No war is necessary to destroy Israel: President Ahmadinejad
Press TV – May 13, 2012
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says there is no need to take up arms against Israel in order to destroy it.
Criticizing the regional countries for buying billions of dollars worth of weaponry from certain powers, Ahmadinejad said, “If their objective for buying these weapons is to fight with the Zionist regime (Israel), they should know that a war is not necessary for destroying the regime.”
“If the regional countries cut their ties with the Zionists and give the Zionist regime (Israel) a small frown, this fabricated regime will be over,” President Ahmadinejad added.
The Iranian chief executive made the remarks in the city of Kashmar in the eastern province of Khorasan Razavi on Saturday.
The president also criticized certain regional rulers for spending their oil revenues on USD 60 billion worth of [Western] arms.
In December 2011, the US formally announced a USD 30-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia which included the sales of F-15 fighter jets to the Arab monarchy.
The deal is part of a multi-year arms agreement between Washington and Riyadh, unveiled in October 2010, which is worth a whopping USD 60 billion overall.
The Iranian president also slammed the massacre of Afghan civilians at the hands of the US military forces stationed in Afghanistan.
State of Israel Dispossesses Negev Bedouin
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | May 6, 2012
Not content with dispossessing nearly 1 million Israeli Palestinians during the Nakba through exile and theft of their land, Israel is repeating this Original Sin against the Negev Bedouin, who’ve lived in their homes for decades. The State now intends to expel the Bedouin from these settlements, where they’ve lived for several generations, and to appropriate the land for itself. In many cases, there are plans hatched with the Jewish National Fund and Israel Lands Authority to Judaize the Negev by creating new Jewish settlements to replace the Bedouin.
There are indigenous tribal members who are fighting back with every means at their disposal. But the odds and long and the deck is stacked. Every legal appeal has been repelled by a judiciary that many liberal Zionists like to claim stands as a bulwark against the worst excesses of rampant Israeli nationalism. This particular issue shows the limits of such optimism.
Nuri el Okbi, Negev indigenous activist, imprisoned for ‘being Bedouin without a license’
Ben Gurion University Prof. Oren Yiftachel provides historical background to this struggle:
Since its foundation, the State of Israel refuses to recognize Bedouin ownership over ancestral lands in the Negev. Most of the Bedouins did not register their lands in 1921, as was required by one of the British laws; but neither did most other residents of Mandatory Palestine, including Jewish ones, carry out such registration. Sixty years later, the State of Israel made cynical use of this lack of registration to order to register most Bedouin lands as “State Lands”, thus making the Bedouins into “invaders” or “squatters” on their own ancestral land.
Some of the Bedouins have tried to challenge the system of dispossession. Notable among them is Nuri el-Okbi, long-time dedicated human rights activist. In recent years, Nuri and his brothers are conducting a series of law suits against the state, demanding restoration of the lands taken from them in the fifties.
A few weeks ago, a ruling rejecting the claims of the el-Okbis was made in an important case – one in which for the first time a professional support team was involved, including attorney Michael Sfard, geographer Oren Yiftachel and other experts. The proceeding lasted three years, during which dozens of witnesses testified and hundreds of documents and expert reports [were] submitted, attesting to the el-Okbis’ ownership of the land.
The judge, however, chose to render a harsh, confrontational ruling, sticking to earlier precedents and concluding that any land which had not been registered in 1921 is ipso facto the property of the state. The court relied mainly on legal precedents, hardly referring to the evidence presented. Therefore, it is very important to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court – the only body which is empowered to overturn precedents and strike out in a new direction.
At such a hearing, the judges would not be able to ignore the rich materials submitted by the el-Okbi Tribe, and the new legal arguments presented. In addition, such an appeal would strengthen the struggle of tens of thousands of Bedouins, who at this very moment are struggling against government plans to evict them to existing townships.
The government’s plan is based on the wrong assumption that Bedouins have no land ownership rights, and a Supreme Court appeal is now the only way to stop these draconian plans. Therefore, it is highly important to lodge an appeal on the el-Okbi Land Case, and make it clear that the Bedouin community is determined to struggle for their basic human rights – specifically to change a legal ruling which causes severe and completely undeserved damage to a large section of Israel’s citizen body.
