CNN – December 19, 2023
As reports of hate crimes against American Muslims grow, here’s how you can help
The rise in anti-Muslim acts is undeniable and unnerving. Three Palestinian college students were shotﾠin Vermont, and whenﾠa six-year-old was stabbed in Chicago, his mother couldnﾒt attend his funeral because sheﾒd been stabbed, too.
In Georgia, a middle school teacher was arrestedﾠafter he allegedly threatened to behead a 13-year-old Muslim student.
But most incidents of Islamophobia don’t make headlines – or even go reported.
This recent unprecedented surge of anti-Muslim biasﾠprompted the White House to announce a national strategy to combat Islamophobia.
Corey Saylor of The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says his organization receives daily reports of Islamophobia, including incidents where people probably could have helped. In one case, they say, a woman was verbally harassed in a crowded grocery store without a single person coming to her aid.
Saylor says that’s in stark contrast to a recent incidentﾠin the Fort Lauderdale airport, where a Muslim woman was harassed by a man who filmed her and threatened to “report” her to authorities. Two bystanders immediately sat down next to her. Others gathered around the victim. From across the room, a woman pulled out her phone and began recording the man, and then posted the video to TikTok.
Saylor says this is an example of how when one person rushes in to help, others often follow. It’s easy to be paralyzed in an uncomfortable situation, but offering assistance - if it’s safe to do so - is like giving first aid, says Saylor. You might not know exactly what to do, but you do your best in the situation.
The Maryland office of CAIR is offering bystander or “upstander” intervention training to teach people how they can help if they see someone being harassed.
He stresses that if there’s any threat of violence, you need to leave immediately. However, if a person is being verbally harassed but doesn’t seem to be in physical danger, you could shout out from a safe distance. That distraction could be enough to disrupt the situation. You could also walk over to and ask the victim if they want you to call the police. If you’re able to record the occurrence with your phone, that can be useful for law enforcement. If you can’t do that, or you just don’t think of it at the time, immediately jot down everything you remember about the incident. This could be a huge help for the victim in the future.
The focus of the training, according to Saylor, is to directly support the target of the hate bias while ignoring the perpetrator. That way, the person who’s targeted feels supported, and the oxygen is taken away from the perpetrator. Helping could be as simple as offering a reassuring smile or moving closer to the person being harassed.
CAIR offers its “upstanders” training both in person and online. The courses are free. If you’re interested in booking one, contact info@cair.com
So what can you do to safely de-escalate a situation if you witness one? And what can Muslims do to keep themselves safe? CAIR has these suggestions:
WHAT BYSTANDERS OR “UPSTANDERS” CAN DO:
Shout from a distance
Move toward the victim and/or offer a reassuring smile
Ignore the perpetrator
Offer to call police
Record the situation with your phone, if safe to do so
Immediately write down everything you remember about the situation
HELP FOR PALESTINIAN, MUSLIM AND ARAB STUDENTS:
While no one wants young people to be fearful, Muslim organizations encourage students to exercise caution, especially right now. Those concerns led CAIR to put out a list of safety tips for Muslim students.
Some of their suggestions include:
Stay alert when walking by removing headphones and ear pods
Walk in well-lighted areas, preferably with friends
Look assertive and confident (avoid looking like an easy target)
Park in well-lighted areas; be aware of your surroundings as you get in and out of vehicles
Tell friends and family where you’re going; consider downloading an app like Life360 that allows family and friends to track your whereabouts
Avoid studying or praying in remote areas
Anadolu Agency – December 19, 2023
Sacking, censorship, threats:
Pro-Palestine supporters face growing global backlash
Over 2,100 such cases reported in the US between Oct. 7 and Dec. 2, Farah Afify of Council on American-Islamic Relations tells Anadolu
By Rabia Ali
Since the start of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, pro-Palestine supporters across the globe have been facing a growing wave of repercussions, ranging from harassment and threats to being fired from their jobs.
Prominent cases of sackings include journalist Zahraa Al-Akhrass, who was fired from Canadian television news outlet Global News for social media posts in support of Palestine.
In Germany, Kasem Raad, a 20-year-old apprentice, was sacked by Welt TV for questioning the company’s internal policies favoring Israel.
In the UK, politicians have also come under fire, such as Conservative MP Paul Bristow, who was dismissed from his government role after calling on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to support a permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Over in the US, the staunchest supporter of Israel’s deadly war, the impact has been just as forceful.
Expressing pro-Palestine opinions is costing people, particularly Muslims and Arab Americans, their jobs, as well as endangering their academic future, with universities across the US also cracking down on student activism.
