Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores need to combat Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

The undated photo shows Muslim women holding banners to raise awareness about Islam in Colombia, South America.
Short Url
Updated 06 July 2023
Follow

Qur’an burning in Sweden underscores need to combat Islamophobia from Europe to Latin America

  • The June 28 desecration act draws attention to hatred, prejudice believed to lie beneath the surface
  • A recent survey of Muslims in Brazil found that women suffer higher rates of Islamophobia than men

SAO PAULO: As the number of Muslims in Latin America increases and Islamic communities gain visibility, more and more cases of Islamophobia are being reported in the region. Community leaders, most of them women, are striving to tackle the issue.

With a Muslim population estimated at between 800,000 and 1.5 million, Brazil is the only nation in Latin America where a comprehensive study on Islamophobia has been conducted.

The issue has been in the spotlight after a copy of the holy Qur’an was burned on June 28 outside Stockholm’s central mosque in an offensive act tolerated by the authorities in Sweden. Although South America has not witnessed such crude display of intolerance, Islamophia is believed to exist just under the surface in many countries.




Swedish police watch as Salwan Momika, who fled from Iraq to Sweden several years ago, prepares to deface the Muslim holy book outside a mosque in Stockholm on June 28, 2023, during the Eid al-Adha holiday. (JAFP)

Led by anthropologist Francirosy Barbosa, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo and herself a Muslim convert, the research involved a survey of 653 Muslims that showed most of them having already suffered some kind of Islamophobia. 

“Women were the majority of the respondents, something that already demonstrates that they’re the ones who suffer the most,” Barbosa told Arab News.

About 54 percent of the men who took part in the study — both those born to Islam and converts — said they have faced some sort of embarrassment due to their religion. Most cases happened on the street, in the workplace or at school.

The proportions are higher among women, with 66 percent of those born to Islam reporting that they have been offended or attacked due to their faith, and 83 percent of converts reporting the same.

Many incidents involve subtle comments and jokes, like a work colleague who discovers that somebody in the office is Muslim and begins to call him or her a “suicide bomber,” or a person who insists that her friend should not wear a headscarf because it is a symbol of male domination.

But the study also reports serious cases of physical violence, such as an unknown attacker spraying insecticide in the eyes of a woman wearing a hijab, and a girl who left her mosque and was hit by a man on the street.

Female converts “are the major victims of Islamophobia because they’re more vulnerable. Many of them come from poor neighborhoods and have to use public transportation,” Barbosa said.

Female converts also have to deal with pressures from their own families. The result is that many of them give up wearing a headscarf after being attacked, something “that brings suffering because they feel they’re failing to attend a divine commandment,” Barbosa said.

She added that Islamophobia grew in Brazil under former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), when different anti-Muslim groups became more powerful.

“In that period, there was a boom in pro-Zionist evangelical churches, for instance,” she said. The survey’s respondents said evangelical Christians are the religious segment that discriminates against them the most.

Barbosa was invited earlier this year to take part in a workshop organized by the Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship to discuss hate speech.

Her study on Islamophobia was presented to the group and will be part of its final report, which will orientate the government’s policies to combat intolerance.

“In our research, we included some guidelines for the struggle against Islamophobia, like the need to invest in education about religions and Islam. Now, those suggestions may finally come to light with the new government (of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva),” Barbosa said.

In Argentina, activists against Islamophobia have been counting on partnerships with governmental institutions as well.

In 2022, Islam para la Paz (Islam for Peace) celebrated a deal with the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism — known by the Spanish acronym INADI — with the goal of promoting cooperation against religious discrimination.

Melody Amal Khalil Kabalan, who heads Islam para la Paz, said many press outlets were spreading misinformation about Qatar when it hosted the FIFA World Cup last year, so her organization and INADI promoted a workshop on the country for journalists.

“This year, we’ll organize a program called School without Discrimination, which will include workshops about Islamic habits for students,” she told Arab News.

While Islamophobia in Argentina is not comparable to what happens in European nations, there has been a growing number of cases lately, she said. Most cases involve women, like in Brazil.

“In a notorious incident, a woman was forbidden to get into a swimming pool in (the city of) Mendoza wearing her burkini,” Khalil said.