Gush Shalom adds:
After a legal struggle lasting three years, the Be’er Sheba District Court rejected the appeal of Nuri al-Okbi, veteran activist for the rights of the Negev Bedouins. El-Okbi’s plea for recognition of ownership over the Al-Araqib lands, from which he and his family were evicted in 1951, was rejected out of hand by Judge Sarah Dovrat. The ruling has wide implications for Negev Bedouins in general, implying an overall denial of their rights over ancestral lands.
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Revisiting the Palestine question: An interview with Ilan Pappe
By Paul Weinberg | Rabble | April 30, 2012
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe begins a speaking tour across Canada tonight in Montreal. The theme of his talk is “The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question.”
Based currently at the University of Exeter in the UK, Pappe will be discussing the history of failed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. He is the author of nine books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which is the definitive account of the expulsion of close to 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 upon the founding of the state of Israel.
Pappe’s tour is sponsored by the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME). Freelance journalist Paul Weinberg interviewed Ilan Pappe for rabble.ca about some of the topics he will address on his tour. These questions and answers were conducted by email, just before Pappe boarded his flight to Canada.
Paul Weinberg: Do historians understand the entire story behind the events in 1948 involving the expulsion of the Palestinian residents from what now constitutes Israel? How open are the archives in Israel?
Ilan Pappe: Historians understand in different ways such a contested chapter in history. Much depends on their location of the ongoing conflict, because these events are part of our contemporary reality in Israel and Palestine. There were two basic conflicting understandings of the conflict: one Zionist and one Palestinian. What happened in the last 20 to 25 years is that most of the professional historians and with them large segments of the public tend to regard the Zionist understanding as a false attempt to cover for a crime committed against the Palestinians in 1948 when half of them were expelled by force from their homeland.
The most interesting development in this is the fact that quite a few Zionist historians, unlike their predecessors in the Zionist historiographical establishment, accept that half of Palestine’s native population was expelled, but they see this is a justified act of self defence. So the final stage in the historiographical attempt to understand, as you put it, is a moral debate of whether in the name of a perceived threat ethnic cleansing and massacres can be justified.
The archives in Israel used to be quite accessible. Material which is now considered as potentially damaging to the state’s image is now far more difficult to access. But there is still, for the time being, enough there to substantiate a better understanding of the 1948 situation and beyond.
PW: What are you working on now in your academic research?
IP: I’m working on several projects. One of them is called “the Idea of Israel”. This is a history of power and knowledge in Israel, and another is the early history of the 1967 occupation.
PW: Why are you living in the UK rather than Israel? Is it dangerous for you to live in Israel under the current political circumstances?
IP: I try and live both places in fact, but I have to work in the UK as I was ousted from the Israeli academia. I do not think the danger for people like me depends on where we are, but rather on how desperate the Israelis and their supporters inside and outside are and how far have they given up the charade of democracy.
PW: How do you envision a one-state solution? Is it possible for two hostile nations to live inside a single state? I speak of this as a Canadian living in a bi-national state that works by hook and crook.
IP: There is already a one-state solution in place – there is only one state and one regime controlling the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean. So the question is not getting hostile nations to live together but convincing oppressors to end the oppression. So one has to look for a combination of an outside pressure on the oppressor and an educational effort from within to change the power relations in the already existing one state.
PW: Norman Finklestein says that a two-state solution is still doable under international law even with the huge number of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land. He also suggests that the boycott and divestment campaign against Israel hasn’t really worked. What is your response?
IP: I think the two-states solutions are dead. Only someone who has not been for a while in the occupied territories can still think there is the ability to create a state of any kind there, even if the international will to impose this solution on Israel would have existed. If anything there is no such international will because the political elites are reluctant to do this. So the reality is of a one-state as I pointed out. The political elites in the west are also reluctant to stop the oppression on the ground, as they were in the heydays of apartheid in South Africa.