Speaking to Anadolu, Farah Afify, research and advocacy coordinator at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said there has been a staggering surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian discrimination.
A recent CAIR report found over 2,100 such cases between Oct. 7 and Dec. 2, she said.
“We have seen 2,171 complaints come into our offices. Now that encompasses everything from employees expressing that they have experienced repercussions because of their pro-Palestinian social media posts or for expressing support for Palestinian human rights,” she said.
The cases also include students facing bullying and harassment in schools or on college campuses, as well as other attacks on Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the US.
This figure represents a huge jump of 172% from the previous year, with the biggest increase in complaints registered in areas like Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida and Maryland.
Among these, over 20% were cases of people being sacked or facing discrimination at workplaces, according to Afify.
‘Spiraling out of control’
“People across the board, in terms of whether it’s students or employees in a particular sector, they are being targeted for their support of Palestinian human rights,” she said.
The attacks have directly been toward employees who might identify as Muslim, Arab or Palestinians, she added.
Citing specific incidents, Afify narrated a case where a death threat was slipped under the door of a staff member at American University in Washington.
In another instance, an employee was told not to speak about Palestinian issues on her social media.
Later, her supervisor posted a very anti-Palestinian speech, saying things like “You deserve everything that’s coming for you,” and referring to Palestinians as “sick animals.”
There were no repercussions for that official, according to the CAIR report.
“So, what we’re also seeing is a double standard in which people who are proponents for Palestinian human rights … might be having their speech suppressed, might be experiencing consequences due to their decision to post about Palestinian human rights online,” said Afify.
She said the number of complaints, including reported incidents of discrimination, have been “spiraling out of control.”
“We will not see an end to these types of situations until we see an end to the violence in Gaza,” she added.
‘Absolute fear’
According to Afify, the current atmosphere for Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in the US is “one of absolute fear.”
“We see not only these incidents coming into our offices but also being publicized across the country,” she said, referring to videos being circulated on social media showing Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians being attacked “for seemingly no reason other than the fact that what they are.”
She said CAIR is working to raise awareness among employees and “make them aware of their legal rights.”
“It’s really important for employees to understand what is protected and … what might not be protected in places of work,” she said.
CAIR is also giving them practical resources in the sense of what to do if they want to post about Palestinian human rights on their social media, how to do that effectively and safely, she added.
“We also issue guidance to employers as well. Sometimes we will, especially if we’re attempting strategic advocacy around a particular complaint, we might speak with the employer directly,” said Afify.
They also give general guidance to employers to make them aware of the legal rights of employees and encourage them to make sure that Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in their places of work feel supported, she added.
Global Research, December 18, 2023
The War in Gaza:
It’s Not About Hamas. It’s About Demographics
By Mike Whitney
We’ve been told repeatedly that the goal of Israel’s operation in Gaza is to “defeat Hamas”. But is that true? We don’t think it is. We don’t think that any reasonable person would attempt to eradicate a militant organization by laying to waste vast swaths of the country while killing tens of thousands of innocent people. That is not how one garners support for one’s cause nor is it an effective strategy for defeating the enemy. Instead, it is a policy that is guaranteed to horrify allies and critics alike greatly undermining the operation’s chances of success. And that’s why we don’t believe that Israel’s attack on Gaza has anything to do with Hamas. We think it’s a smokescreen that’s being used to divert attention from the real objectives of the campaign.
And, what might those “real objectives” be?
The real objectives relate to an issue that is never discussed in the media, but is the primary factor driving events. Demographics.
As we all know, Israel’s long-term plan is to incorporate Gaza and the West Bank into Greater Israel. They want to control all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
The problem is, however, that if they annex the occupied territories without disposing of the people, then the Palestinian population will equal or exceed that of the Jews which would lead to the demise of the Jewish state. That is the basic problem in a nutshell. Check out this article that helps to explain what’s going on:
Demography is a matter of national security in Israel and a key indicator for Israeli-Palestinian relations and their outlook: demographic trends in Israel are rapidly shifting and this will impact prospects for violence and conflict resolution.
As of late 2022, over seven million Israelis lived in Israel and the West Bank, and seven million Palestinians lived in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel and East Jerusalem, a somehow integrated region referred to as “Greater Israel” by Jewish right-wing activists …
A demographic bomb is already ticking. Israeli Jews experience an existential fear to be outgrown by the Palestinian population,and this is further instrumentalized by right-wing nationalist political entrepreneurs. Demography lies at the core of the territorial dispute between Jews and Arabs, as the two nations are waging a major war on numbers, aimed at weaponizing fertility rates to turn them into a predictive assumption of victory.
