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Israel

Rockets Fired From Gaza As Obama Lands In West Bank

HAARETZ (Israel), WAFA (Palestine), REUTERS, AP

Worldcrunch

RAMALLAH – Barack Obama arrived Thursday in Ramallah in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders, on the second day of his visit to the Middle East.

The U.S. President met with President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah’s presidential headquarters to emphasize the importance of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, a message AP says was underscored when Palestinian militants in Gaza launched two rockets into southern Israel.

Obama was still in Jerusalem, some 80 kilometers away from the border town of Sderot where one of the rockets exploded in the courtyard of a house early in the morning, causing damage but no injuries; the other rocket landed in an open field, Reuters reports.

"We condemn violence against civilians regardless of its source, including rocket firing," Abbas was quoted as saying by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The second leg of Obama’s four-day Mideast tour started more calmly with a visit to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where he saw the Dead Sea Scrolls, accompanied by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Haaretz reports.

After his meeting with Abbas, Obama will attend a cultural event at Al-Bireh Youth Center and will meet with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Fayyad. He will then give a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, before attending a dinner hosted by Israeli President Peres where he will receive the Presidential Medal of Distinction.

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Ideas

Turkey: The Blind Spot Between Racial And Religious Discrimination

Before the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel war, a social media campaign in Turkey aimed to take on anti-Arab and anti-refugee sentiment. But the campaign ultimately just swapped one type of discrimination for another.

photo of inside Istanbul's Eminonu New Mosque

Muslims and tourists visiting Istanbul's Eminonu New Mosque.

Levent Gültekin

-Analysis-

ISTANBUL — In late September, several pro-government journalists in Turkey promoted a social media campaign centered around a video against those in the country who are considered anti-Arab. The campaign was built around the idea of being “siblings in religion,” and the “union of the ummah,” or global Muslim community.

(In a very different context, such sentiments were repeated by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after the Israel-Hamas war erupted.)

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While the goal is understandable, these themes are highly disconnected from reality.

First, let's look at the goal of the campaign. Our country has a serious problem of irregular migrants and refugees, and the administration isn’t paying adequate attention to this. On the contrary, they encourage the flow of refugees with policies such as selling citizenship.

Worries about irregular migrants and refugees naturally create tension in the society. The anger that targets not the government but the refugees has come to a point which both threatens the social peace and brought the issue to hostility towards the Arabs, even the tourists. The actual goal of this campaign by the pro-government journalists is obvious if you consider how an anti-tourist movement would hurt Turkey’s economy.

However, as mentioned above, while the goal is understandable, the themes of the “union of the ummah” and “siblings in religion” are problematic. The campaign offers the idea of being siblings in religion as an argument against the rising racism towards irregular migrants and refugees; a different form of racism or discrimination.

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