Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Lens-Artists Challenge #297: Music to My Eyes

My husband laying on the cliff I saw this Leopard in Africa I saw this flooding in Halifax I saw this Cloud Cross in our area

Lens-Artists Challenge #297: Music to My Eyes

White House considers admitting some Palestinians from Gaza as refugees | The Hill

The Biden administration is considering admitting certain Palestinians to the U.S. as refugees, a report by CBS News found.

Senior officials in several U.S. agencies have discussed the idea of resettling Palestinians from Gaza who have immediate family who are American citizens. One of the ideas proposed would be to use the United States Refugee Admissions Program to allow Palestinians who have U.S. ties and have escaped Gaza and are now in Egypt to enter the country as refugees, CBS News reported.

Source: White House considers admitting some Palestinians from Gaza as refugees | The Hill

Celebrating Your Birthday in May? Then Let Your Flowers Burst in Jubilation 💐 | From Behind the Pen

Image Credit: Darkmoon_Art

You are a lily of the valley

symbolic of innocence and purity

regardless of how the breeze makes you sway

it only makes you dance, cause you’re born in May.

©Kym Gordon Moore

To all of our family and friends born in May, let the magic of your flowers bloom in the sunshine and celebrate throughout the day, the month, and the year. Do it with a celebratory passion that jolts jubilation throughout your veins.

Happy Birthday to all

of our May Flowers!

Image Credit: RosZie 

Source: Celebrating Your Birthday in May? Then Let Your Flowers Burst in Jubilation 💐 | From Behind the Pen

A Gaza team went to repair a telecoms machine. An Israeli tank fired at them

On the morning of Jan. 13, a five-man crew from Paltel — a Palestinian telecommunications company that provides telephone, cellular, and internet services across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip — set out to repair a switchboard generator that had run out of fuel in the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. The repair operation was coordinated in advance and in real time with the Israeli military, which also sent the team a detailed map of the area specifying the routes they were authorized to take. The Palestinian men completed the repair job and, by early afternoon, had set off on their return journey to the city of Rafah.

But then, without warning, an Israeli tank fired a shell directly at one of the team’s clearly-marked vehicles, killing two technicians.

In a statement to +972 Magazine and Local Call, the Israeli army confirmed that its forces fired at a Paltel team that had coordinated its entry into Khan Younis with the military. The tank, the army claimed, fired at the convoy because it had failed to follow the instructions agreed upon in advance. “The initial investigation [emphasis in the original] that was carried out indicated that the convoy crew set off on its way back without notifying the IDF, contrary to the prior coordination, and deviated from the planned and approved route. As a result, the convoy entered the sector of another force, which was not familiar with the coordination. The force identified the convoy crew as a threat and fired at them.”

However, an investigation by +972 and Local Call finds several holes in the Israeli army’s version of events. Witness testimony and video footage from the scene, along with the map that the army provided to the technicians and testimony from an Israeli intelligence source, reveal that the army killed the Paltel employees despite the team closely following instructions.

This incident did not receive nearly as much publicity as the Israeli army’s shooting of three Israeli hostages waving a white flag in December, nor the drone strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen employees driving in clearly-marked vehicles last month. But the killing of the Paltel employees has several parallels with these other two incidents. It, too, shines a light on two recurring features of Israel’s seven-month onslaught in Gaza: the disorderly coordination between Israeli forces on the ground, and the army’s trigger-happy conduct toward anyone found inside designated “kill zones” where those forces are operating.

Source: A Gaza team went to repair a telecoms machine. An Israeli tank fired at them

Palestinian writer jailed in Israel wins top Arabic book prize – Egypt Independent

A Palestinian writer who has been in an Israeli prison for 20 years has won a prestigious prize for Arabic fiction for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”

Basim Khandaqji won the prize on Sunday for his book, and was awarded $50,000 and funding for an English translation.

The “mask” of the book’s title is, metaphorically, a blue identity card belonging to an Israeli found by the protagonist, Nur, in the pocket of an old coat.

Nur, an archaeologist living in a refugee camp in Ramallah, adopts this “mask,” and “what follows is an experimental and multi-layered narrative which sets out to reclaim elements of history and place with vivid and memorable characterization,” said the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), which announced the prizewinner at a ceremony Abu Dhabi.

The novel, published by Lebanon’s Dar Al-Adab, “dissects a complex, bitter reality of family fragmentation, displacement, genocide, and racism,” said Nabil Suleiman, a Syrian writer who chaired the 2024 prize.

“The strands of history, myth, and the present day are delicately woven together in a narrative that pulses with compassion in the face of dehumanization and is stirred by a desire for freedom from oppression, both at an individual and societal level,” said Suleiman.

Source: Palestinian writer jailed in Israel wins top Arabic book prize – Egypt Independent