Malaysia and Palestine - The similarity is that both nations are multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Both regions were victims of British colonial rule - and the policy of divide and rule based on ethnicity/religion. Unlike Indonesia and Thailand, who pushed for nationalism, Malaysia under the British advocated ethnic difference, which later became part of the Malaysian Constitution that provided for 'preferential treatment' based on ethnicity alone, without any consideration of socio-economic status - Malaysians recently was shocked that the super-rich T20 were also getting subsidy to perform haj.Shocking - T20 was being subsidized by government for Haj? Another reason to criticize past BN, past PH and past PN regimes?
For this, Anwar Ibrahim said - '...The government will no longer provide subsidies to Muslims from the T20 income group to perform the haj, says Anwar Ibrahim.'. But, then similar position not yet taken for university placements, scholarships and other financial assistance. Therefore, still the RICH benefit - how many of our Ministers and rich people's children and themselves benefit from this purely ethnic-based policy - when really preferential treatment and financial assistance must be directed to the POOR, irrespective their ethnicity.
Likewise, the Palestinians (be they citizens of Israel or people living in the Occupied Territory of West Bank and Jerusalem, or the 'free state of Gaza' - noting that Israel withdrew from Occupied Territory Gaza in 2005. But, then Gaza was turned into the world's largest 'prison' - and walls surround Gaza, and even the little border shared with Egypt is 'controlled' by Israel - preventing humanitarian aid entering.
In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered full disengagement from Gaza, marking an end to settlements that started after taking control of the region following the six-day war in 1967....The unilateral disengagement process began in August of 2005 and by September, around 9,000 Jews living in 25 settlements were evicted and the Israeli troops completely withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the Green Line -- a 1949 Armistice Line drawing boundaries between Israel and its Arab neighbors. These settlements had stood for decades until 2005 and their removal involved bulldozing, forceful eviction by Israeli troops. Although the settlers received compensation from the Israeli government for rehabilitation, the process was protracted and tedious.
In July 2018, the Knesset voted to pass a law that defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”, with Hebrew as its official language and Jerusalem – including the illegally occupied eastern side – as its capital.
In July 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state can revoke citizenship over offences constituting a “breach of loyalty”, providing the government with legal mechanisms to strip Palestinians of their citizenship and fundamental rights and deport them, after rendering them stateless.In August 2017, the Haifa District Court revoked the citizenship of Alaa Zayoud, a Palestinian citizen of Israel serving time in prison after being convicted of attempted murder. This was the first time an Israeli court has ruled that an individual’s citizenship be revoked, according to Adalah.
The root cause of the problem is the British Colonial Government. There was never an Israeli State in the region, until the British supported the Zionist movement for the establishment of a separate Jewish State. The colonial powers facilitated the movement of international Jews from Europe, Asia, Africa and even the Americas - hence changing the local demography. After World War II - the UN was convinced(without according the Palestinian People the right to be heard) to authorize the formation of a Jewish State, a Palestinian(or Arab) State, and an independent self-governed Jerusalem. Israel was recognized a UN member State in 1949, one year after its formation. BUT what about Palestine?? The Israel State, in violation of the UN and international law, then occupied the entire Palestine and still occupies West Bank and Jerusalem, and 'imprisons' Gaza.
Because Israel's friends like US have the VETO power - it has been used to block any significant action despite Israel's breach of international law, and human rights violation against the people of Palestine, and also some of its other neighbors. Does Israel have Weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD)? Was there breach of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology,..?
The Palestine People are the new victims of the HOLOCAUST since after 1948... and the perpetrators are the former Holocaust victims, in particular the Zionist Jews and the Zionist State of Israel. The Nazi movement of the past that victimized JEWS, Roma People and others - and now we have
the Zionist movement that also control/govern the State of Israel - Who is worst? It is shocking how victims of one Holocaust can today become the perpetrators of the NEW HOLOCAUST against the people of Palestine.
THE UNITED NATIONS can move UN peacekeeping forces into the region, demand/ensure Israel's total withdrawal from all Occupied Territory of West Bank and Jerusalem, and the peacekeeping forces be tasked to remain and protect the people of Palestine in Palestine(and Jerusalem) and the Israeli people in Israel. Maybe, a demilitarized zone along the boundary of Israel and Palestine be set-up and monitored by the UN peacekeeping force - just like what is happening now in between North and South Korea.