So you needed then, and you need now, a strong pressure from the civil society on the political elites to change course. And this is the essential role the BDS movement play and will play. The only real worry, and indeed the only remaining asset the Palestinians can still have vis-à-vis the Israelis is giving the presence of the Jews in Palestine moral and international legitimacy.
The BDS movement highlights that despite all its power, Israel will never receive legitimacy as long as the Palestinians do no grant it to them (this was understood very well by Netanyahu when he demanded that even the shamble of leadership of the PA would provide the state recognition as a Jewish State). Apart from the new efforts of Palestinian unity and re-arranging the issue of representation (resurrecting the PLO), the BDS is the most important development in Palestine in the last decade.
Paul Weinberg is a Toronto-based freelance writer and journalist. His website is www.paulweinberg.ca
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Palestine…. A Moment of Reflection
To Save Palestine is to Save the World
By Nahida | Uprooted Palestinians | April 28, 2012
I often pondered as to why the name Holy Land was given to Palestine?
What is it about this land that justifies or legitimizes such a description when in fact that land, through myriad of foreign invasions has witnessed some of the cruelest, most barbaric, most unholy, most immoral human behaviour?
My latest visit to my Home-Land Palestine was a heartrending experience with shocking reality; a roller-coaster, a volcano of paradoxical emotions, an extraordinary visual and sensual intensive course, with daily, if not hourly, spiritual lessons.
While the visit itself did not last more than ten days, I however travelled through time, standing on the terrace of my grandparents, I saw what was, what is and what could be.
As I stood on that old terrace of my grandfather’s house, facing the remains of the village of Lifta on one side and the construction of the Jewish colony Givat Shaul with its hideous buildings and eerie cemetery on the other, what I saw was indescribable: a vivid screen shot of two extremes of human existence and endeavour, a visual manifestation of a bizarre reality of two paradoxical worlds narrating the tragedy of what had happened and is still happening to Palestine and the world:
In the horizon, there before my eyes, was written the truth in plain indisputable language.
With poignant Lifta on my left I saw the past: organic, natural, native, rooted, sustainable, gentle, green, alive, flowing, timeless, tender, harmonious, modest, and exquisitely beautiful.
With Givat Shaul on my right I saw the present, violently constructed on the ruins of Deir Yassin by the Jewish-Zionist occupiers; artificial, implanted, pompous, forced, disconnected, rootless, harsh, malignant, cancerous, dead, offensive, aggressive, predatory, foreign, ruthless, and hideous beyond words.
On the terrace of my grandfather’s I saw a Civilization that lived by fostering life VS a Devilization that can only exist by destroying life.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw a culture of Life being momentarily oppressed by a culture of Death.
On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that for us Palestinians if we are to make it into the future, all we need to do is to vehemently reject the poisonous glitter of the occupiers with all its multifaceted deception: where slavery is sugar-coated with slogans as “modern banking systems”, “global trade”, “free loans”, “buy now pay later” and “economic growth”.
On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that whatever we do we must vehemently oppose any attempt that aims to lure us to “learn” from or mimic the occupier in any shape or form:
Not in the way they run their society, where the selfish concept of “I” and “my interest” are promoted and admired while the foundation of civil human interaction and the altruistic concepts of “we” and the “communal interest” are frowned upon, despised and discouraged as irrelevant backwardness;
Not in the way they conduct business by the use of usury enriching the rich few and impoverishing the masses of poor;
Not in the way they use aggressive agriculture, under the veil of “increasing productivity” they kill the land with chemicals and over-irrigation and destroy the future with GMO sterile seedless uncontrollable crops, they farm animals in the most cruel conditions. Under the veil of modernity they inject seeds of death and un-sustainability, bleeding the land dry of its richness and natural resources;
Not in the way they model their pyramidic hierarchical systems of which millions who languish at the bottom are crushed by a handful who climb to the top.
