While Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) recently celebrated the return of a fifth-century baptismal font, Palestinian officials argue that Israeli forces "stole" the 1,500-year-old relic in an "abominable act of thuggery and cultural appropriation."
Hananya Hizmi, head of COGAT's Antiquities Unit, said on Monday, as reported by the Jerusalem Post."I welcome the return of the baptismal font, which is a cultural and historical treasure from the Byzantine period.Citing a COGAT release, the Jerusalem Post claimed that the baptismal font was looted from the West Bank archaeological site of Tel Tekoa around 20 years ago. COGAT also received assistance from the Bethlehem District Coordination and Liaison Office and Etzion Regional Brigade in recovering the artifact.
" The Civil Administration's heavy investment of effort and resources in the search over recent years for this item has borne fruit. We will continue working tirelessly to preserve the sites and the archaeological relics throughout Judea and Samaria, and to prevent antiquities thieves from looting the history of the region."
However, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Department of Public Diplomacy and Policy offered a different account of the events that transpired late Sunday night and accused "Israeli occupation forces" of stealing the baptismal font from Bethlehem.
Tuqu Mayor Tayseer Abu Mufreh provided more details of the alleged theft, which he said did not happen in Bethlehem, but in his neighboring town.
According to the Middle East North Africa Financial Network, Abu Mufreh recounted that Israeli forces stormed his home, detained members of his family and stole the font. The mayor clarified that the relic was being stored near his home while it awaited transfer to a museum.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi slammed the alleged theft as "an abominable act of thuggery and cultural appropriation.""A hallmark of Israel's system of colonial occupation and oppression has been its disdainful attempts to erase Palestinian presence, culture and heritage, including the illegal appropriation and theft of heritage sites and artifacts," she said in a statement, as reported by the CDJ.The PLO official also called on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and its Director-General Audrey Azoulay "to speak out and protect Palestinian heritage."
A three-year-old girl was seriously injured early Wednesday morning in Chicago, not long after a bloody shootout outside a South Side funeral home left 15 people injured. No arrests have been made in either incident.
The toddler was shot in the head around 12:45am local time on Wednesday morning as her parents drove down East 74th Street, also receiving scratches to the eye - possibly from broken glass caused by the bullets shattering the car window, police told local media.
Two suspects are said to have fired in the direction of the car from the street corner. Their identities remain unknown, and no one has been arrested in connection with the shooting. Additionally, police are unsure of the intended target of the attack.
The incident took place just hours after a mass shooting outside a South Side funeral home on Tuesday night left 15 people injured after mourners fired back at the shooter's vehicle. The funeral, in a sad irony, was for the victim of another shooting last week in the city's Englewood neighborhood. A police car was present due to the large number of people attending the funeral, but this apparently didn't deter the attackers - whose identities remain unknown - from shooting up the mourners.
No arrests have been made in connection with the violence, police said in a Tuesday night press conference, but one person has been taken in for questioning. They reported one victim was in "extremely critical condition" and another was in critical condition, while the rest are expected to recover.
Chicago, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the US, also has one of the country's highest murder rates. More than 63 people were shot over the weekend in the city, 12 of them fatally, a pattern that is increasingly being echoed in other cities across the nation.
President Donald Trump recently announced plans to deploy Department of Homeland Security agents to Chicago in an attempt to get a handle on the surge in violent crime. The president has already sent a bevy of agents to Portland, where violent protesters have threatened a federal courthouse and other local government buildings on a nightly basis, and has stated he is eyeing other cities run by "liberal Democrats" for more muscular law enforcement.
Protesters have vandalized the home of Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, splattering it with red paint and graffiti while pelting the house with fireworks. The mayor's office said the attack was meant to "terrorize" and "intimidate."It's not like Schaaf hasn't tried hard to establish her liberal cred:
"An attack at the home of a publicly elected official does not advance democracy," the mayor's office said in a statement, noting that "vandals shot projectiles at the mayor's home, set off fireworks and graffitied her home with paint."Oakland Police are now investigating the incident, the aftermath of which was seen in photos shared on social media.This attack, designed to intimidate the mayor and strike fear into her family, will not stop her from advocating for the policies she believes are in the best long-term interests of her beloved hometown. Like all Oaklanders, she supports passionate protest but does not support tactics meant to harm and terrorize others.
Though the mayor has come out in favor of the BLM movement - approving of a massive street mural created to celebrate the group and forcefully speaking out against police brutality on a number of occasions in recent weeks - her not-radical-enough stance on police funding is at odds with activists' growing calls to slash department budgets or abolish them outright.
The city voted to divert more than $14 million from the Oakland Police Department budget last month, however activists and some city council members have demanded more, with two local lawmakers proposing a whopping $150 million cut in a recent budget amendment.
Schaaf ultimately provided the tie-breaking vote to shoot down the larger cut on Tuesday night, arguing it would "further impair what is already sub-standard police 911 response" and "strain Oakland's under-staffed police force."
It is not the first time anti-police brutality demonstrators descended on Schaaf's private residence. In June, some 1,000 marchers staged a protest in her Fruitvale neighborhood, calling on the mayor to defund the OPD, among other things. Following the action, the mayor's office issued a statement in support of the protesters, arguing that the "outrage across America right now needs to be heard."
Comment: See also: Immigration, Crime and Propaganda
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