South Americans of Palestinian descent tell of life in embattled Gaza, fears for safety in the West Bank

1 / 4
Demonstrators take part in a rally in support for the Palestinian people in front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires on October 9, 2023. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 30 October 2023
Follow

South Americans of Palestinian descent tell of life in embattled Gaza, fears for safety in the West Bank

  • Palestinian from Brazil says he and his young family are unable to leave the enclave amid heavy Israeli assault
  • Mexicans, Chileans and Colombians in Jerusalem and the West Bank talk about tensions and attacks by settlers

SAO PAULO: With large Palestinian communities and historical ties with the Levant, many Latin American countries have been following the Israel-Hamas war with close attention.

In nations like Brazil, with as many as 70,000 Palestinians and their descendants, and Chile, with more than 500,000 Palestinians, people have been receiving information about the conflict not only through the press, but also from Palestinian Latin Americans who live in Gaza and the West Bank.

One of them is Hasan Rabee, a 30-year-old shop owner who lives in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. About a month ago, he traveled to Khan Younis in Gaza, along with his wife and two daughters, to visit his family.




Hasan Rabee, a 30-year-old shop owner in Sao Paulo, traveled with his wife and two daughters to Khan Younis in Gaza about a month ago to visit his family. Now they are trapped in the war. (Supplied)

Then the war broke out and they have not been able to leave the region since. Rabee has been posting videos and information on the Israeli strikes on social media every now and then. Some of them have been aired by Brazilian TV stations.

“As I talk to you, bombs are exploding, can you hear? It is especially strong during the night. My daughter runs to the window and shuts it down when she hears anything. She thinks we will be protected this way,” Rabee told Arab News.

FASTFACTS

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay host a large Palestinian diaspora.

Brazilian nationals in Gaza are receiving aid from their embassy, but cannot leave.

Palestinian Latin Americans in the West Bank say they are determined to remain.

Rabee says the children are petrified and his wife has begun taking pills to help control her nerves. His mother meanwhile is suffering from spikes in her blood pressure. Many relatives have joined them in their small apartment. Nobody can sleep at night due to the bombs.

“The power was cut 20 days ago. At times, we go to a guy who owns solar panels and pay him to charge our batteries,” said Rabee. The water arrives at the building once a week without enough pressure, so they have to go down, fill some bottles, and take them upstairs.




Rescuers communicate with each other as they sift through the rubble of a collapsed building following an Israeli air strike on Rafah in southern Gaza Strip on October 26, 2023. (AFP)

Given that he is a Brazilian citizen, Rabee is receiving food from the Brazilian embassy in Palestine. The Brazilian government has established a plan to take a group of citizens from Khan Younis and Rafah through the border with Egypt.

“All we want is to leave for Brazil. But Israel does not open the border,” he said. Rabee wishes to take his mother with him to South America. He hopes the Brazilian government will allow him to do so.

In a number of interviews with Brazilian journalists, Rabee denounced the killing of civilians in Israeli strikes. “For me, that is a war against the children. Thousands of them have been killed. I cannot understand how something like that is happening,” he said.

While the West Bank is not being targeted by Israeli strikes, the number of attacks against Palestinians in the region has grown since the war broke out, according to Latin Americans who are in the region.




Palestinians search for survivors and the bodies of victims through the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, on October 26, 2023. (AFP)

“With the strikes on Gaza and the international support that Israel is getting, the Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been feeling more empowered to act with violence against Palestinians,” Estefania Vega, a Mexican actress who is monitoring the human rights situation in the region of Hebron, told Arab News.

Vega obtained a scholarship from the Mexican government for a three-month internship with the Freedom Theatre, a community-based theater in Jenin. She arrived on October 2, but had to leave Jenin on October 8 for safety reasons.

Since then, she has been working with a human rights organization that accompanies Palestinian villagers who are at risk. The idea is to visit families who were harassed or attacked by settlers or the military, film every act of violence, and denounce it to the international community.




Estefania Vega, a Mexican actress who is monitoring the human rights situation in Hebron, West Bank, has a scholarship from the Mexican government for a three-month internship with the Freedom Theatre, a community-based theater in Jenin. (Supplied)

“Last week a settler got into a village and shot a young man in the stomach. He wanted to shoot everybody,” said Vega.

She has been monitoring the events in Wab Sik, a village in the region of Ramallah, and Tawani, near Hebron. In both of them, officers have been randomly attacking houses, breaking local infrastructure like solar panels, and threatening people.

Last week, Vega was inside a house that had been attacked, surrounded by toddlers and women, when nine officers stormed in. They heard that she and her Irish colleague had a camera and asked them to give it to them. But other activists had taken it to another village earlier that day.

“They grabbed and destroyed our phones and asked us why we were there. We told them that they were the ones who had no right to be in Palestinian territory. So, an officer answered to me that I should go back to my country now, otherwise I would go back in pieces,” she said.




Estefania Vega, a Mexican actress, says she had personally seen and experienced Israeli violence while observing the human rights situation in the occupied West Bank. (Supplied)

Vega intends to remain in the West Bank until January and then try to leave through Jordan. “Every foreigner is leaving. If they remain alone, nobody will tell their stories,” she said.

Many Latin Americans live in the West Bank, especially Palestinian Brazilians (estimated at 6,000 people) and citizens from Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and other nations.

Some of them have been trying to leave Palestine since the war broke out, including a Palestinian Chilean who tried to get a rescue flight to Santiago in Tel Aviv but was forbidden to do so by the Israeli government.

Most of the Palestinian Latin Americans, however, are attached to Palestine and do not want to leave.

That is the case with Ruayda, a Palestinian Brazilian who did not want to provide her surname owing to security concerns. She lives in the region of Ramallah, taking care of her great-grandfather’s land.

“I am not a foreigner. The Israelis are. I am not leaving by land,” she told Arab News.

It is time for the olive harvest, Ruayda said, and whole families are involved in gathering the crop. The Israeli settlers know that and have been shooting people and cattle.

“In our city, a boy was shot right on the first day of harvest. He lost part of his liver and is in ICU,” she said. In Jenin, she says Palestinian Brazilians have also been shot. That is why she worries about her 14-year-old son.

“He is not going to school because it is closed. I would send him to Brazil if it was possible. We spend 24 hours a day with fear of being shot by one of those maniacs,” Ruayda said.

Palestinian Colombian Samia, who also preferred not to provide a surname, has lived near East Jerusalem since 1977. She said there is an atmosphere of anguish across the whole region.

“I wake up in the night with great anxiety and come to the living room to watch the news,” she told Arab News.




Colombian army soldiers load humanitarian aid at the Dorado International Airport in Bogota on October 25, 2023, for Palestinian people affected by the war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

Clashes between the youth — carrying rocks — and armed Israeli soldiers have been constant, Samia said. Some of her friends have lost relatives. She fears for her adult daughters, who live nearby.

“There is a cumulation of traumas among us. Unfortunately, there are not enough mental health centers here,” she said.

Samia considers Colombia to be her motherland, but she thinks she cannot leave Palestine. That is also the case with Brazilian Palestinian Ruayda.

“We fear they will launch another ethnic cleansing operation,” she said. “That is a new Nakba. We cannot leave Palestine.”

 

 


Europe launches a drive to attract scientists and researchers after Trump freezes US funding

Updated 11 sec ago
Follow

Europe launches a drive to attract scientists and researchers after Trump freezes US funding

  • The European Union is launching a drive to attract scientists and researchers with offers of grants and new policy plans
  • It comes after the Trump administration froze US government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives
PARIS:The European Union launched a drive on Monday to attract scientists and researchers to Europe with offers of grants and new policy plans, after the Trump administration froze US government funding linked to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“A few years ago, no one would have imagined that one of the biggest democracies in the world would cancel research programs under the pretext that the word diversity was in this program,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the “Choose Europe for Science” event in Paris.
“No one would have thought that one of the biggest democracies in the world would delete with a stroke the ability of one researcher or another to obtain visas,” Macron said. “But here we are.”
Taking the same stage at the Sorbonne University, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU’s executive branch would set up a “super grant” program aimed at offering “a longer-term perspective to the very best” in the field.
She said that 500 million euros ($566 million) will be put forward in 2025-2027 “to make Europe a magnet for researchers.” It would be injected into the European Research Council, which already has a budget of more than 16 billion euros ($18 billion) for 2021-2027.
Von der Leyen said that the 27-nation EU intends “to enshrine freedom of scientific research into law” with a new legal act. As “the threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles,” she said.
Macron said that the French government would also soon make new proposals to beef up investment in science and research.
Last month, hundreds of university researchers in the United States had National Science Foundation funding canceled to comply with US President Donald Trump’s order to end support to research on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the study of misinformation.
More than 380 grant projects have been cut so far, including work to combat Internet censorship in China and Iran and a project consulting with Indigenous communities to understand environmental changes in Alaska’s Arctic region.
Some terminated grants that sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. Scientists, researchers and doctors have taken to the streets in protest.
While not mentioning the Trump administration by name, von der Leyen said that it was “a gigantic miscalculation” to undermine free and open research.
“We can all agree that science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity, no political party,” she said. “We believe that diversity is an asset of humanity and the lifeblood of science. It is one of the most valuable global assets and it must be protected.”
Von der Leyen’s drive to promote opportunities in Europe in the field of science and take advantage of US policy shifts dovetails with the way that she has played up the potential for trade deals with other countries since Trump took office in January and sparked a tariff war last month.
The former German defense minister, and trained doctor, vowed that the EU would also address some of the roadblocks that scientists and researchers face, notably excessive red tape and access to businesses.
Macron said that science and research must not “be based on the diktats of the few.”
Macron said that Europe “must become a refuge” for scientists and researchers, and he said to those who feel under threat elsewhere: “The message is simple. If you like freedom, come and help us to remain free, to do research here, to help us become better, to invest in our future.”

Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff

Updated 05 May 2025
Follow

Pakistan conducts second missile test since renewed India standoff

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan military said on Monday it had conducted a missile test with a range of 120 kilometers (75 miles), the second launch in two days as tensions with India have soared over disputed Kashmir.
New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on tourists on the Indian side of Kashmir last month, sparking a fresh stand-off between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
“The launch was aimed at ensuring the operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters, including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced accuracy,” the military said in a statement.
On Saturday, the military said it had tested a surface-to-surface missile with a range of 450 kilometers (280 miles).
It did not say where either of the tests took place.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was satisfied with the military’s “full preparedness for national defense.”
“The successful training launch clearly shows that Pakistan’s defense is in strong hands,” he said in a statement.
The missile training launch comes after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he has given his military “full operational freedom” to respond to the April 22 attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people.
Pakistan has denied any involvement and called for an independent probe.
Islamabad warned last week of an imminent air strike from its neighbor and has repeatedly made clear it will respond with force to any aggression by India.
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad — who have fought several wars over the disputed Kashmir region — to de-escalate.
The two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire for more than a week nine along the militarised Line of Control, the de facto border, according to Indian defense sources.
Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region of around 15 million people, is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed in full by both.
On the Pakistani side, emergency drills have been carried out on playing fields, residents have been told to stock up on food and medicine, and religious schools have been closed.
In Indian-run Kashmir, a vast manhunt seeking the gunmen continues across the territory, while those living along the frontier are moving further away — or cleaning out bunkers fearing conflict.
Sharif has postponed an official visit to Malaysia scheduled for Friday as tensions mounted, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Monday.
His office said the two sides spoke on Sunday night and that he “conveyed that he looked forward to paying an official visit to Malaysia later this year.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Islamabad on Monday for an official visit.
“Pakistan is presenting its case to friendly countries,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told reporters on a visit to Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Monday.


Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people

Updated 05 May 2025
Follow

Indigenous Catholics hope the next pope shares Francis’ approach to Native people

  • Francis was the first Latin American pope and the first from the order of the Jesuits, who are known for, among other things, their frontline work with society’s most marginalized groups

