Recently there has been a movement, spearheaded by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (the football hooligan and racist rabble-rouser known as Tommy Robinson) and his associates  to fly both British and English flags off buildings and lampposts, as well as the more traditional flagpoles, pretty much wherever they are. The campaign has been accompanied by the usual claims from Reform supporters and the like on GB News that anyone who objects is a snob, or a woke lefty who despises the ‘real’ white working class. Matt Goodwin posted a video taken from a car driving down a street in Rednall, on the south-western outskirts of Birmingham, in which flags had been attached to every lamppost (in this case Union flags; in other cases they have been St George’s Crosses or a combination of the two), and in the accompanying tweet called it “act of resistance against mass uncontrolled immigration, broken borders, the decision by politicians to house illegal migrants in the heart of their communities, and the loss of their national identity”.

The other day I saw a video, on a motorcycling channel on YouTube, titled “Does the Saint George’s flag offend you??”. The simple answer to this is no. (YouTube apparently blacks out any flags that are posted by emoji in the comments; this was assumed to apply only to that flag.) But the context and atmosphere in which these flags are being posted does. We have seen footage of louts painting flags on other people’s property, while racially abusing Asian people who just happened to drive onto the scene to do shopping. We have seen footage of council workers being assaulted, in one case by someone trying to remove the ladder he was standing on, while removing unauthorised flags or just while working on the pole or mast the flag was attached to. If flags are flown from public property such as lampposts and not attached properly, they can become a safety hazard, for example by falling into a cyclist’s or motorcyclist’s face, obscuring their vision; if they just fall off, they become litter. In many cases the flags were the wrong way up, representing a signal of distress, not a show of pride. It’s quite right that some councils want to remove unauthorised flags; it doesn’t mean they “hate the English” or “despise the working class”. It means they want to keep their districts clean and looking civilised, and keeping their character.

In a recent debate at the London Assembly, a Tory assembly member named Emma Best, having made some now common accusations that “the Left — people like you, people like the mayor — exaggerate and lie about members of the Right, and this … will lead to more violence” (having already mentioned the murder of Charlie Kirk), suggested that the best way to ‘reclaim’ the St George’s flag would be to fly it at City Hall and across the GLA and TfL (Greater London Authority and Transport For London) estate. The deputy mayor did not answer the question adequately, mumbling about how she had been born here and supported the English football team, and thought that Britain at its best was seen in the Second World War and in the welcoming of refugees from Ukraine, as “a place of inclusion and tolerance”. The TfL estate consists of things like railway stations and depots as well as bus and tram stations and maintenance depots; a brief glance at the Google Street View images of many TfL rail stations shows that they do not have flagpoles. Of those I looked at, only Embankment had one, and sometimes this was empty and sometimes it carried the Union flag. To fly flags at stations would require flagpoles to be installed, which would cost a lot of money that could be spent on improving the service; station staff also have enough to do without having to worry about raising or lowering flags when it’s deemed appropriate.

But the other answer to Emma Best’s question is that the flying of flags is something we do on special occasions, to celebrate or to commemorate. Aside from government buildings, and at military bases and the like, we see them at war memorials as well as on village greens. Companies use it to indicate a British product, though this can often mean British design rather than British manufacture. We do, of course, see flags flying when a British sports team is in an international tournament and when it is the English football team, the flag will be the English one. However, there is nothing traditional in this country about flying flags everywhere and attaching them to every lamppost, least of all by people who do not know how to fly them properly, and the persistent display of flags outside of competitions has a menacing overtone, reminiscent of its use for sectarian purposes in places like Northern Ireland. And it’s nothing for us to be proud of to have thugs roaming the streets, waving flags in people’s faces who didn’t ask for it, painting them on other people’s property without permission and then attacking or threatening council workers who try to remove them, or anyone they meet who looks different from them. It’s not a spontaneous display of national pride; it’s an ugly wave of incivility and thuggery from the worst of British.

Democratic leaders in US House ignore constituents on Palestinian rights as Trump targets activists for those rights.

More than 1,000 Palestinians arrested in occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm in one day.

Rubio Visits Jerusalem

The United States set out a revealing, if thoroughly predictable, stance this week after Israel’s strikes on an American-requested negotiation with Hamas at Qatar. American Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Jerusalem and reaffirmed his support for the Israeli regime and commitment to the removal of the same Hamas with whom Doha had been facilitating talks. It is unclear what reception Rubio will get as Qatar meets with other Gulf states to discuss its response to the Israeli attacks.

Pattern of Israeli Attacks on Negotiators

Yahya Sinwar (right) and Ismail Haniyeh (left) attending the funeral of Hamas official Mazen Foqaha in Gaza City on March 25, 2017.

The Israeli attack on Doha marked another case where Israel struck at negotiators under American protection. In summer 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who led negotiations, was assassinated in Tehran after having already lost much of his family as an Israeli pressure tactic.

A year later, Israel interrupted American negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program by wiping out the Iranian military command—almost including chief negotiator Ali Shamkhani, who was initially reported to have been killed but survived—and then inciting the United States into an ill-conceived assault on Iran.

What makes this attack different is that it took place in a Gulf state that is nominally an ally of the United States, even as Israel has repeatedly flared at its diplomacy with Hamas.

Qatar’s Mediation History

Though Israel, and such sympathetic regimes as the United Arab Emirates, have often accused Qatar of backing “radical Islam” – a buzzword for any remotely independent form of Muslim politics -, in fact, Qatar’s mediation has often been done at American insistence.

In 2012, for instance, Barack Obama’s government requested that Doha take in Hamas’ civilian leadership, which was then distinguished from its military command, in an effort to break up the group between its exterior and interior leadership. A year later, Qatar was used as the venue for a Taliban diplomatic office as the United States attempted to wedge between the Taliban’s “interior” and “exterior” leadership as well as draw the group away from Pakistan.

It was Doha that ended up mediating a ceasefire between the United States and Taliban in 2020, which only collapsed after prevarication from Washington and a Taliban assault that captured Afghanistan a year later.

A Trap for Hamas Negotiators

Indeed, the Hamas negotiating team led by Khalil Hayya was essentially lured into a trap: having been promised negotiations, they and their Qatari hosts were instead subjected to an Israeli attack of which the United States could not have plausibly been unaware. Such niceties as diplomacy are, of course, irrelevant to an Israel that treats not only Hamas but Palestinians at large as a virus to be expunged in its ongoing genocide, but it is also clear that the United States is quite content to let Tel Aviv run amok even at the cost to its reputation.

Rubio, an especially ardent Zionist who cut his teeth by arguing that Obama was insufficiently committed to an Israel that actually thrived on his protection, has unsurprisingly been an enthusiastic cheerleader of whatever Tel Aviv does and is more committed to censoring criticism of Israel among his populace.

Qatar’s Ambiguous Role in American Power

Qatar and the American military base.

Qatar has played an ambiguous but important role in the American balance of power. On the one hand, unlike “more-loyal-than-the-king” regimes such as Abu Dhabi, it hosts political leaders from various Islamist groups and occasionally flirts with anti-autocratic Islamists such as the Muslim Brethren; on the other, it hosts the largest American base in the region, Udaid.

It has long been argued that this would protect Doha against a backlash of precisely the sort that the United States has just permitted from Israel. This theory now stands exposed, and it was with unsurprising indignation that Qatari foreign minister Mohammad bin Abdul-Rahman announced Doha’s right to respond however they see fit.

 

Related:

– The Witkoff Massacre: Slaughter Of Starving Palestinians Undercuts Trump Pretensions

 

The post What A Rubio: United States Throws Weight Behind Israel After Aggression On Qatar appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

New report by the Sexual Violence Prevention Association also details systemic Israeli rape of Palestinians.

I often think of Sandra Bland. She was stopped for a minor traffic violation in Texas, arrested, and found dead in her jail cell three days later. The official story was suicide. Many of us never believed it. What we saw was a young Black woman silenced — her light extinguished, her death written off, her humanity erased by a system that preferred convenience over truth. 

I think of Sandra now because the world is watching something similar happen to Palestinians. They are being bombed, starved, displaced — and now, even silenced at the very stage where nations are supposed to speak. Recently, the United States barred Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, from attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The message is unmistakable: not only can Palestinians be denied their homes, their lives, and their futures — they can be denied even a voice. 

At the same time, nearly all Palestinians holding Palestinian Authority passports are now barred from traveling to the United States. This includes students, workers, and the sick in desperate need of medical treatment. Earlier this month, even humanitarian visas for critically ill children from Gaza were halted. Think about that: children who needed surgery, chemotherapy, or urgent care were told they could not enter the U.S. because of who they are. 

This is not just policy. It is not just “security.” It is erasure. 

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention defines genocide not only as killing members of a group, but also “causing serious bodily or mental harm” and “inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” What else do you call systematic starvation, denial of medical care, displacement, and silencing? What else do you call the banning of an entire people from the halls of the UN, where the world claims to uphold justice? 

This is genocide. 

Some will recoil at that word, insisting it is too extreme, too loaded. But if we are too afraid to name it, then we are complicit in its continuation.

Genocide does not happen only in gas chambers or on battlefields. It happens when a people are denied the right to live, to move, to heal, and finally, to speak. It happens not only with bombs but with paperwork, policies, and visa restrictions. 

And it happens most effectively when the world shrugs. 

I write this not only as a journalist, but as a Muslim who believes deeply that silence in the face of oppression is a betrayal of faith. The Qur’an tells us to stand firmly for justice, even against ourselves or our families. To watch Palestinians denied even a seat at the United Nations and say nothing would be to side with the oppressor. 

Sandra Bland’s face in that mugshot looked hollow, as if the life was already draining from her before the world declared her gone. Palestinians today are being made to look the same way — as if they are already erased, their voices already muted. But I know, as we all know, that they are alive, they are human, and they will not stop speaking. 

And so neither can we. 

If Palestinians are barred from traveling, then we must carry their stories. If they are denied the right to speak at the UN, then we must speak their names in every space we can. If their passports are deemed worthless, then we must remind the world that their humanity is priceless. 

Sandra Bland’s family still fights to this day for accountability, because they know the truth: she did not die by her own hand. She died because a system decided she did not matter. The same system is now telling Palestinians they do not matter. We cannot let that lie stand. 

To the readers of this piece, I ask: do not grow numb. Do not tell yourself this is politics too complicated for you to understand. It is not complicated to say that children deserve medicine. It is not complicated to say that a people deserve representation. It is not complicated to say that denying a whole nation the right to speak is not democracy — it is erasure. 

History will remember whether we looked away or whether we stood up. I pray we choose the latter.

Because when you silence a people, that is not security. That is not diplomacy. That is genocide.

 

Related:

– Watch, Learn, And Speak Out: Films And Documentaries About Palestine Made Available Online For Free

– The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth?: A Case For Fictionalizing Testimonies Of Atrocities

The post When You Silence A People, That Is Genocide appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Airdrops are “useless” and “dangerous,” with packages spilling open and falling in unpredictable spots, even the sea.