Israel's Right to Defend Itself - well, what about the Palestinian peoples' right to defend themselves? How long should an oppressed people 'patiently' suffer oppression an on-going rights violations? How long should they wait for the United Nations to resolve this problem? Peaceful means is the best option - but after 75 years of waiting...
A huge row has broken out after UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said that the Hamas attack on Israel didn't happen in a vaccum. Israel has said that the UN chief's speech seems to be a justification of the Hamas attack and has sought his resignation. The UN chief also talked about how Palestinians' rights have been suppressed for 75 years and their land is being taken. Although, he added that all of these don't justify Hamas attack, and that even the Hamas attack doesn't justify the collective punishment being meted out to Gaza residents due to Israeli blockade and bombings. - Times of India, 25/10/2023
IT IS NOT NEW - Anwar's quest to be champion of the Palestinian people's quest for end of occupation or 'imprisonment' by Israel is just keeping in line with Malaysia's position all along, which is also the common position of the majority of the nation states of the world.
However, in the case of Anwar, it is still unclear what exactly he is fighting for >> he seems to be limited to end of current hostilities, and access to humanitarian aid. He did not openly support the UN Secretary General, or the Russian position. In fact, Anwar is not getting much media coverage on the issue other than in Malaysia
Another weakness of Anwar is that he seems to be focusing his lobby to Islamic majority states - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, ... , and that indirectly seem to paint the Palestinian struggle into an Islamic struggle, which it never was - it was always a nationalistic or peoples' struggle, noting that Palestinians are Muslims, Christians and Jews...hence a multi-ethnic and multi-religious struggle, and the people are like Malaysia both multi-ethnic and multi-religious.
The Palestinian people are one people, made up of all Palestinians, inside and outside of Palestine, irrespective of their religion, culture or political affiliation.
If Anwar and the government paints it as an Islamic struggle, it may alienate non-Muslims in Malaysia leading the loss of support for the Palestinian peoples' struggle. And that is not good - as for years most Malaysians(irrespective of ethnicity or religion) supported the Palestinian peoples struggle against the Zionist Israelis..
Sadly, in Malaysia, many non-Malays see themselves as 'second-class citizens' - thanks to the 'special preference' provided in our Federal Constitution that is extended to the Malays and defined ethnic communities. There are thus 'quotas' imposed for education, civil service ...which also affects promotions - although Malaysian government at times denies it. There may have been some justification, noting that then Malays(and certain ethnic groups) was poor in education, business, economics, etc ...But after 60 plus years, sadly many especially the poorer in these preferred ethnic groups remain poor - ONLY the richer became richer. Helping a person from an ethnicity does not benefit the people from that ethnic group - one who benefits simply does not share with others from the same ethnic group. However, if preferential policies targets to poor and marginalized, it will be more JUST and help reduce the number of the poor. Then, keeping the masses from certain ethnic groups poor keeps them dependent on ethnic based political parties, and governments of these ethnic based parties - like UMNO, MIC, MCA..
After GE14, Malaysians choose to end the control of ethnic based political parties - choosing rather multi-ethnic parties committed to REFORM but then Anwar still displays characteristics of the ethnic based party UMNO, where he started his political life..(and the rest of PH parties in DAP and Amanah to date has been silent...and maybe be turning to be a 'disappointment' to the people of Malaysia.
The quota system at public universities in the country will be retained but students from all races who excel in their studies will get places in institutes of higher learning, says Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
As of Saturday, Turkey is the latest of a handful of nations to recall their ambassadors to Israel, following in the footsteps of Honduras, Bahrain, Chile, Colombia, and Jordan. These decisions came after Bolivia became the first nation to fully cut diplomatic ties with Israel over its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. - Newsweek, 4/11/2023As ASEAN, Anwar must push ASEAN to take the correct stance - END OCCUPATION - not simple end fighting and humanitarian aid.
The fact that PM Anwar has visited this and that countries to lobby the Palestinian Cause is not enough >>> What exactly did he manage to get these countries to do? [If not, some may see it as an excuse to travel, improve local image, wastage of government funds - possibly resulting in government debt, etc...]
One wonders whether Malaysia has trade with Israel, as Israel Exports to Malaysia was US$74.41 Million during 2022, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade. Israel Exports to Malaysia - data, historical chart and statistics - was last updated on November of 2023.- https://tradingeconomics.com/israel/exports/malaysia
Malaysian exports to Israel are estimated to be close to US$9 million, with imports at around US$7 million.- NST,12/5/2022
Should Malaysia also end trade with Israel - not just diplomatic relationships? Anwar should clarify matters about trade with Israel - are the data above correct or FAKE?
Quota system at local varsities to remain, says Anwar
- Nation
-
Saturday, 08 Jul 2023
ALOR SETAR: The quota system at public universities in the country will be retained but students from all races who excel in their studies will get places in institutes of higher learning, says Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
The Prime Minister said the quota system would continue to be implemented to enable Malay and bumiputra students to achieve balance in universities.
"If not, we will see the same disparity that occurred at Universiti Malaya in the 1970s and 1960s, where there were no Malays in the engineering faculty and only 12% in the medical faculty, so there was an effort by the late Ungku (Abdul) Aziz and the ministry at the time... to help the Malays so that they can better compete," he said at the "Program Temu Anwar Kedah" at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) here on Saturday (July 8).
The late Royal Prof Ungku Abdul Aziz Ungku Abdul Hamid was the UM vice-chancellor at the time.
"I agree to retain this quota programme, but we have to find another way to give opportunities to smart non-Malay, non-bumiputra children, whose results are good, so that they are not left out," he said.
Anwar was responding to a question from a student during the programme who asked whether the quota system for university entrance should continue or be replaced by a meritocracy-based system.
About 5,000 students from universities, polytechnics and secondary schools in Kedah and Perlis attended the programme.
Israeli protests cast light on laws discriminating against Palestinians
Israel has passed many laws that codify bias against Palestinians but did not meet the same uproar as the judicial overhaul bill.
The push for the bill, months in the making, has brought out thousands of Israelis to the streets, with the country’s opposition rallying around a call to “protect democracy”, and maintaining that the present government and its control of the Knesset mark a departure from the norms of Israeli parliamentary democracy.
Palestinians, watching on, may have a different opinion. Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories rarely, if ever, receives censure in the Knesset. Instead, many bills are passed – relatively unnoticed – that continue to subjugate and discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, as well as those living in occupied East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Sari Bashi, programme director at Human Rights Watch, said Israeli law codifies racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and facilitates institutional privilege of Israeli Jews over Palestinians.
“I respect the pro-democracy protestors engaging in mass demonstrations against the further erosion of judicial independence in Israel, and many are also protesting Israeli occupation and apartheid. But let’s please be clear about the Israeli ‘democracy’ they are trying to protect,” she tweeted.
Here are just some of the laws Israel has passed in recent years that experts have said codify discrimination against Palestinians and restrict their rights but that have not met the same public uproar:
Expansion of the Admissions Committees Law
On Tuesday, the Knesset expanded a 2010 law that allows communities to screen and reject applicants deemed “unsuitable to the[ir] social and cultural makeup”. This, observers have said, essentially maked it easier for towns to prevent Palestinian citizens of Israel from moving to Jewish-majority towns. Many of these towns were built on or near Palestinian towns and villages that were depopulated before or during the 1948 Nakba, after their inhabitants were expelled or fled.
“The passage of the ‘Admissions Committees’ law in the Knesset yesterday, which effectively authorises segregation in Israeli towns, is but the latest reminder that principles of democracy and equality have been absent in Israel long before this most recent judicial overhaul,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center in Washington, D.C.
“From NGO laws targeting human rights organisations, laws around Palestinian family unification, laws around the right to boycott and laws around the right to commemorate Palestinian history, the assault on liberal principles in Israel has been a very long road, which was paved by some of the same political figures screaming about democracy today,” Munayyer told Al Jazeera
Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People
In July 2018, the Knesset voted to pass a law that defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people”, with Hebrew as its official language and Jerusalem – including the illegally occupied eastern side – as its capital.
The bill denies Palestinians any national rights and further entrenched racial discrimination against them by declaring that “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.
According to the Haifa-based Adalah legal rights centre, the law “transforms discrimination into a constitutional, systematic and institutional principle, and into a basic element of the foundations of Israeli law”.
The law states that Jewish settlement is “a national value” and that the state will “encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation” – essentially giving it carte blanche to settle more land in the occupied territories – the Golan Heights included, or in Israel proper.
Upholding the 2008 Citizenship Law
In July 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the state can revoke citizenship over offences constituting a “breach of loyalty”, providing the government with legal mechanisms to strip Palestinians of their citizenship and fundamental rights and deport them, after rendering them stateless.
In August 2017, the Haifa District Court revoked the citizenship of Alaa Zayoud, a Palestinian citizen of Israel serving time in prison after being convicted of attempted murder. This was the first time an Israeli court has ruled that an individual’s citizenship be revoked, according to Adalah.
“There has never been a request to revoke the citizenship of a Jewish citizen, even when Jewish citizens were involved in serious and grave crimes,” Adalah noted, highlighting the case of Yigal Amir, the assassin of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a request to revoke his citizenship in 1996, but upheld the ruling against Zayoud.
Law banning BDS supporters from entering Israel
In March 2017, parliament voted to ban any Palestinians or foreign nationals if they, or the organisations they belong to, publicly endorse the boycott of Israel or its illegal settlements.
The law, with its vague wording, also has implications for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem whose partners live with them on Israeli military-issued permits or a temporary residence status.
If those spouses are vocal about supporting BDS – the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement – they could be vulnerable to having their status or permits revoked based on their political opinions.
BDS is a campaign to push Israel into withdrawing from all occupied Palestinian and Arab territory, and to give its Palestinian citizens the same rights as its Jewish ones.
Who has the right to self-defence, occupier or the occupied?
TO say Israel has the right to defend itself is like saying the rapist and abuser has the right to defend himself because his victim hit him.
Israel is not an innocent party under attack and defending itself as it portrays itself in the international media. It is a colonial settler apartheid regime established on the ruins of Palestine and at the expense and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people following their catastrophe (al-Nakba) in 1948.
Colonialists, occupiers and apartheid regimes do not have the right to defend their occupation and apartheid system; it's the occupied who have all the right in international law to defend themselves and liberate their country.
We don't condone the killing of civilians and innocent people. Still, surely the Jewish colonial settlers, most of whom are armed and members of the reserve army, knew what they were doing and are taking the risk by occupying someone else's country and denying them their rights.
When Israel was established in Palestine in 1948, it ethnically cleansed over 70 per cent of the Palestinians, occupied 78 per cent of Palestine, destroyed 531 towns and villages, including 47 villages in the Gaza district, and displaced their 80,000 residents.
The vast majority of them took refuge in Gaza, and their number today reaches hundreds of thousands. Many Jewish colonies and kibbutzes were established on the lands of these evacuated and destroyed villages.
All the kibbutzes and Jewish colonies Hamas fighters attacked were built on those 47 villages around Gaza, such as Jiyya, Burayr, Hamama, Najd, Dimra, Simsim.
Before the Nakba, the Gaza Strip and the area surrounding it, called the "envelope," constituted the mandatory "Gaza District," which had an area of 1,111 square kilometres, now reduced to what Gaza is today, 365 sq kilometres, with a population of 2.3 million. It is 41km long, from 6 to 12km wide, and has one of the highest population densities in the world of 6,300 people per square kilometre.
Seventy per cent of the 2.3 million in Gaza are refugees ethnically cleansed from these villages. Their farms, houses and belongings were stolen from them and they were thrown out to live in misery in refugee camps, the world's largest concentration camp ever, deprived of their human and national rights, abandoned by the international community, and a few hundred metres away they watched Jewish colonialist settlers from around the world living in luxury enjoying the fruits of their farms.
Should anyone be surprised they are fighting for their freedom and their human and national rights?
What enraged Israeli leaders and generals was that a small contingent of fighters was able to penetrate the "invincible army" and within hours destroy all the illusions they had built around an army on which they spent hundreds of billions of dollars.
The fighters inflicted a heavy blow to the Israeli intelligence, spy agencies and electronic eavesdropping technology which failed to detect the attack, a major defeat they will not forget.
What Israeli propaganda conceals from the world public is that Hamas fighters fought the Israeli troops, occupied all their military, security and police bases, seized their weapons and detained dozens of soldiers and officers, among the prisoners, to exchange them for over 6,000 political detainees, including children and women, languishing in Israeli occupation prisons.
Israeli survivors from the attack testified in interviews with Israeli media that most of the Israeli civilians were killed as a result of the Israeli army's exchange of fire and shelling of their homes - where they were hiding and even their own bases as they were overwhelmed by Hamas militants on Oct 7, to prevent the taking of hostages.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli army was only able to restore control after admittedly "shelling" the homes of Israelis who had been taken captive.
Israel believed it had placed 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza in a mass impenetrable concentration camp surrounded by barbed wire, insulated on all sides and that it could forget about them, collectively punish them and continue denying them their inalienable rights.
To cover up the miserable failure suffered by its army, Israel has resorted to tactics used by colonial regimes to punish civilians for the resistance. All colonialists and occupiers called the resistance they faced "terrorists", the French, British, Dutch colonialists, the Nazis, fascists and the South African apartheid regimes, were those resistance acts of terrorism?