Not in the way they build colonies brutally carving out the heart of our beautiful landscape, savagely slicing through our precious hills and butchering our millennia-old meadows and mountains only to replace it with prison boxes and creepy tombstones.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw that a culture of death by its very nature is not sustainable, and cannot possibly survive let alone give birth to life.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw the manifestation of an exemplary, sustainable, organic, cohesive, open and hospitable civilization, a World Heritage that learned how to peacefully and lovingly coexist and thrive with its neighbours, surroundings and environment.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I understood why and how a land can become Holy and from where the sanctity of this cherished Land emerged.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw the hands of thousands upon thousands of men women and children tenderly attending the land, lovingly removing the stones from its fields and pathways, where in return I saw the stones write poetry of love and thankfulness with its poppies, daisies and bluebells.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw the attentive hearts of my people singing melodies of affection and adoration as they tenderly depicted their poetic verses in sublime harmony with their environment. Their little hand-picked stones thoughtfully arranged, perfectly in tune with the landscape around. Sensitively, compassionately and to the best of human endeavour, mimicking in fine details the Divine-artwork, without causing injury or harm to whatever lays in the way. Out of stones, rocks, flowers and trees they have created a timeless panorama of breathtaking beauty.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw the hands of generations of my ancestors patiently caressing its sleepy hills and artistically painting the landscape with the brush of pure love, swathing it with Holiness and Sacredness, preserving its Divine-given authenticity and protecting life that dwells on it.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw breathing homes with flowery grassy roofs, I saw homes with eyes, homes with hearts, homes that smile and weep, homes that rejoice meeting her loved ones and that mourn those whom have been lost.
On the terrace of my grandfather I saw homes that welcome its dwellers with hugs and kisses and put its children to sleep by tales of love, magical bedtime stories and singing prophetic lullabies.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I finally understood the meaning of the name Holy Land, Blessed Land, Sacred Land and why that name was bestowed on our Palestine.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw Love of Life, Love of Land and Love of Humanity beautifully and supremely intertwined with spirituality, religiously protecting all that is around, thus creating a Holy Land, with excruciating beauty and dazzling glory, a Sacred Landscape, a Majestic Prayer and a Soul-Capturing Sanctuary with infinite charm and mesmerizing grace.
On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw how is it possible for humanity to be saved, to survive and thrive by saving and following the example of Palestine.
On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that the day of their demise is a stone throw away and the day of our Liberation is not far anymore.
On the terrace of my grandfather I realised that stopping and reversing the destruction of this land, and its inevitable Full Liberation, is not only necessary and urgent from the standpoint of Justice. Palestine is far more.
Palestine and its ominously peaceful and sustainable model is NOT a mere nostalgic ideal, but the most perfect source of inspiration and blueprint to design a futuristic, yet solidly rooted and time tested society, in which human interaction, environmental intervention, timeless architecture, agriculture, ethical commercial exchange and spiritual quest are the peak of human achievement. They are not incompatible with contemporary technology and population growth, they are the safeguards and KEY to a sustainable, peaceful and brighter future.
Whether some like it or not, in order to rescue this Sacred World Heritage, it will need a difficult surgery: the removal of the invading death culture that has shown its colossal failure to integrate the Land and its People.
Beauty and Humanity shall prevail.
I warmly invite the world along with my fellow Palestinians to rediscover and embrace our Palestinian culture of Life following the flowering footsteps of the Prophets of this Holy Land, Palestine.
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MK Zoabi: Struggle for democracy is a struggle against Zionism
Haneen Zoabi, an MK from the Balad party, speaks to Elsa Rassbach about Land Day and her relationship as a Palestinian to Zionism and citizenship.
By Elsa Rassbach | +972 | March 29, 2012
Since the 1980s, Palestinians have marked every March 30 with protests to celebrate Land Day. The day commemorates the first widespread struggle of Arab Israelis against processes of land confiscation intended to create Jewish majorities in certain communities. The marches and general strikes began in the Galilee in 1976, and resulted in the killings of six unarmed Arab citizens of Israel. Solidarity protests spread to the occupied West Bank, Gaza and the refugee camps in Lebanon. Since then, the day has marked the first common struggle for a Palestinian national cause following the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, an event Palestinians call the Nakba. This year on Land Day, worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activities will take place against Israeli policies, as well as the Global March to Jerusalem, which will call attention to the continuing Judaization and ethnic cleansing in the city that was supposed to be the multi-ethnic, multi-religious capital of a future Palestinian state.
Haneen Zoabi, 43, became a Knesset member in 2009, as the first Palestinian woman elected on an Arab party’s list. She is a member of the Balad party, which seeks to transform Israel into a democracy for all of its citizens, irrespective of national, ethnic or religious identity. Zoabi was born in Nazareth to a Muslim family. In 2010, she participated in the Gaza flotilla on board the Mavi Marmara. I spoke with her recently by Skype.
What does Land Day mean to you?
To me, Land Day is a day of ongoing and a continuous struggle around the issue of “land property.” This is still the crucial issue between us and the state. The core of the Zionist project is a continuous stealing of land from the Palestinians and transferring it to the Israeli Jews. Renaming the places, the junctions, the villages, the streets, and giving Jewish names to the landscape is part of this “confiscation.” It’s a way to steal from us and confiscate our historical relation with our homeland. This is the meaning of Ariel Sharon’s famous statement in the Knesset in 2002 when he said that the Palestinians inside Israel, whom he called “Israeli Arabs,” in effect have only temporary “rights in the land,” the land not yet confiscated, but “all the rights over the Land of Israel are Jewish rights.”
During the 63 years since 1948, Israel has confiscated 85 percent of our land and turned it over to the exclusive use of the Jews. It has developed and built 1,000 towns, cities and villages, all of them only for the Jews. And zero for the Palestinians. We live now on 2 percent of our land. We don’t even have permission to build our own houses on our own land and thus have no rights to use our land that hasn’t been confiscated.
How does Israel’s definition of itself as a “Jewish state” affect the Palestinian citizens of Israel?
The “Jewish state” is a state that has been established by Jews and is run by the Jews for the sake of the Jews – all at the expense of the Palestinians. It’s a racist definition. The state declares me to be an outsider in this land, though I’m the opposite. I’m the indigenous people. I didn’t immigrate to Israel; it was Israel that immigrated to me.
The State of Israel claims that it can be Jewish and democratic at the same time, as if there were no contradiction between the two. Any debate within Israel regarding the inherent contradiction between being a Jewish state and being a democratic state is considered no less than a “strategic threat.” If we are not Jewish and refuse to give up our rights, then obviously we present not just an alternative view, but something that contradicts the state’s very legitimacy: Zionism.
How you define your struggle as Palestinian citizens of Israel in relation to the struggle of the rest of the Palestinian people?
Our struggle has two components, as citizens and also as Palestinians. And unlike the state, we don’t see why both components — our citizenship and our nationality – should clash.
On the contrary, citizenship should be inclusive. We are fighting for normal citizenship with full recognition of our national rights as indigenous people that would include our history, our identity, our culture and our nationality.
My citizenship is conditioned by the Jews’ privileges. It’s even conditioned to my loyalty to these privileges! Therefore, there is no way to struggle for full equality and full citizenship without challenging the concept of “Jewish state.” To struggle for democracy in Israel is to struggle against Zionism. And this is what unifies our struggle with the wider Palestinian struggle. Racism, Oppression, Judaisation, Apartheid and Undemocracy inside Israel; Apartheid, Occupation, Oppression, and Judaisation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and the denial of the right of return – all of these mechanisms of control serve the same ideological project: Zionism.
Nakba Day, the first intifada, the second intifada – all of these days are days of unity. But still our struggle is not united, because it lacks a unifying vision and a unifying framework of legitimacy. The Palestinian issue did not begin in 1967 and does not only concern the territories occupied in 1967. It concerns the entire Palestinian people, and even the wider Arab region.
After the Oslo Accords of 1993 defined the Palestinians inside Israel as an internal Israeli matter, we reformulated our national project in a manner that secures our reintegration into the Palestinian people and guarantees our place as an integral part of the Palestinian issue, both as part of the conflict and as part of the solution. Our demand for a “state of all its citizens” has put the Palestinians in Israel at the heart of the direct confrontation with the Zionist enterprise and has forced the “Jewish state” to admit the primacy that it grants to Jewish-Zionist values over democratic values, and to recognixe the impossibility of coexistence between the two.
