Forum Topic

Sudan - ‘world’s largest humanitarian crisis’

The vast majority of media comment from the BBC to the left-wing press such as the Guardian and even posts on this humble Forum has raged about and denounced what are claimed to be 'humanitarian atrocities' - military actions, civilian deaths etc, carried out by Israel in its war with the Palestinians.Posters on this Forum have stated their positions as to whether they believe Israel is perpetrating such, and if so whether in a time of war some explanation, if not the condoning of them, is possible.However what the continual focus on and denouncing of Israel's behaviour has done, perhaps deliberately, is to turn attention away from what is happening in other parts of the world and what atrocities Islamist Arabs are perpetrating on a far, far more massive scale against non-Arabs in Africa.Even the Guardian and the UN is beginning to take notice and show concern, diverting its attention from Gaza.Today's Guardian."NGOs and UN say country is ‘worse off than ever before’ with wide-scale displacement, hunger and attacks on refugee camps". 'Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year.The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks. However, diplomatic efforts have often been sidelined by other crises, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.Two years to the day since fighting erupted in Khartoum between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary (ISLAMIST - my comment) Rapid Support Forces, hundreds of people were feared to have died in RSF attacks on refugee camps in the western Darfur region in the latest apparent atrocity of a war marked by its brutality and wide-scale humanitarian impact.The consequences for Sudan’s 51 million people have been devastating. Tens of thousands are reportedly dead. Hundreds of thousands face famine. Almost 13 million people have been displaced, 4 million of those to neighbouring countries.“Sudan is now worse off than ever before,” said Elise Nalbandian, Oxfam’s regional advocacy manager. “The largest humanitarian crisis, largest displacement crisis, largest hunger crisis … It’s breaking all sorts of wrong records.”There were “massive-scale” violations of international humanitarian law in the conflict, said Daniel O’Malley, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Sudan. “All of the civilian population, irrespective of where they are in the country, have basically been trapped between one, two or more parties. And they have been bearing the brunt of everything. The sheer numbers are just mind-boggling.”It is also claimed that as a fall out from this intra-Islamic civil war is that Christians are also being persecuted. In January of this year the US formally declared that the RSF had committed genocide, marking the second time in less than 30 years that genocide had been perpetrated in Sudan.The United Arab Emirates has been accused of fuelling the conflict by arming the RSF. Emirati passports allegedly found on the battlefield last year point to potential covert boots on the ground.All of this does not make for pleasant writing or reading and of course any claims of genocide should not be ranked in order of wickedness.However it does put the claims made against Israel into some form of perspective.

John Hawkes ● 77d24 Comments

Ms Bond et al,Many on this Forum rant and fulminate over the actions of Israel as they defend themselves against attack by Palestinian terrorist extremists.'Genocide', 'ethnic cleansing' and other emotive terms are used to decry what Israel is doing.MEANWHILE ..... BBC News reports attacks on minority, often Christian religious groups by Islamic Arab groups supported by oil rich Gulf States.https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly1ygvxvq3o'Sudan has cut diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), after repeatedly accusing the Gulf nation of backing the rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the country's civil war.The announcement came as the RSF were blamed for attacks on the usually safe city of Port Sudan, which started on Sunday and have continued until Wednesday.On Tuesday, Sudan's Defence Minister Yassin Ibrahim accused the UAE of violating his country's sovereignty through its "proxy", the RSF.The UAE has repeatedly denied allegations that it is giving financial, military and political support to the paramilitary force.Two years of conflict has killed thousands, forced millions from their homes and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis.As a result of the defence minister's announcement, the Sudanese ambassador will be withdrawn from the UAE and Sudan will shut its diplomatic missions in the Gulf nation'.Sounds much much worse than is happening in Gaza.Will those leftist supporters of human rights that are planning to march in support of the Sudanese government be leaving their black and white tea towels at home ?

John Hawkes ● 46d

Ms BondHope you will be voting !https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp92zjejzvyo"I've practised being booed', Israel's Eurovision entry who survived Hamas attack tells BBC"'Yuval Raphael never dreamt she'd be at Eurovision.The last major music event she attended was the Nova festival, in Israel, where she was nearly killed. On 7 October 2023, the singer fled the festival when Hamas gunmen started shooting.Now she's preparing to go on stage at the world's largest music event."It's something I deal with every day," she told the BBC. "It feels like a personal win, just to be having this experience and representing my country and doing it with such pride."On that day - one and a half years ago - Ms Raphael was attending her first outdoor rave. As rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, and Hamas gunmen started shooting at revellers, she attempted to flee the carnage.She and her friends took refuge in a concrete bomb shelter at the side of a road. Around 50 people were crammed in, lying on top of each other.But there was no escape as the gunmen shot repeatedly into the mass of bodies in the shelter and then threw in hand grenades.Ms Raphael managed to call her father in tears, as heard in a recording played in an Israeli documentary. "Dad, lots of people are dead. Send the police here. Please dad, send the police, it's urgent.. they're crushing me," she said."Be quiet," he replied. "Yuvali my daughter. Yuvali, breathe deep. Hide. Play dead.""Bye," she said, thinking that was the end.Ms Raphael was one of only 11 people in the shelter to survive. She hid under a pile of dead bodies for eight hours until they were rescued.That day, around 1,200 people were killed by gunmen led by Hamas, and 251 were taken hostage'.Interesting to see how the Israeli contestant is received by other participants and the TV presenters.'The Israeli entrant has had to contend with protests about her country's participation in the song contest.Irish national broadcaster RTÉ asked the EBU for a discussion on Israel's inclusion. Its director general, Kevin Bakhurst, said he was "appalled by the ongoing events in the Middle East and by the horrific impact on civilians in Gaza, and the fate of Israeli hostages". Spain and Slovenia's broadcasters also asked for a discussion.Last week, more than 70 former Eurovision contestants signed a letter calling on the organisers to ban Israel from the competition'.Eurovision said it understood the concerns and views about the current situation in the Middle East, but insisted members should ensure Eurovision remained a "universal event that promotes connections, diversity and inclusion through music".Nevertheless, Israeli fans have been warned by their country's National Security Council not to wear Jewish or Israeli symbols while attending Eurovision.On Sunday, during the Eurovision opening parade in the Swiss host city of Basel, the Israeli broadcasting delegation made a complaint to the police and the EBU after accusing a pro-Palestinian demonstrator of making a throat-slitting gesture and spitting at the delegation.Shame Hamas cannot participate !

John Hawkes ● 49d

Ms Bondhttps://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/07/greta-thunbergs-moral-siege-of-israel/Try looking at things from another perspective.Also regarding your claims of Israeli apartheid -'The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics defines the population of Israel as including Jews living in all of the West Bank and Palestinians in East Jerusalem but excluding Palestinians anywhere in the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and foreign workers anywhere in Israel. As of December 2023, this calculation stands at approximately 9,842,000 of whom:73.2% (about 7,208,000 people) are Jews, including about 503,000 living outside the self-defined borders of the State of Israel in the West Bank21.1% (around 2,080,000 people) are Israeli citizens classified as Arab, some identifying as Palestinian, and including Druze, Circassians, all other Muslims, Christian Arabs, Armenians (which Israel considers "Arab")[2]An additional 5.7% (roughly 554,000 people) are classified as "others". This diverse group comprises those with Jewish ancestry but not recognized as Jewish by religious law, non-Jewish family members of Jewish immigrants, Christians other than Arabs and Armenians, and residents without a distinct ethnic or religious categorization'.This multi-ethnic electorate has meant that members of Arab and other non-Jewish political parties have representatives in the Israeli Knesset.How many Jewish MPs in what passes for democracy in Arab Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi, UAR etc ?And Jews not only fled the WWII holocaust but also aggression against them by Arabs in the neighbouring countries they lived in."The expulsion of Jews from Arab countries and Iran – an untold history"This op-ed was written by WJC Jewish Diplomatic Corps member Andrea Mifano, was orginally published on the Brazilian Jewish news  website Kadima in Portuguese on 3 December 2020.'Until the 1960s, approximately one million Jews lived in Iran and other Arab countries having arrived in the region more than 2,000 years before. Nowadays, it is estimated that only around 15,000 remain, as the majority of the Jewish population in Muslim lands were forced to flee their homes in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel. This mass expulsion and exodus is part of modern history, but inexplicably, it’s neither taught at schools nor remembered within the context of the conflicts in the Middle East. (Not inexplicable really. It's antisemitism.)For over 2,500 years, Jews lived continuously in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region the first Jewish population had already settled there at least 1,000 years before the advent of Islam. (NB !)Throughout the generations, Jews in the region were often subjected to various forms of discrimination -- and in many cases, ranked lower on the status of society than their Muslim compatriots -- but they were nevertheless loyal citizens who contributed significantly to the culture and development of their respective countries. (Which shows itself today in that Israel is light years ahead of surrounding Arab states when it comes to innovation and creativity in finance, business research and enterprise especially bio-medical and IT, popular culture (they might even win the Eurovision song contest if other countries do not no-platform them). Despite the positive influence that Jews brought to the places where they lived, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Another major forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80, following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the shah’s regime, adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number'.And even today when Israel defends itself from continual attacks by Islamofacist Palestinians in Hamas, people like you never seem  to show it any empathy or support but keep banging on about how cruel they are to its enemies.Sad really.Student Union perception and denial of what is really happening in the region.

John Hawkes ● 51d

"The plight of Nigeria’s Christians"https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-plight-of-nigerias-christians/'The persecution of Nigeria’s Christians is medieval in its horror. Villages are surrounded in the dead of night by bandits who rape and kill the inhabitants. No one is spared: women and children are among those butchered.The Makurdi Diocese, in Nigeria’s Middle Belt Benue state, has been hit badly by this savage violence. In 2024, 549 locals in this diocese alone were murdered and dozens more kidnapped. Over 3,700 people in Makurdi have been killed since 2015. Villages have been effectively wiped off the map. Over a million Nigerians, terrified of what might await them, have chosen instead to live in Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps.Wilfred Anagbe, the Catholic Bishop of Makurdi, says the massacres are a systematic attempt to Islamise the regionWilfred Anagbe, the Catholic Bishop of the diocese of Makurdi, home to about a million people, says the massacres are a systematic attempt to kill Christians and Islamise the region – and that the authorities are turning a blind eye to the killing of Christians:‘The quest to Islamise the land is high on the agenda of some of the most powerful and influential Muslims in Nigeria. There is a campaign to take land to spread Islam. Militant Fulani herdsmen are destroying society. They steal and vandalise. They kill and boast about it. They kidnap and rape – and they enjoy total impunity from the elected authorities.’Sounds like what Israel is accused of in Gaza, but no IDF involved in this case.But I still hope certain posters on this Forum join me in condemning this Islamist attempt at racist, religious genocide.

John Hawkes ● 74d