And if Australia was occupied tomorrow, would the resistance against the occupiers be acts of terrorism? If so, then the Palestinians are proud to be in this colonial apartheid dictionary.
Israel's claim that it wants to eliminate Hamas is ludicrous because of the fact that it will not be able to eliminate the Palestinian resistance forces, whether Hamas or any other resistance organisation.
What Israel is doing, and the world is witnessing, is the slaughter of civilians and children and the destruction of thousands of houses, high-rise residential buildings, schools, hospitals, ambulances, mosques, churches and public infrastructure.
Israel's war against Gaza is a cowardly war by an army classified as the fifth most powerful army in the world, against civilians, carpet bombing them from the air, day and night, for the last three weeks with thousands of tonnes of bombs. Each has injured and shattered the lives of scores of babies, men and women, and wiped out hundreds of entire families.
Israel has so far dropped 12,000 tonnes of bombs on Gaza—the cumulative size of the nuclear bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima — the Israeli military announced yesterday its ground invasion and destroyed Gaza's Internet and cellphone service.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza documented the killings in two weeks, from Oct 7 to 28 of 7,650 Palestinians, including 3,595 children, 1,726 women and 19,450 injured. In addition, about 1,650 people, including 940 children, have been reported missing under the rubble.
Hospitals reported Israel's use of internationally banned bombs such as white phosphorus. To put it in perspective, this is equivalent to the killing of 84,532 Australians and the injury of 214,922. If we compare the proportion to the USA, it is equivalent to the killing of 1,102,441 and the injury of 2,802,939 civilians.
An estimated 1.4 million people in Gaza are internally displaced and according to Gaza's Ministry of Public Works and Housing about 45 per cent of all houses and housing units have been destroyed. This is in addition to cutting off all means of communication, Internet, water, electricity, fuel and food supplies from Gaza for the past three weeks.
Palestinians have been the victims of Israeli state acts of terrorism and a slow war of genocide for 75 years. They were massacred, women and small girls raped and ethnically cleansed, as documented by Palestinian, Israeli and international historians.
Their factories, farms, banks and furnished homes were seized and they were denied their inalienable right to return to their country. All these crimes against humanity were committed and continue to be committed against them only because of who they are, not Jews, with the full complicity of the Western governments, especially the group of Anglo-Saxon countries of the so-called "Five Eyes".
It is time these countries are made accountable, shoulder the responsibility they are obliged to under the Geneva Convention and force Israel to recognise the Palestinian people's human and national rights, and Palestine's right to exist.
Without the blind support and protection of these
governments, Israel would not dare commit these crimes against humanity,
and challenge the international community as it's doing. NST, 31/10/2023
Russia: Israel is an occupying power and has no right to defend itself
November 2, 2023 at 8:57 am
![Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States on September 11, 2018 [Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/20180911_2_32315090_37115998-e1698915440847.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States on September 11, 2018 [Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency]
Israel has no right to defend itself as it is an occupying power, Russia’s representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said yesterday.
Nebenzya pointed out, during his speech before the emergency special session of the UN General Assembly, that the United Nations does not have the right to give Israel an absolute mandate to carry out a ground operation in Gaza.
“The only thing they can muster is continued pronouncements about Israel’s supposed right to self defence, although as an occupying power, it does not have that power as confirmed by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice handed down in 2004,” he explained.
He stressed his country’s call to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East, to avoid expanding the scope of the crisis to the entire region, and to work on a diplomatic solution to it.
“As for Israel’s security – and we recognise its rights to ensure its security – this security can only be fully guaranteed if we resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of relevant UN Security Council resolutions.”
He added that sooner or later, a diplomatic solution will have to be taken, but the question is how many innocent people will die during this time.
Nebenzya noted that Russia cannot turn a blind eye to the flagrant violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, pointing out that entire neighbourhoods have been flattened.
He also accused the US and its allies of “hypocrisy,” saying that “in other completely different situations are issuing appeals for the respect of humanitarian law, establishing investigation committees, imposing sanctions on those who are actually genuinely only resorting to force as a last resort to put an end to years of violence,” in an apparent reference to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Since 7 October, the Israeli occupation army has been
attacking the Gaza Strip, causing massive destruction, during which more
than 8,796 Palestinians were killed, including 3,648 children, and
22,219 were injured. - Middle East Monitor, 2/11/2023
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