“In other cases, women were impeded by government officials to take pictures for documents wearing a hijab, which is their right.”

Victims of Islamophobia can report incidents to INADI, but many fail to do so “because they think the authorities won’t defend Muslims as they defend other groups,” Khalil said.

“We realized that this perception is connected to the fact that our communities aren’t so organized to resist discrimination as other communities in Argentina.”

She said it is up to Muslims to inform and educate Argentinian society about their needs and specificities.

“We have a responsibility to tell people about our way of life. It’s not only a problem for the government,” she added.

Islam para la Paz recently created an observatory of Muslim issues and is gathering information on the communities’ problems.

In Colombia, a group of women led by Maria Jose Acevedo Garcia established five years ago the Islamic Foundation Assalam of Colombian Muslim Women, whose goal is to protect Muslim women and prevent Islamophobia.

She said the most common incidents involve discrimination at school, the workplace and in government agencies.

“Women at times are discriminated against for wearing a hijab at work. In those cases, I send a letter to the person in charge and schedule a visit to the company in order to inform people about Islam,” Acevedo told Arab News.

Raised in a Catholic family, she converted to Islam 20 years ago. At first, she would commonly hear offensive comments and get angry, but over time she “learned how to react calmly and educate people.”

She said: “Assalam frequently visits schools and universities to offer workshops against discrimination. That’s the only way to change things.”

Acevedo added that during crises in Muslim nations — such as the war in Syria and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan — Islamophobia usually increases.

“We still haven’t experienced a great number of physical attacks, but incidents in which people tried to take off the hijab of a woman on public transportation have already been reported,” she said.

Assalam recently met with governmental authorities in order to present to them the needs of Muslim women in Colombia.

Problems commonly arise at the airport, for instance, when women coming from Muslim nations are told to take off the headscarf during inspection.

Acevedo expressed hope that more government employees will understand the nature of Islam in the future.

In Mexico, where the Muslim community has been growing over the past years, Islamophobia is noticeable in the arts, books and the news, where “negative expressions are commonly employed when it comes to Islam,” anthropologist Samantha Leyva Cortes told Arab News.

In her studies about Muslim communities in Mexico City and San Cristobal de las Casas, Leyva was told by many women that they are treated as foreigners due to their hijab.

“Shopkeepers frequently assume they aren’t from Mexico and charge them more than they should for a product,” she said.

Women wearing headscarves have to face all kinds of sexist remarks on the street and on public transportation, Leyva said.

“People generally think they’re passive, disenfranchised women. They don’t consider that wearing a hijab is their choice,” she added.

But the younger generations have been opening new paths lately. Many Muslim women are expanding their presence on social media and making themselves visible in the public arena.

“Many conversions have been happening online, so the internet is an important space for them,” Leyva said.

Barbosa said most Muslim leaders have been dealing with Islamophobia inadequately. “In general, they’re concerned only about spreading the religion and think that talking about discrimination and violence is something negative that can raise more problems,” she added.

Her goal now is to apply the same survey in other Latin American countries so the problem of Islamophobia in the whole region will be known, and communities and governments will be able to act.

 