SIMOJOVEL: At a recent service in the remote southern Mexican community of Simojovel, Catholic and Mayan symbolism mingled at the altar as the deacon — his wife beside him — read the gospel in his native Tsotsil and recalled Pope Francis’ teachings: work together for human rights, justice and Mother Earth.
The scene in the small church in Mexico’s poorest state, Chiapas, conveyed much of the message Francis delivered during his 2016 trip to the region and his other visits to far-flung locales, including the Amazon, Congo and the jungles of Papua New Guinea.
It also illustrated what the world’s Indigenous Catholics don’t want to lose with the death of the first pontiff from the Southern Hemisphere: their relatively newfound voice in an institution that once debated whether “Indians” had souls while backing European powers as they plundered the Americas and Africa.
“We ask God that the work (Francis) did for us not be in vain,” Deacon Juan Pérez Gómez told his small congregation. “We ask you to choose a new pope, a new servant, who hopefully Lord thinks the same way.”
Empowering Indigenous believers
Francis was the first Latin American pope and the first from the order of the Jesuits, who are known for, among other things, their frontline work with society’s most marginalized groups. Although some feel Francis could have done more for their people during his 12 years as pontiff, Indigenous Catholics widely praise him for championing their causes, asking forgiveness for the church’s historical wrongs, and allowing them to incorporate aspects of their Native cultures into practicing their faith.
Among the places where his death has hit particularly hard are the lowlands of the Bolivian Amazon, which was home to Jesuit missions centuries ago that Francis praised for bringing Christianity and European-style education and economic organization to Indigenous people in a more humane way.
Marcial Fabricano, a 73-year-old leader of the Indigenous Mojeño people, remembers crying during Francis’ 2015 visit to Bolivia when the pope sought forgiveness for crimes the church committed against Indigenous people during the colonial-era conquest of the Americas. Before the visit, his and other Indigenous groups sent Francis a message asking him to push the authorities to respect them.
“I believe that Pope Francis read our message and it moved him,” he said. “We are the last bastion of the missions. … We can’t be ignored.”
That South American tour came shortly after the publication of one of Francis’ most important encyclicals in which he called for a revolution to fix a “structurally perverse” global economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and turns the Earth into “immense pile of filth.” He also encouraged the church to support movements defending the territory of marginalized people and financing their initiatives.
“For the first time, (a pope) felt like us, thought like us and was our great ally,” said Anitalia Pijachi Kuyuedo, a Colombian member of the Okaira-Muina Murui people who participated in the 2019 Amazon Synod in Rome, where Francis showed interest in everything related to the Amazon, including the roles of women.
Pijachi Kuyuendo, 45, said she hopes the next pope also works closely with Native people. “With his death, we face huge challenges.”
A wider path for the church
Pérez Gómez, 57, is able to help tend to his small Tsotsil Catholic community in Mexico because the church restarted a deaconship program under Francis.
Facing a priest shortage in the 1960s, the church pushed the idea of deacons — married men who can perform some priestly rituals, such as baptisms, but not others, such as conducting Mass and hearing confession.
Samuel Ruiz, who spent four decades as bishop of San Cristóbal de las Casas trying to improve the lives of Chiapas’ Indigenous people, saw deaconships as a way to promote the faith among them and form what he called a “Native church.” The deaconship initiative was such a hit in Ruiz’s diocese, though, that the Vatican halted it there in 2002, worried that Ruiz was using it as a step toward allowing married priests and female deacons. The halt was lifted in 2014.
Pérez Gómez, who waited 20 years before he was finally ordained a deacon in 2022, said he was inspired by Ruiz’s vision for a “Native church.” He said Francis reminded him of Ruiz, who died in 2011 and whom he credits with explaining the church’s true purpose to him as “liberator and evangelizer.”
“Francis also talked about liberation,” Pérez Gómez said, adding that he hopes the next pope shares that view.
New ways to celebrate Mass
It had been a half-century since the Vatican allowed Mass to be held in languages other than Latin when Francis visited Chiapas in 2016 and went a step further.
During a Mass that was the highlight of his visit, the Lord’s Prayer was sung in Tsotsil, readings were conducted in two other Mayan languages, Tseltal and Ch’ol, congregants danced while praying and Indigenous women stood at the altar.
Chiapas was a politically sensitive choice for the Pope’s visit, which wasn’t easily negotiated with the Vatican or Mexican government, according to Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, who was then bishop of San Cristobal. In 1994, it saw an armed uprising by the Zapatistas, who demanded rights for Indigenous peoples.
Getting the Vatican to allow Mayan rituals in the Mass was also tricky, but Arizmendi recalled that there was a helpful precedent: Congo.
In 1988, the Vatican approved the first cultural innovation in a Mass, the so-called Zaire rite, which is a source of national pride and continental inclusion, said the Rev. Abbé Paul Agustin Madimba, a priest in Kinshasa. “It shows the value the church gives Africans.”
Francis cited the Zaire rite, which allowed some local music and dance to be incorporated into Mass, to argue for such accommodations with other Indigenous Catholics around the world.
The decision was made not only to expand Catholicism, which is in retreat in many places, “but also a theological act of deep listening and conversion, where the church recognizes that it is not the owner of cultural truth, but rather servant of the gospel for each people,” said Arturo Lomelí, a Mexican social anthropologist.
It was the Vatican’s way to see Indigenous rituals not as “threats, but rather as legitimate ways to express and live the faith,” he said.
‘No longer objects’
On the Saturday after Francis’ death, Pérez Gómez stopped by a church in the town near his village to pick up the Communion wafers he would give out during his service the next day. Because he’s a deacon, he needs a priest to consecrate them for him ahead of time.
He and his wife, Crecencia López, don’t know who the next pope will be, but they hope he’s someone who shares Francis’ respect for Indigenous people. And they smile at the thought that perhaps one day, he could become a priest and she a deacon.
“We are no longer objects, but rather people” and that is thanks to God and his envoys, “jtatik Samuel (Ruiz)” and “jtatik Francis,” Pérez Gómez said, using a paternal term of great respect in Tseltal.


Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit

Updated 05 May 2025
Follow

Ukraine says it shot down 42 drones from Russia but two regions hit

  • The military said that Russia also attacked Ukraine with two ballistic missiles that were not shot down

KYIV: Ukraine’s air defense units shot down 42 of 116 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack that hit the regions of Sumy and Donetsk, the military said on Monday.
It said another 21 drones were lost but did not disclose the fate of the remaining 53, noting that Sumy and Donetsk “suffered as a result of the attack.”
The military said that Russia also attacked Ukraine with two ballistic missiles that were not shot down.
Civilian authorities in Ukraine did not immediately comment on the overnight attacks.


France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists

Updated 05 May 2025
Follow

France, EU leaders spearhead effort to lure US scientists

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen host a Paris conference Monday to attract US researchers ready to relocate because of President Donald Trump’s policies.
EU commissioners, scientists and ministers for research from member countries will discuss, among other things, financial incentives at the gathering to lure disgruntled American scientists across the Atlantic.
Paris’s Sorbonne university is hosting the conference, called “Choose Europe for Science,” which is to close with speeches by Macron and von der Leyen.

 

Under Trump, universities and research facilities in the United States have come under increasing political and financial pressure, including from threats of massive federal funding cuts.
Research programs face closure, tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, while foreign students fear possible deportation for their political views.
The European Union hopes to offer an alternative for researchers and, by the same token, “defend our strategic interests and promote a universalist vision,” an official in Macron’s office told AFP.
The French president had already last month appealed to foreign, notably US, researchers to “choose France” and unveiled plans for a funding program to help universities and other research bodies cover the cost of bringing foreign scientists to France.

Shortly before, Aix Marseille University in the south of the country said its “Safe Place for Science” scheme received a flood of applicants after announcing in March it would open its doors to US scientists threatened by cuts.

 

Last week, France’s flagship scientific research center CNRS launched a new initiative aimed at attracting foreign researchers whose work is threatened and French researchers working abroad, some of whom “don’t want to live and raise their children in Trump’s United States,” according to CNRS President Antoine Petit.
An official in Macron’s office said Monday’s conference comes “at a time when academic freedoms are retreating and under threat in a number of cases and Europe is a continent of attractiveness.”
Experts say, however, that while EU countries can offer competitive research infrastructure and a high quality of life, research funding and researchers’ remuneration both lag far behind US levels.
But CNRS’s Petit said last week he hoped that the pay gap will seem less significant once the lower cost of education and health, and more generous social benefits are taken into account.
Macron’s office said France and the EU are targeting researchers in a number of specific sectors, including health, climate, biodiversity, artificial intelligence and space.