As the current Israeli right-wing government is laying the ground for the de facto annexation of the West Bank’s Area C, demography has been one of the tools employed to reassure the Jewish public opinion that Judea and Samaria could still be integrated into Israel, while keeping a Jewish demographic majority. However, demography remains a struggle for survival and an uphill battle for Israel. This is especially true if Israel were to progress with the Palestinian Area C annexation.ﾠIsrael: A Demographic Ticking Bomb in Todayﾒs One-State Realityﾔ, Aspenia
As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal. But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine. Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state. And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land. In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.” Here’s more from the Times of Israel:
Jewish people make up less than 47 percent of all those living west of the Jordan River, an Israeli demographer warned Tuesday, claiming that most of the Israeli population is unaware of the democratic peril the country is sliding into by possibly becoming a ruling minority in the area.
Arnon Soffer, a professor of geography at Haifa University, told Army Radio Tuesday that in addition to the Jewish and Arab populations, he reached his figures by taking into consideration the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish people residing in Israel who are not citizens.
According to Soffer, there are 7.45 million Jews and others along with 7.53 million Arab Israelis and Palestinians living in what he termed the Land of Israel, meaning Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip. When the number of non-Israeli nationals is taken into consideration, it leaves the Jewish proportion at between 46% and 47% of the total, he claimed.
According to Israel’s official Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2021, 9.449 million people live in Israel (including Israelis in West Bank settlements). Of those, 6.982 million (74 percent) are Jewish, 1.99 million (21%) are Arab and 472,000 (5%) are neither…. The Palestinian Bureau of Statistics puts the West Bank Palestinian population at a little over 3 million, and the Gaza population at just over 2 million.
Soffer explained to Army Radio that although the birthrate has been higher among the Jewish population in recent years, so too is the death rate, meaning the Arab population, which is far younger on average than the Jewish population, is growing faster. Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says, The Times of Israel
Imagine, for a minute, that you posted a number of articles on your social media sites that said you thought there were too many blacks or Asians in America. How long do you think it would take before you were either shadow-banned, censored or buried under an avalanche of death threats? But when we look at the contents of the article above, we see that a major newspaper in Israel breezily publishes an article which states in stark terms that the country faces “democratic peril” because there are too many Arabs in the areas earmarked for future annexation. How is that not racism?
But this is how the issue is discussed in Israel. Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State. Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme? Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”? And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.
So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?
Why fewer Arabs, of course. Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state. As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population. Go figure? Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following:
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”
Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood. And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said:
“You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.” He concluded: “Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.” (1948)
And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938: “I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”
See how far back this line of reasoning goes? The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state. And for good reason. They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State. The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.” And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity. The preservation of the Jewish State became the highest value permitting behavior that would otherwise be disparaged as unacceptable and immoral. Here’s how Ben Shapiro summed it up in an essay titled “Transfer is Not a Dirty Word”:
The time for half measures has passed…. Some have rightly suggested that Israel be allowed to decapitate the terrorist leadership of the Palestinian Authority. But this, too, is only a half measure. The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.…
Here is the bottom line: If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution. And it is far less ugly than the prospect of bloody conflict ad infinitum….
The Jews don’t realize that expelling a hostile population is a commonly used and generally effective way of preventing violent entanglements. There are no gas chambers here. It’s not genocide; it’s transfer….
It’s time to stop being squeamish. Jews are not Nazis. Transfer is not genocide. And anything else isn’t a solution. Transfer is Not a Dirty Word, Narkive
The importance of the Shapiro piece can’t be overstated. First, he explicitly links the future viability of the Jewish state to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Second, he acknowledges that transfer is “an ugly solution”, but supports the policy as a necessary evil. And, third, he justifies the implementation of the mass expulsion by putting the entire Palestinian population into the same category as the terrorists. (“The ideology of the Palestinian population is indistinguishable from that of the terrorist leadership.”) So, in essence, Shapiro is making our case for us. He is candidly admitting that the only policy that will preserve the Jewish state is ethnic cleansing. And judging by developments on the ground, we must assume the Netanyahu government arrived at the same conclusion. The people of Gaza are being bombed, starved and terrorized all with the explicit aim of herding them in the direction of the southern border where they will be forced at gunpoint to flee their historic homeland.
Bottom line: The strategic objectives of the Israeli operation in Gaza are entirely different than the stated goal of defeating Hamas.
All of the land west of the Jordan River is now being cleared of its native occupants so it can be incorporated into Greater Israel while maintaining a sizable Jewish majority.
The demonizing of the Palestinian people –which casts the victims of this onslaught as the perpetrators– is intended to conceal the underlying policy that is based on racial discrimination. There is no doubt that if the Arabs in Gaza were of Jewish descent, they would be spared the genocide they face today.
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Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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