‘I feel it’: US voters confident in most pro-Trump town

Updated 7 sec ago
Follow

‘I feel it’: US voters confident in most pro-Trump town

  • As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well

MIAMI, United States: There are very few lawn signs backing Donald Trump in Miami, Texas. They aren’t necessary.
This speck of a town of around 500 souls — a world away from its glamorous namesake in Florida — is known as the most vehemently pro-Trump town in the United States: 96 percent of its voters backed the Republican in the 2020 election.
And it was about the same proportion in 2016 when Trump won the White House, defeating Hillary Clinton.
As Americans voted on Tuesday, this time in the race between Trump and Kamala Harris, the support for the former president seeking an astonishing comeback from political isolation is alive and well.
“Trump’s going to be the president,” said Julian Huff, 68, a former truck driver who was the fourth person in line to cast his ballot at the local community center.
“I feel it and feel good about it, and everybody I talk to feels the same thing,” said Huff, who in particular likes Trump’s campaign pledge to crack down on people trying to cross the US-Mexico border without documentation.
Miami — pronounced with an “uh” sound at the end — is the only town in Roberts County, in far northwest Texas. The closest city is Amarillo.
On Election Day, the streets of Miami are deathly quiet, interrupted only by the whistles of passing freight trains. The traffic lights are set at a constant blinking yellow.
Miami is surrounded by ranches and its inhabitants make their living from farming, small businesses, or working in oil refineries or gas plants.
Journalists, lured by Miami’s pro-Trump fervor, visited earlier this week but things were back to the normal silence on Tuesday.
Rick Tennant, a 71-year-old retired county judge who now runs an auto repair shop, said he always votes Republican — no matter who the candidate is.
“I’ll be happier if Trump wins. I think my money will be safer if Trump wins,” said Tennant, who voted early this year.
Randy Crismas, a 57-year-old gas station owner, said he likes Trump because of what he called the politician’s Christian values.
“This community is about as tight-knit a community as I’ve ever been in the good lord’s luxury of living in,” said Crismas.
“It’s a fabulous community and we take care of each other.”
Huff’s house is one of the few with a Trump sign outside. “He’s the man for the job and he’s going to get in,” said Huff.


Why the Middle East will weigh heavily on the new US president’s agenda

Updated 43 min 27 sec ago
Follow

Why the Middle East will weigh heavily on the new US president’s agenda

  • From Iran to Palestine, the incoming US administration will face a slew of daunting policy challenges
  • New leadership will have to balance diplomacy with action if it hopes to prevent further regional escalation

LONDON: America has voted and now the Middle East waits to discover who has won — and, crucially, what that victory will mean for a region with which the US has had a complex relationship ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz bin Saud met for historic talks on a US warship in the Suez Canal in 1945.

Whichever way CNN and the other big US channels have called the result of the US presidential election, it could be days, or even weeks, before America’s arcane electoral process reaches its final conclusion and the winner is formally declared.

Although they have ticked the box on their ballot papers alongside their preferred candidate, America’s voters have not actually voted directly for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump or any of the four other runners.

Instead, in proportion to its number of representatives in Congress, each state appoints electors to the Electoral College, the combined membership of which votes for the president and the vice president.

It is rare, but not unknown, for electors to disregard the popular vote. But either way, to become president, a candidate needs the votes of at least 270 of the college’s 538 electors.

Their votes will be counted, and the winner announced, in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. The president-elect is then sworn into office on Monday, Jan. 20 — and, as first days at work go, these promise to be intense.

A poll worker waits for voters at a polling station in New York City on Election Day, November 5, 2024. (AFP)

There will be many issues, domestic and foreign, clamoring for the attention of the new president and their team.

But of all the in-trays jostling for attention, it is the one labeled “Middle East” that will weigh most heavily on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and on the mind of the incoming president.

Depending on how they are handled, the sum of the challenges contained in that in-tray could add up either to an opportunity to achieve something no American president has achieved before, or an invitation to a disastrous, legacy-shredding encounter with some of the world’s most pressing and intractable problems.

Palestine and Israel

In November 2016, then-President-Elect Donald Trump declared: “I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians.” A lot of “really great people” had told him that “it’s impossible — you can’t do it.”

But he added: “I disagree … I have reason to believe I can do it.”

As recent history attests, he could not do it.

Every US president since Jimmy Carter, who led the Camp David talks that culminated in a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, has been drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of Middle East politics — partly through economic and political necessity, but also because of the Nobel-winning allure of going down in history as the greatest peacemaker the world has ever known.

A woman rests with her children as displaced Palestinians flee Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024. (AFP)

Not for nothing, however, is the Israel-Palestine issue known in diplomatic circles as “the graveyard of US peacemaking.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s onslaught on Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a crisis long deemed intractable appears to have degenerated even further to a point of no return.

All the talk throughout the election by both of the main candidates, calculated to walk the electoral tightrope between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voters, will now be forgotten.

All that matters now is action — careful, considered action, addressing issues including the desperate need for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the reopening of the much-cratered pathway to a two-state solution.

Palestinians search through the rubble following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2024. (AFP)

Epitomizing the hypocrisy that has so infuriated millions, including the many Arab American voters who have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in this election, the Biden-Harris administration has bemoaned the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians while simultaneously supplying Israel with the munitions that killed them.

For Trump, regaining the White House would be a second chance at peacemaker immortality and, perhaps, the Nobel Peace Prize he felt he deserved for his 2020 Abraham Accords initiative.

Last time around, Trump did achieve the breakthrough of establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. The big prize, which eluded him in 2020, was bringing Saudi Arabia on board. The Kingdom has made it clear that for that to happen, one condition must be fulfilled — the opening of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood. This, therefore, could well be on the to-do list of a Trump administration in 2025.

For Harris, the presidency would be a chance to step out from under the shadow of the Biden administration, which has so spectacularly failed to restrain Israel, its client state, and in the process has only deepened the crisis in the Middle East and undermined trust in the US in the region.

The West Bank

If America has equivocated over events in Palestine and Lebanon, the Biden administration has not turned a blind eye to the provocative, destabilizing activities of extremist Jewish settler groups in the West Bank.

In February, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The order, signed by President Joe Biden, condemned the “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction,” which had “reached intolerable levels” and constituted “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”

A wounded Palestinian man arrives for treatment for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli settlers in the village of Mughayir, at a hospital in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on April 12, 2024. (AFP)

So far, the US, reluctant to act against members of an ally’s government, has stopped short of sanctioning Israel’s far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the chief settler rabble-rousers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

Whether Harris would continue with, or even strengthen the sanctions policy, remains to be seen, but the settlers believe that Trump would let them off the hook. “If Trump takes the election, there will be no sanctions,” Israel Ganz, chairman of one of the main settler groups, told Reuters last week.

“If Trump loses the election, we will in the state of Israel … have a problem with sanctions that the government over here has to deal with.”

It was, after all, Trump who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, undoing decades of US foreign policy, and moved the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.

Whoever wins, if they are truly interested in peace in the region, they will need to exert pressure on Netanyahu to bring the extremist right-wingers in his government to heel. It was Ben Gvir’s repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that Hamas cited as the main provocation that triggered its Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.

Iran

Iran has been a thorn in the side of every US administration since the 1979 revolution, the roots of which can be traced back ultimately to the CIA-engineered overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.

The next US president faces two key, interrelated choices, both of which have far-reaching consequences. The first is how to deal with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who was elected in July and, so far, has given every appearance of being someone who is prepared to negotiate and compromise with the West and its regional allies.

In the hope of lifting the sanctions that have so badly hurt his countrymen, if not their leaders, Pezeshkian has offered to open fresh negotiations with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.

According to a recent Arab News/YouGov poll ahead of the presidential election, this would be appealing to many Arab Americans.

Asked how the incoming US administration should tackle the influence of Iran and its affiliated militant groups in the region, 41 percent said it should resort to diplomacy and incentives, with only 32 percent supporting a more aggressive stance and a harsher sanctions regime.

Here, a Harris victory might pave the way to progress. The Biden presidency has seen some sanctions lifted and moves made toward reopening the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

In a move that infuriated supporters of Israel but brought some relief to a region that appeared to be teetering on the brink of all-out war, in October the Biden administration publicly warned Israel that it would not support a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in retaliation for Tehran’s drone and missile attack on Israel.

Under a Trump administration, however, progress with Iran would seem unlikely. It was Trump who in 2020 ordered the assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qassem Soleimani, and who in 2018 unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA to the dismay of the other signatories, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is difficult to see how he could revisit that decision.

The Houthis

In many ways, coming to an understanding with Iran could be the greatest contribution any US president could make to peace in the region, especially if that led to a defanging of Iran’s proxies, which have caused so much disruption in the Middle East.

The previous Trump administration backed Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, however, Biden reversed that decision and withdrew US support for the military interventions of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen against the rebels, who overthrew Yemen’s internationally recognized government, sparking the civil war, in 2015.

Houthi supporters attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on November 1, 2024. (AFP)

Since then, however, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and drone and missile assaults on Saudi Arabia, have opened Western eyes to the true nature of the rebel group, to the extent that in October Biden authorized the bombing of Houthi weapons stores by B2 stealth bombers.

For either candidate as president, apart from securing the all-important commercial navigation of the Red Sea, dealing with the Houthis offers the opportunity to mend bridges with Arab partners in the region (only Bahrain joined America’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval mission to protect shipping).

But it is Trump, rather than the Biden-era tainted Harris, who is expected to come down hardest on the Houthis.

Hezbollah

Trump’s grasp of events in the Middle East has at times appeared tenuous. In a speech in October, for example, he boiled down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.” As president, though, there seems little doubt that he would, once again, be Israel’s man in the White House.

In a recent call with Netanyahu, he appeared briefly to forget the importance of wooing the all-important Arab American swing-state votes and told the Israeli prime minister to “do what you have to do,” even as innocent civilians were dying at the hands of Israeli troops in Lebanon.

Of course, no American government is going to defend Hezbollah or any of Iran’s proxies. But when Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was targeted in an Israeli airstrike in September, Harris released a statement that outlined a preference for diplomacy over continuing conflict.

Demonstrators celebrate during a rally outside the British Embassy in Tehran on October 1, 2024, after Iran fired a barrage of missiles into Israel in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. (AFP)

She had, she said, “an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel” and would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”

But, she added, “I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”

The US presence in the Middle East

One of the findings of the recent Arab News/YouGov poll of Arab Americans ahead of the election was that a sizable majority (52 percent) believed the US should either maintain its military presence in the Middle East (25 percent), or actually increase it (27 percent).

This will be one of the big issues facing the next president, whose administration’s ethos could be one of increasing isolationism or engagement.

America still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, for example, where talks are underway that could see all US and US-led coalition personnel withdrawn from the country by the end of 2026 — 23 years since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A vehicle part of a US military convoy drives in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 17, 2024. (AFP)

In April, Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani issued a joint statement affirming the intention to withdraw US troops, who now act mainly as advisers, and transition to a “bilateral security partnership.”

Trump, on the other hand, could go much further, and as president has a record of disengaging America from military commitments. In 2019, to the alarm of regional allies, he unilaterally ordered the sudden withdrawal of the stabilizing US military presence in northeastern Syria, and in 2020 withdrew hundreds of US troops who were supporting local forces battling against Al-Shabaab and Daesh militants in Somalia.

In the wake of his election defeat that year, he ordered the rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. The order was not carried out, but in September 2021, the Biden administration followed suit, ending America’s 20-year war and leading to the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces and the takeover of the country by the Taliban.

 


Harris or Trump? Millions vote in tense, tight US election

Updated 49 min 17 sec ago
Follow

Harris or Trump? Millions vote in tense, tight US election

  • Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters

ATLANTA: The volatile, dramatic US presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump headed to an unpredictable finish Tuesday, with millions of Americans casting their votes in one of the tightest elections of modern times.
The result — which may be known overnight or not for days — carries major consequences, either making Harris the first woman in arguably the world’s most powerful job or handing power back to Trump and his nationalist “America First” agenda.
As voters formed long lines across the country, several bomb threats were reported at polling stations, while police at the US Capitol — where Trump’s supporters rampaged following his 2020 defeat — arrested a man who smelled like fuel and was carrying a flare gun.
Both the FBI and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the bomb threats, while not credible, appeared to originate from Russia.
Polls show one of the tightest races in modern times between Democratic Vice President Harris, 60, and Republican Trump, 78, who would be the first felon president, the oldest ever to take office and only the second to serve non-consecutive terms.
Harris made a late, dramatic entrance into the race when President Joe Biden dropped out in July, while Trump has ridden out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters.
After criss-crossing the country, Harris returned to Washington where she called in to radio stations in swing states and took a few calls personally at a phone bank for voters.
“We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” Harris told Atlanta station WVEE-FM.
She described her opponent as “full of vengeance. He’s full of grievance. It’s all about himself.”