This is the role we play.
Elsa Rassbach is a filmmaker and journalist from the United States, now based in Berlin. Her award-winning film, ”The Killing Floor,” an historical dramatic film about a union’s struggle against racism in the Chicago Stockyards, will be re-released this year.
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Eight children from Beit Ummar facing suspension from their village of residence
International Solidarity Movement, West Bank | March 26, 2012
Eight children between the ages of 14 to 17 years old were arrested in Beit Ummar during night raids from 6th to 11th of March conducted by the Israeli occupation forces following a nonviolent solidarity demonstration for the hungerstriker Khader Adnan on the 21st of February.
On Tuesday 20th of March the youth went to court at the Israeli military court at Ofer and faced a sentence of being banned from Beit Ummar, where they live with their families, for a period of 6 months. The youth are being accused of throwing stones at Israeli military installations. The detainees are Ayesh Khalid Sabri Awad (17 years), Basil Khalid Hassan Abu Hashim (15 years), Zain Hisham Khalil Abu Maria (15 years) Sami Amer Ahmed Abo Joudeh (16 years), Emad Mohammed Saed Solaiby (16 years), Mohab Jawdat Adi (14 years), Bilal Mahmud Awad Ayyad (16 years), and Ahmed Ali Mahmoud Solaiby (16 years).
The announcement of the sentence aroused opposition on the part of family members of the accused, leading to removal of the family members from the court and adjournment until the 25th of March. Issa Solaiby, father of Ahmed, says his son was also beaten by 4 soldiers in the court.
Hisham Abu Maria, father of Zain, claims that the children are being pressured to agree to false accusations. He said, “They made him (Zain) say he threw rocks at the soldiers even though there were no soldiers” present at the time noted in the charges.
The village of Beit ummar has around 17,000 inhabitants and is surrounded by illegal, Zionist settlements. According to Issa Solaiby a member of the local Popular Committee, Beit Ummar used to consist of 33,000 dunams of land. The building of the separation wall by Israel and a road that is closed off to Palestinians took 13,000 dunams of the village land.
Since then an additional 3,000 dunams have been stolen by settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements. The inhabitants of Beit Ummar suffer from violence from the settlers living in the surrounding settlements. Issa Solaiby also complains that the settlers prevent the farmers from access to their own land and destroy olive trees and grape vines.
In March the settlers living in the illegal Beit Ain settlement destroyed 14 olive trees, 21 grape vine plants, and 2 citrus trees from the village in an act of incitement.
According to Issa the settlers also enter the village with soldiers and guns to make the villagers aware of their aggressive presence. One year ago 17-year-old Yousef Ikhlayl was shot and killed by Israeli settlers as he was farming with his father. His killers remain unpunished.
Many of the villagers have been arrested and gone to jail. Imprisonment is a problem especially with young people. According to Muhannad Abu Awwad 10,000 villagers have gone to jail and at present 30 inhabitants, most of them under 16, are serving time in Israeli occupation prisoners.
Muhannad himself went to jail for two years from the age 21 until 23 and is now studying law.
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Israel Boycotts UN Rights Council over Settlement Investigation Decision
Al-Manar | March 26, 2012
Israel decided on Monday to cut contact with the United Nations Human Rights Council after last week’s decision to establish an international investigative committee on the settlements that the occupation is building in the West Bank, Haaretz reported Monday.
According to the Zionist website, “the Israeli foreign ministry ordered the Israeli ambassador to Geneva to cut off contact immediately, instructing him to ignore phone calls from the commissioner.”
Quoting an un-named official, Haaretz pointed out that this step would enable the Zionist entity to “bar any fact-finding team dispatched by the council from entering Israel and the West Bank to investigate settlement construction.”
“We will not permit members of the human rights council to visit Israel and our ambassador has been instructed to not even answer phone calls,” the official said.
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UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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