Remarkable images from the Great Return March in Gaza, May 25 2018:

(Photos by Abed Alkahlout via Shehab News)

Hindu women interviewed yesterday at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps claimed they were attacked by the Burmese military in Arakan/Rakhine state & fled to Bangladesh with Rohingya Muslims. Now if Amnesty doesn’t want to be completely compromised for some kind of unsavory devil’s pact with the Burmese genocidaires, it should hotfoot it to those Hindu refugees to interview them to make sure they have the full story & were not just played by the generals. Or does Amnesty want to play a role in the Islamophobic war on terror?

Mohammed Abu Tahoun died yesterday in Gaza from wounds he received last week at the hand of Israeli snipers. May he Rest In Peace.

(Photo from Palestine Observer)

Photos of Kashmiris defending themselves against occupying troops shooting up the Jamia Mosque with tear gas shells & pellet guns after Friday prayers.

(Photos by Basit Zargar)

Why are Kashmiri stone pelters condemned by so many for violence? Why not Indian occupying forces who fired pellet guns & tear gas shells inside the Jamia Mosque in Srinagar after Friday prayers during the holy month? Almost 100 people, including women & children were injured. Some claim the violence started when young people coming out of Friday prayers began pelting troops with stones. But why were troops deployed & surrounding the mosque in the first place except as a provocation & a violation of sacred space–very similar to what Israeli troops do at Al Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem? So did the troops start shooting up the mosque after they got hit with a few rocks? Or did young people start pelting them after they began their sacrilegious violence? And why would they start shooting worshippers in the mosque to retaliate for stone pelters outside the mosque?

(Photo of Indian troops outside Jamia Mosque by Abid Bhat/KO)

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=999489036873016&id=100004357860569

A video showing blood on the floor of Jamia Mosque in Srinagar after police & Indian soldiers fired pellet guns inside the premises with no respect for a religious sanctuary.

Graffiti tribute in Melbourne, Australia to 30-year-old Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, a double leg amputee & one of 64 killed by Israeli snipers at the May 14th Trump embassy massacre. The artist Van T. Rudd said “This mural has already been erased! A friend went to Kensington to show his children this mural yesterday & found that it had already been painted over. So, it existed for about three days. To whoever censored it: You can erase the image, but you can’t erase the spirit of resistance.”

Several times in the past few weeks, both on Facebook & Twitter, I’ve read rueful, not at all bitter comments by Kashmiris about the lack of solidarity for their struggle compared to that of Palestinians when their freedom movements are of comparable duration. Palestinian solidarity is massive, though still not massive enough, but only goes back less than a decade. For most of the past 70 years they’ve been entirely isolated & were in fact abandoned by most of their so-called left supporters after the Oslo Accords. The growth & strength of Palestinian solidarity can only in the long run strengthen Kashmiri, Rohingya, & Uyghur solidarity since they are so yoked by Islamophobia & Israeli weapons.

The reason the Kashmiri freedom struggle was almost completely unknown is the systematic news blackout–the same blackout imposed on the Rohingya & Uyghur struggles–& for a long while, the Palestinian struggle. Activists from all those movements have brilliantly used social media to break that blackout & the fact that media reports them today is due directly to their work. Media & governments have to get ahead of the freedom narrative of activists to put their own spin on things which offer equivocations, rationalizations, war on terror rhetoric, all that head-chopping Wahhabi/Salafi jihadi jazz intended to undermine international solidarity.

The isolation felt by those suffering war, occupation, genocide must be unbearable. Their use of social media to overcome that is revolutionary & has significantly advanced their movements. Their struggles are our struggles because the outcomes will directly affect all of suffering humanity by inspiring the oppressed everywhere.

From the archives: a protest, one of several in Kashmir, against Israel’s seven-week bombing siege of Gaza in July & August 2014.

(Photo was sent to me by a Kashmiri activist & photographer was not identified.)

There are probably none more able than Palestinians to answer the chronic question “Why aren’t the Arab & Muslim countries doing more to help the Palestinians?” This article answers it very well & succinctly. Those governments are on the side of oppression, including by Israel of the Palestinians. They have the same interests as Israel in suppressing popular movements for democracy, equality, justice. So of course they give little more than lip service & ignore the needs & demands of Palestinians for active assistance. Those regimes saw the Arab Spring uprisings with the same hatred & horror as Israel sees Palestinians. Class is always an essential element in politics, including the politics of war, occupation, & genocide.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180519-palestinians-in-jerusalem-reject-ramadan-meals-provided-by-uae/