Trump voted in Florida near his Mar-a-Lago residence, saying he felt “very confident” and that he wanted to be “very inclusive.”
But he aired concerns about the vote count — heightening fears he will reject the result and cite fraud if he loses.
“If it’s a fair election, I would be the first one to acknowledge it,” he said.
Trump has repeated baseless claims of election fraud while saying he should “never have left” the White House in 2021.
Casting a ballot in Arizona, Trump backer Camille Kroskey, 62, said she was voting in person due to concerns about voting fraud.
“I want to make sure I drop my ballot where it’s going to actually land somewhere,” she told AFP.
“Now, will it get counted?” she asked. “I don’t know.”
In perhaps the most crucial battleground state, Pennsylvania, Harris voter Marchelle Beason, 46, said the lines were “way, way, way more” than in the last election.
“We’re so divided right now, and she’s about peace. And everything that her opponent has to say is really negative,” she added.

At the same school, 56-year-old Darlene Taylor, wearing a homemade Trump shirt, said her main issue is to “close the border.”
Trump has vowed an unprecedented deportation campaign of millions of undocumented immigrants if elected.
The election is being watched closely around the world including in the war zones of Ukraine and the Middle East.
Harris has vowed to keep up support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and to put a greater effort in ending the Gaza war, although she has also voiced support for Israel.
Trump has promised a quick end to the Ukraine war, likely by pressing Kyiv into concessions, and has made clear he will give freer rein to Israel, which relies on US support.
“We can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America — indeed, the world — to new heights of glory,” Trump told his closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Harris hammered home her opposition to Trump-backed abortion bans in multiple states — a vote-winning position with crucial women voters.
Control of Congress is also at stake, with Republicans widely expected to win back control of the Senate.
 

 


US hails fired Israeli defense chief Gallant as ‘important partner’

Updated 06 November 2024
Follow

US hails fired Israeli defense chief Gallant as ‘important partner’

  • Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet

WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday praised sacked Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, a key intermediary with Washington fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defense of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defense,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Just Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone to Gallant to press US demands for greater humanitarian aid into Gaza, with a deadline looming next week in a threat to cut off some US military assistance without progress.
President Joe Biden’s own relationship has deteriorated with Netanyahu, who announced Gallant’s dismissal just as the United States was electing Biden’s successor.
 

 


FBI warns of hoax bomb threats from Russia at US voting sites

Updated 06 November 2024
Follow

FBI warns of hoax bomb threats from Russia at US voting sites

  • The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations

ATLANTA: The FBI warned of bomb threats at polling stations in “multiple” US states on a tense Election Day, adding that none were credible but many appeared to originate from Russia.
The statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came as authorities in the US state of Georgia said hoax bomb threats had briefly disrupted voting there Tuesday.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day has been ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery and violence against poll workers.
“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” spokeswoman Savannah Syms said in a statement.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” she added, urging the public to “remain vigilant.”
Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the state had also identified the source of bomb threats that briefly disrupted voting at polling places.
“It was from Russia,” he said, without elaborating.
At least seven polling stations in Georgia’s Fulton County were among those facing threats and were briefly closed, South Fulton’s Mayor Kobi told AFP.
“None of the polling places were closed for more than 30 minutes,” he told AFP outside one of them — Feldwood Elementary School in South Fulton.
“There are some people who are trying to discourage people in South Fulton from voting, but we are the Blackest city in the United States,” he said.
“We are the descendants of, the sons and daughters of people who faced lynch mobs, water cannon... to exercise the right to vote. And so we aren’t going to let bomb threats turn us around.”
With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they have also bolstered physical security for election operations nationwide.
Poll workers have been given panic buttons, workers, special weapons teams have been deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel have been placed on standby.
The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
The US Capitol Police, who protect the seat of Congress in Washington, said on social media platform X Tuesday that they had arrested a man who “smelled like fuel, had a torch & a flare gun.”
He was stopped at the Capitol visitor center — part of the complex that was stormed by Trump supporters in a deadly riot on January 6, 2021 as they sought to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The visitor center would remain “closed for tours for the day, while we investigate,” the post said.
The bomb threats were not the first time US authorities have pointed the finger at Russian interference during the vote.
Hours before polls opened, officials warned that Russia-linked disinformation operations had falsely claimed attempts were being made in battleground states to fraudulently sway the outcome of the election.
And on Friday, US intelligence officials blamed Russia for a fake video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times..
The United States previously imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and entities over alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections.