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SvennoJ on 01 August 2024
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Australia’s FM tells Australians to leave Lebanon now

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong has shared a video on social media warning Australians to leave Lebanon immediately.

“My message to Australian citizens and residents in Lebanon is now is the time to leave,” Wong said in the message.

“There is a real risk that the conflict in the region escalates seriously,” she said, adding that Australia is “working with partners in the region to push for restraint and de-escalation”.

Australia is home to more than 248,000 people with Lebanese ancestry, one of the largest populations of Lebanese people outside of Lebanon.

Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalists an attempt to ‘erase’ Palestinian identity

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has targeted those who “speak truth to power” and is aimed at eroding the “collective identity of the Palestinian people”, the US-based Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) activist group has said.

In a post on social media condemning Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi in Gaza on Wednesday, JVP said Israel seeks to “erode the collective identity of the Palestinian people” by killing media workers and destroying Palestinian cultural sites.

“The world must act to protect Palestinians in Gaza, the journalists and medics, the cultural heritage, the schools and the farmland, from further destruction and hold the Israeli government accountable for their war crimes,” JVP said.

“Safeguarding Palestinian history and identity is more essential than ever,” it added.

Israel is a ‘rogue state’, wants to destabilise the region: ex-PLO leader

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian political leader and a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, said Israel’s “gangster style assassination and extrajudicial executions” are designed to “inflame the whole region”.

The killings of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon, were carried out to “sabotage any chances” of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and regional de-escalation, Ashrawi said.

“These are attacks not just on the capitals of sovereign states but also on significant leaders to ensure total provocation [and] destabilisation,” she wrote on social media.

“Israel is a rogue state that represents a real [and] present danger globally,” she said.


Former Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi