Palestine – Breaking News

(source: www.plfpakistan.com)

Khaled Mishaal, head of Hamas’s political bureau, met on Friday with Kgalema Motlanthe, South Africa’s deputy president, in the Syrian capital Damascus and discussed the main files of the Palestinian issue topped by Palestinian national reconciliation and the peace process.

 After the meeting Mishaal and Motlanthe held a joint press conference and talked about what they had tackled during their meeting.

Mishaal said that Hamas briefed the visiting delegation on Hamas’s position on the various aspects of the Palestinian issue and on the National aspirations on which Palestinians in Palestine and in exile agree on, namely: the right to self determination, ending the occupation, restoring the land, Jerusalem and rights, the return of refugees to their homes from which they were expelled, achieving national reconciliation and uniting the Palestinian leadership through a reformed PLO.

“Our brothers from South Africa have promised to stand by the Palestinian people [in their struggle] to realise their rights and [achieve their] aspirations. As the people of South Africa achieved their aspirations and national project, God will help us realise our aspirations with their help and the help of our friends worldwide,” Mishaal said.

Asked on the new Israeli “loyalty law” which was passed recently Motlanthe said that Israeli laws are not international laws and that he was sure that Palestinians will resist this law, adding that Palestinians have the full right to self determination.

Read More »Mishaal meets south Africas deputy president in damascus

By John V. Walsh

(source: AntiWar.com)

Eclipsed by the36in Egypt, news from its little neighbor has not gleaned much notice save for media angst that Egyptian democracy might not be as genial as was the Mubarak dictatorship to the relentless, long-term ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people, the Palestinians. But news there was as Israeli “human riSendghts” lawyers went public with a libel suit against Jimmy Carter for his precise little book, Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid. The stunner to the Israelis lies in a single word in Carter’s title, “apartheid.”

Names, names, names. What constitutes an accurate description of Israel? There are many appellations, none of them appealing. The partisans of Israel like to call it “the Jewish state.” But that name carries a disconcerting note. We do not like “Islamic states,” and “Christian state” calls forth40of fascism, bigotry, and Crusades. Does “Jewish state” sound any more tolerant?

Then there is the very old-fashioned label, “a people without a land and a land without a people.” Not even the European colonialists of the Americas had the chutzpah to deny the very existence of the indigenous peoples as they were exterminated or put into reservations, the Gazas of the New World. Though that racist little phrase continued up to Golda Meir, who denied the very existence of the Palestinians, at least by the time of the terrorist Yitzhak Shamir the Palestinians had transmogrified into “insects” or “cockroaches.” At least Shamir allowed for their pesky, subhuman existence.

Then there is “colonial, settler state,” an accurate name well understood by the developing world as it continues its struggle to throw off the hidden shackles of European domination – but not well understood as yet in the more or less post-colonial West. Of course there is the “Zionist entity,” again well understood by the oppressed of the Middle East, but a mystery to many in the West who have been trained to perceive it as anti-Semitic.

Read More »Jimmy carters gift of apartheid

By Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (source: Peace People.com) I write to you regarding your programme of 16th August, 2010,… Read More »An open letter to bbc panorama

Malaysia PM called on Islamic banking to work on clarifying and resolving conflicts in interpretation over what products are allowed under religious laws.

The global economic crisis presents an opportunity for Islamic banking to show it is a viable alternative to conventional finance, Malaysia’s premier said according to reports Wednesday.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the meltdown showed the need for laws enshrined in Islamic banking, which prohibits speculation and high levels of debt, and which has so far been relatively unscathed by the credit crunch.

"These ethical and moral safeguards are missing in the conventional system," Abdullah said in a speech, adding that the crisis was caused by trade in loans which few truly understood.

"In reality these repackaged sub-prime loans were nothing more than artful works of deception that fed the speculative excesses and hubris in the financial markets," he said at the launch of an Islamic law research academy.

However, he called on Islamic banking — a booming 1.0 trillion dollar global industry — to work on clarifying and resolving conflicts in interpretation over what products are allowed under religious laws.

"The Islamic finance community should not be complacent or unduly proud. We must continue to critically evaluate ourselves," he said according to the state Bernama news agency.

"For instance, have we truly established an alternative system or are we still very much mimicking the established conventional system?"

Islamic law prohibits the payment and collection of interest, which is seen as a form of gambling, so highly complex instruments such as derivatives and other creative accounting practices are banned.

There have been calls for the conventional banking industry to take a leaf out of the book of Islamic finance, which also shuns investments in gaming, alcohol and pornography in favour of ethical investments.

Agencies

Read More »Malaysia pm global crisis a chance for islamic banking to shine