our economy".

"The traders here need emergency funding to get back on their feet. Without immediate intervention, thousands of livelihoods are at risk," he told AFP.

Kantamanto Market, which is home to over 30,000 traders, has been a lifeline for many in Accra's Central Business District.

The government is yet to announce a formal response to the tragedy.

(AFP)

Blaze destroys Ghana's largest clothes market(+VIDEO)

TEHRAN, Jan. 03 (MNA) – A raging inferno that swept through the bustling Kantamanto Market in the Ghanaian capital Accra has reduced the sprawling hub of the country's informal economy to ashes, officials said.

The fire, which erupted late on Wednesday, consumed vast sections of the largest used clothes market in the West African country, displacing thousands of traders, disaster officials said.

The Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) deployed 13 fire tenders to put out the flames. But on Thursday morning, ruins smouldered where rows of stalls once bustled with activities.

Goods worth millions of the local cedi currency have been destroyed, the GNFS said.

"This is devastating," said Alex King Nartey, a GNFS spokesperson. "We've not recorded severe casualties, but the economic loss is enormous."

"Preliminary investigations suggest faulty electrical connections might have sparked the blaze, although we are not ruling out arson," Nartey told AFP.

He added that efforts to completely extinguish the fire could stretch into Friday.

Hundreds of traders, many specialising in the resale of used clothes, now face an uncertain future.

For traders like 45-year-old Fred Asiedu, the fire is a life-altering disaster.

"Everything I own was here -– my wares, my savings, my future. Now, it's all gone," Asiedu said.

"How do I start over? The government must step in. Without help, life will be unbearable."

MNA/

The entrepreneur tackling Uganda's second-hand clothing problem

An entrepreneur based in Uganda recovers second-hand denim from abroad and transforms it into sought-after fashion garments. -

Copyright © africanewscleared
By Rédaction Africanews and AP 

Uganda

At Owino Market in Kampala, shoppers jostle for space between stalls filled with second hand clothes – mostly from European countries.

Here, they can find almost anything, used, but for an affordable price.

But not all clothes sell well.

This is particularly true for denim, according to one of the traders.

Globally the market for denim jeans are estimated at $74.0 Million in 2023, according to the the "Denim Jeans - Global Strategic Business Report" published by Global Industry Analysts Inc.

The tonnes of clothes discarded by Europeans or Americans and imported to Uganda are becoming a problem.

It's why one businessman has come up with a solution.

Each day, Troy Elimu, founder of Denim Cartel, sends his employees to Owino Market to sort through second hand clothes to pick out the best denim finds.

These are then taken to his factory where tailors give a new lease of life to the discarded fashion items.

“We are trying to protect our environment using sustainable material so we try and reuse denim, denim that has been thrown or put to waste. So, that’s where the first process starts with. Sourcing the wasted denim or the offcuts of denim sourcing materials and then we now look at bringing it to our factories which is at MOTIV or Port Bell Road where we start cutting out patterns and pieces to specific designs,” explains Elimu.

His idea has found broad support among fashionistas and celebrities alike.

Content creator Patience Ainembabazi is a regular at Elimu’s store.

“I love the authenticity about the products here. I love the creativity. I believe they really think out of the box and repurpose denim. It gives denim more depth and makes us appreciate denim more because denim has really been a beautiful material that has been here since forever,” she explains.

In August 2023, the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, declared that he was banning imports of used clothing, saying the items were coming “from dead people".

But among Elimu's customers, many are convinced that his business is a viable way of tackling the masses of second-hand clothes in the country.

The entrepreneur also hopes to re-export his creations out of Uganda.

He calls this philosophy "send back to the sender".

 

US appeals court overturns FCC decision reinstating net neutrality rules

Matthew Farrell | U. Toronto Faculty of Law, CA

JANUARY 3, 2025 

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did not have legal authority when it reinstated net neutrality rules last May, striking a blow to President Joe Biden’s telecommunications policy.

Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) must provide access to all content without favoring or blocking particular websites or services. In May the FCC voted to classify ISPs as
“telecommunications services” as opposed to “information services,” thereby subjecting them to net neutrality rules. Several telecommunications companies challenged the decision.

The court found that ISPs are information services and thus net neutrality rules do not apply. In doing so, it applied the US Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo Secretary of Commerce, which abolished the deference afforded to administrative bodies in interpreting their enabling statutes. The court went on to find that the FCC’s classification of ISPs as telecommunications services was wrong:

A provider need only offer the “capability” of manipulating information to offer an “information service” under. Even under the FCC’s narrower interpretation of “capability,” Broadband Internet Access Providers allow users, at minimum, to “retrieve” information stored elsewhere. And we think it equally plain, for the reasons recited below, that Broadband Internet Service Providers offer at least that capability.

This ruling is the latest in a long line of dispute over net neutrality. In 2014, the US Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit struck down FCC rules requiring net neutrality. After that, the FCC implemented new rules in 2015. Courts upheld the rules in 2015, but they were repealed by the FCC in 2017 during the first Trump presidency. The May 2024 decision by the FCC effectively reinstated the 2015 net neutrality rules.

Many have criticized the court’s decision. For example, Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) worries over the possibility that “[ISPs] could throttle or block news sites based on the political views of their investors and corporate CEOs.” On the other hand, some have supported the decision. Ajit  Pai, the FCC Commissioner responsible for repealing net neutrality in 2017, lauded the decision, calling net neutrality “unlawful” and “pointless.”

Solidarity with Palestine and the Struggle from Below

Joseph Daher, author of a recent book, Palestine and Marxism, writes that amid drawn-out suffering in Palestine and Lebanon, we should not despair. He argues that resistance from below against our own complicit states offers a way forward.

By Joseph Daher

January 3, 2025

Source: Rebel News

Palestine solidarity protest in Berlin, 2018 | Image by Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr



Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza shows no sign of ending more than a year after its beginning, while the Israeli occupation army and settlers have continued to escalate its violence in the West Bank, as well as its continuous annexation, by dispossessing the Palestinians and confiscating their lands. Moreover, Israel’s government launched a new war against Lebanon by mid-September 2024, resulting in several thousand deaths and massive destructions, with scenes and images reminding us of Gaza.

It is in this context that former US president Donald Trump has been elected against Kamala Harris. Among many other elements, the Democratic party continuous and expanding support to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians provoked their defeat. Israel’s war on Palestine and Lebanon has indeed been completely supported by the Biden presidency. Since 7 October 2023, the US has acted in the most hypocritical way. Despite rhetorical calls to de-escalate the situation, it has in practice allowed Israel to act with impunity. It has provided Israel with all the military equipment it needs to carry out its genocidal war, occupy and colonise Palestinian lands, launch a war in Lebanon, bomb Yemen and Syria, conduct assassinations throughout the region and escalate military operations against Iran. The US has spent more than $18 billion on military aid to Israel since October 2023.

Trump will officially take office in the White House on January 20, 2025. Despite claims by Trump that he will bring about a cease-fire and end to wars in the Middle East, nothing should be expected from his rule. In August 2024, the Republican billionaire stated that if elected, Israel would receive all necessary aid to “end the war” in the Gaza Strip swiftly. As a reminder, Trump’s first term included notably moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, while encouraging the normalization between Israel and different Arab countries through the Abraham accords. None of these decisions were challenged by Democrats, quite on the opposite as we mentioned above.

Regardless of who is in power in the USA, both democrats and republicans have supported Israel because it acts as their local police force mobilising against threats to US and Western imperialists interests in the region, in particular any revolutionary movements that might emerge which would challenge US control over the area’s strategic energy reserves. Because Israel is a state predicated on the displacement of a people with deep roots on the land Israel claims, a reality which arouses anger and hostility among the region’s masses, Israel is forced to rely on imperial patronage and make itself such an instrument against radical change in the Middle East.

At the same time, Israel’s outspoken, unapologetic racist repression of the Palestinian population has become a model that far-right and right-wing neoliberal parties around the world would like to follow: ignoring international law and dealing however they want with non-white populations, whether those are new migrants or other minorities.

The elections of Trump, continuous rise of far right and deepening of authoritarian practices in western states, could lead sometimes to a form of despair among some sections of the working and popular classes. This also includes the Palestinian solidarity movement, particularly as the genocide continues, as well as the support of western imperialist states to Tel Aviv, while solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions BDS campaign have been increasingly criminalized in Western states. The criminalization of Palestine solidarity today serves to normalize attacks on fundamental democratic rights by the ruling classes and expanding state control.

The obstacles to achieve results and victories can lead some groups and individuals within the Palestine solidary movement and on the left to lose faith in the possibility of change from below and instead to place their hopes for the liberation of Palestine in the actions of some states, claiming to be allies of the Palestinians.

There have been indeed some saluting the so-called “Axis of resistance” led by the Islamic republic of Iran and describing it as the way forward for the liberation of Palestine. Iran, Hamas’s main regional ally, has however sought since October 7 to improve its standing in the region so as to be in the best position for future political and economic negotiations with the US. Iran wishes to guarantee its political and security interests, and is therefore keen to avoid any direct war with Israel. Its main geopolitical objective in relation to the Palestinians is not to liberate them, but to use them as leverage, particularly in its relations with the United States. Similarly, Iran’s passivity in the deepening war against Lebanon, and in the wake of the assassination of key Hezbollah political and military cadres including Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, also suggests its first priority is protecting its own geopolitical interests. Iran has also not hesitated in the past to reduce its funding for Hamas when their interests did not coincide: Tehran significantly decreased its financial assistance to Hamas after an historic mass uprising erupted in Syria in 2011 and the Palestinian movement refused to support the Syrian regime’s murderous repression of Syrian protesters.

Similarly, some have looked to Turkey as a champion of the Palestinian cause and its president Erdogan. Despite Turkish Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s criticism of Israel and his government’s ban on domestic trade with the Israeli state (in place since May 2024), Turkey and Israel maintain close economic ties. According to data released by the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (TIM), Turkish businesses appear to be bypassing the trade ban by routing exports through Palestinian Authority customs: there was an 423% increase in exports to Palestine during the first eight months of 2024, with exports in August alone surging by over 1150%, climbing from USD $10M last year to USD $127M. Trade between both countries has also been ongoing through third countries such as Greece. In addition, Turkey and Israel found common ground during Azerbaijan’s recent military aggression in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, controlled and populated primarily by Armenians. Israeli and Turkish drones, as well as support from both countries’ intelligence services, proved essential to Azerbaijan’s victory over the Armenian armed forces. More than 100,000 Armenians, nearly the entire pre-conflict population, were forced to flee Nagorno-Karabakh and become refugees.

More generally, grassroots progressive forces need not align themselves with imperialist or sub-imperialist states that each compete for political gains and strive to intensify their exploitation of resources and working people. Of course, US imperialism remains exceptionally destructive and deadly through its military, political, and economic powers. But to choose one imperialism over another is to guarantee the stability of the capitalist system and the exploitation of popular classes.

Left and progressive forces must of course defend the Palestinians’ right to resist Israel’s racist, colonial apartheid state violence, including through military resistance. Similarly, the Lebanese have the right to resist Israeli aggression. Defending the right of people to resist oppression should not be confused with political support for the specific political projects of Hamas or Hezbollah in their respective societies, or lead us to imagine these parties will be able to deliver Palestinian liberation or that they have a strategy in this direction.

That said, the most important task for those outside the MENA region is to win over the left, unions, progressive groups, and existing social movements to build a strong mass popular movement in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, and to support the BDS campaign against Israel. The best way to serve Palestinian liberation today is indeed to build strong local popular solidarity movements and push forward BDS campaigns. We need also to cultivate regional and internationalist analyses in our movements, believing in the common interests and common destiny of popular and working classes.

The main task of a large popular movement for Palestine is to denounce the complicit role of our ruling classes in supporting not only the racist settler-colonial apartheid state of Israel and its genocidal war against the Palestinians, but also Israel’s attacks on other countries in the region such as Lebanon. The movement must pressure those ruling classes to break off any political, economic, and military relations with Tel Aviv. No one should expect Western ruling classes to easily change their political positions regarding Israel. Never in history have the ruling classes granted genuine democracy or justice except under pressure from working-class mobilization from below.

International solidarity is absolutely needed as Palestinians face not only the state of Israel but its imperialist backers as well as we explained above.

There is a growing awareness that a victory for the Palestinian cause would be a victory for the entire left – for the whole progressive camp opposed to the destructive impulses of neoliberal capitalism and the rise of fascist movements, which are the two dominant political projects threatening popular and working classes today. Weakening Western ruling classes weakens Israeli apartheid, and vice versa. Struggling for Palestine, important in itself, is also a way to defend the rights of everyone engaged in challenging this unequal, authoritarian world system.

Joseph Daher is an internationalist anti-capitalist and an academic. He is the author of Palestine and Marxism (2024), Syria after the Uprisings (2019) and Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon’s Party of God (2016).

In Which Language Do Palestinian Women Live?

Re-reading Etaf Rum’s 'A Woman is No Man' in the current context reminds us that Arab-Palestinians have lived with painful, disfiguring histories of displacement for generations now.

By Samiparna Samanta

January 3, 2025

Source: The Wire India


Women in the Golan Heights Protesting for Syria and Palestine | Image vis Spectre Journal

Etaf Rum’s story begins in the 1990s in the hilly countryside of Birzeit – flocked by olive trees and mulberry bushes, the hometown of the Hadids. We follow the life of Isra Hadid, a young Arab-Palestinian girl ,who is married off at 17 and travels from Birzeit to Brooklyn to live with her husband and his parents.

We are led into the book with an emphatic confession: “I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York.” The innate ‘condition’ of voicelessness of the women of Palestine is assiduously developed throughout the novel, as Rum takes it upon herself to voice her silence, and that of countless other women. In hearing Rum speak, we are faced with troubling realities of patriarchy, of traumas of wars and ‘refugees’, of lives in ‘exile’, of states and borderless-ness, of ‘homes’ free of occupation and blood.

Etaf Rum’s
A Woman is No Man,
Harper (2019)

Yacob’s family was forced to evacuate their seaside home when he was 10 years old, as Israel invaded Palestine. Yacob’s daughter, Isra, a brooding young lady in love with folktales and the idea of love, grew up in Birzeit, close to a cemetery, on a plot of land that no one laid claim to.

At a very young age, Isra’s optimism that accompanied her migration to America- “land of the free” was promptly overtaken by a quiet resignation. We meet her husband, Adam, who runs a deli in Brooklyn and comes home drunk most nights, only to violate her. The burden of loveless marriages, relentless chores, and a near-captivity express themselves in fiercely diverse ways among the women of the household.

Fareeda, Adam’s mother, chooses to look away at Isra’s wounds as she sends silent prayers for the arrival of ample grandsons, while Sarah, Adam’s rebel sister, brings her Kafka and Lolita.

We are faced with a world wherein marriage, shame and motherhood reign supreme. With a haphazard timeline alternating between Birzeit and Brooklyn, the book reverberates with an aching feeling of anguish, but also, of wisps of hope, dreams of an unlived life, of secret ambitions and longing for freedom.

In sketching three generations of Arab-Palestinian women, refugees and immigrants from an undefined land, we learn that the book is partly autobiographical. A feisty Sarah’s life closely mirrors that of Rum’s, who, like Isra, migrated to New York from a small village in Palestine.

The women in Rum’s narrative are complex and layered, while the men seem linear; broken as they are by the Nakbah, poverty and dogmatism. The women – caught up in the banality of domesticity, motherhood and chores – are lonely, joyless and tired beings.

As they silently suffer through multiple childbirths, taunts of the fastidious mother-in-law, and abuses of their husbands, one is left wondering: Why are all the Arab women in Rum’s narrative uniformly powerless? Why do we witness recurring horrors of deep-seated internalised patriarchy? Can there not be women like Scheherazade – the captivating storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights, that Isra so fondly treasures, who seamlessly weaves story after story to save Muslim women from the evil king Shahriyar? In a world that feeds off typecasting Arabs as bigots, conservatives and extremists, how do we escape the stereotype of violence and victimhood? And more dangerously, what if the reality is sometimes indeed a single story? What if there are no possibilities of defiance, even if our Western-educated, feminist-self desperately seeks to find signs of resistance and choices?

Rum masterfully takes us through these questions as she complicates the narrative. Towards the end, the women break their oppressive anatomy of silence that held them captive for generations. Here, we are confronted with runaway mothers, young women-rebels, who turn down potential suitors and marriage offers, as they make their way into colleges. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s first-born, is an outlier. Just like Sarah who runs a bookstore and lives alone without a “male protector” in the crowded city of Brooklyn, Deya loves to read, stalls marriage plans and dreams of a life unlike her mother’s. And herein, the single-story breaks down.

Arab-Palestinians have lived with painful, disfiguring histories of displacement for generations now. Historians have dwelled on the fateful consequences of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the eventual Nakba as Palestinians saw themselves inexorably turning into strangers in their own land. In Rum’s story, Adam craves a ‘return’ to his homeland. However, ‘return’ is fraught with a deep emotional turmoil.

An all-encompassing captivity

As Peter Gatrell writes in his book, The Making of the Modern Refugee, the persecution and displacement of European Jews and Palestinians after the World War II can only be understood as a struggle between two memories – through the shared sense of being victimised, and their dual aspiration to seek restitution through ‘return.’ Rum paints an evocative pastoral landscape of grape vines and hill-lined terraces to remind us of a ‘home’ that is no more; of an “absentee love” that wells up within.

One cannot help but reflect on how an all-encompassing captivity framed the lives of most Arab-Palestinian women. Their territorial captivity, marked by the historical reality of Occupation in Palestine; their domestic captivity of shame and silence that defined their immigrant experience in Brooklyn. And I wondered: How important is it for one to belong? To a land, to a loved one, or yourself.

As the violence of the Nakbah resonated with the conjugal and emotional violence that scarred these women, I hoped to wish away the rootlessness of countless Arab-Palestinian women abandoned by the world and possessed (a haunting reference to ‘possession’ by djjins that hangs loosely) by the dominant power of Israeli military and Arab masculinity. And yet, like Scheherazade’s extraordinary stories, these women, stuck in a muzzled existence, puncture the single narrative of oppression, war, and inequality with their uncatalogued acts of rebellion.

In his memoir, Out of Place, Edward Said, one of the most eloquent proponents of Palestinian self-determination, writes, “everyone lives life in a given language.” What is the language that the women of Rum’s narrative, and the innumerable displaced women of Palestine, live their lives in?

If we look beyond the binary of agency and victimhood, a whole new world emerges. In this world of liminality, there is no performative resistance. This is no outright act of revolution. Yet, through their emotive spaces, dreams, desires and defiance, the women craft their language. By emphasising everyday acts of resistance and the depths of silence, Rum’s novel participates in the construction of a new Arab-Palestinian female identity. As Bashar-al-Assad’s regime comes to a historic end in Syria and displaced refugees pledge to return home, one wonders if we are perpetually defined by the desire to belong across anxious borders and identities.

Samiparna is trained as a historian and teaches at O.P Jindal Global University.

Hebron clans issue joint statement condemning PA assault on Jenin camp

Dozens of families in Hebron have issued a statement calling for the PA to end its siege of Jenin camp and engage in dialogue with Palestinian fighters there.

The New Arab Staff
03 January, 2025


A member of the Palestinian security forces stands in a roundabout in the Jenin refugee camp on December 29, 2024 [Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty]

Senior clan figures from Hebron province in the West Bank have publicly condemned the military operation being conducted by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Jenin Camp.

They issued a joint statement following a meeting which brought together dozens of prominent Palestinian families on Wednesday.

The clan meeting took place amid the unprecedented violence between the Fatah-led PA's security forces and Palestinian fighters in Jenin and its refugee camp.

PA forces have been besieging the camp since 6 December, after the PA launched a "security operation" dubbed 'Protecting the Homeland'.

Attendees of Wednesday's meeting rejected the siege of Jenin camp and emphasised the "sanctity of Palestinian blood" after the killing of six civilians and six security personnel in Jenin in the course of the standoff which shows no signs of abating.


Fayez Al-Rajabi, a prominent figure among the Hebron clan families, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: “We are treating what’s happening in Jenin from the standpoint that both sides are our family. Therefore, we must solve the dispute by calling for the good and forbidding wrongdoing, without siding with either party”.

He said the clans’ statement had been delivered to the PA’s security forces via mediation figures with close ties to them.

He also explained that previously circulated statements claiming that the Hebron clans supported the PA’s operation were not representative of the “general stance of the clans”.

This, he said, is what had prompted the public meeting, which was attended by over 1,000 people representing families from all over the province, and their decision to issue a clear, collective position.

Al-Rajabi pointed out that the PA was the party with the most capacity to resolve the problem, and therefore must take decisions which would spare further bloodshed, as what was occurring in Jenin was “unacceptable”.

“It isn’t permissible for the Jenin Brigades to shed the blood of the security services, nor for the services to shed the blood of the Jenin Brigades,” he said.

The clans’ statement read: “We reject […] anything that could be understood as our approval or endorsement of what the [PA] is doing in Jenin camp, and we condemn those who incite killing. The members of the security forces are our sons, and it hurts us to see them drawn into conflict with their brothers - the duty is to unify ranks against the occupation”.

On 24 December a Fatah-led demonstration was held in various towns in the province in support of the Palestinian security forces, and was attended by a number of prominent clan figures.

Abbas al-Junaidi, another senior clan figure in Hebron, said: “The positions of many Hebron clans have been falsified, with claims circulating that the people of Hebron have granted legitimacy to the killings happening in Jenin camp. This is a clear falsification of the tribal stance, and it never happened”.

He said Wednesday’s meeting had been held to “clarify the truth” through a recorded statement signed by “well-known figures and representatives from family councils”.

He said the clans had issued a call for the security services not to be drawn into political positions and urging for disputes to be resolved through dialogue “especially since we are under occupation, which requires us to stand united”.

Furthermore, he questioned the PA’s claim that it was targeting “outlaws”: “What kind of legal sovereignty are we talking about when we live under occupation and don’t have a real state? When the occupation attacks us, it doesn’t differentiate between anyone, so we have urged the PA to make dialogue the basis [for resolving the dispute]”.

He emphasised that what was needed was for the PA to "lift the siege on Jenin, end the military operation, and open the door to dialogue through calm discussions."

Moreover, he said many of those who had attended the march in support of the security forces had been put under significant pressure, with some even ordered to attend under threat of salary deductions if they had refused.

This article is based on an article that appeared in our Arabic edition by Malik Nabil on 2 January 2025. To read the original article click here.