logo
Why Michael Caine's Palestine Tweet Went Viral

Why Michael Caine's Palestine Tweet Went Viral

Buzz Feed29-07-2025
Earlier today, the BBC reported that the UN-backed global food security experts, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), had said that a 'worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out' in Palestine.
It comes after UN agencies warned that there is man-made, mass starvation in Gaza after Israel imposed a total blockade on aid and deliveries into the country at the start of March.
Despite the blockade being partially eased on occasion, shortages of food, medicine, and fuel have worsened.Per the BBC, the UN has recorded more than 1,000 people seeking aid being killed by Israeli forces over the past two months, and the IPC says that malnutrition has been rising rapidly throughout July, and has reached the famine threshold in Gaza City.
These devastating reports have led to many public figures using their platform to raise awareness and call for intervention, and people have been left touched by 92-year-old Michael Caine's attempt to utilize his social media account to do the same.
The acting legend has had an X account since 2010, but has only tweeted 472 times in those 15 years. However, since Thursday, he has tweeted six times about the starvation in Gaza, including sharing details of a planned protest in London with his 818k followers.
'Feed the Children of Gaza, no child should be starving,' he tweeted on Thursday.And on Sunday, Michael shared heartbreaking photos from Palestine, following up in a separate tweet: 'Feed Children Respect Children They are innocent.'
But it is Michael's photo post that really struck a chord with other social media users, who were taken by the way that the images had been cropped and uploaded.
The photos are incredibly blurry, and one of them is actually a screenshot of the picture in an iPhone's photo editor, presumably from Michael's phone.
And the low quality of the pictures really brought home the fact that Michael had sent the tweets himself, and was seemingly doing the best he could with his platform despite struggling with the technology.
Click here for information on how you can support Palestine.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Homeowners discover suspected Nazi bunker underground with creepy message scrawled on walls: ‘Beware, the enemy is listening'
Homeowners discover suspected Nazi bunker underground with creepy message scrawled on walls: ‘Beware, the enemy is listening'

New York Post

time9 hours ago

  • New York Post

Homeowners discover suspected Nazi bunker underground with creepy message scrawled on walls: ‘Beware, the enemy is listening'

A UK couple was taken aback after discovering a World War 2-era 'Nazi bunker' while renovating their home. 'It's not something you find every day!' Shaun Tullier, 35, told South West News Service while recalling the 'completely wild' discovery. 4 'It is history and it's good to have but I couldn't have imagined going through that — it really puts you back, especially when you go down,' said Shaun Tullier while describing the space. Shaun Tullier / SWNS Advertisement The subterranean refuge was reportedly located 26 feet underground and was outfitted with bottles, water and even an escape hatch like a Bond villain's lair. He and his wife Caroline, 32, had moved into the domicile in Guernsey in 2021, unaware of the wartime shelter that lay beneath their feet. Having been born in Guernsey, Shaun had been familiar with the history of the Channel Islands, which were occupied by German forces from 1940 until their liberation in May 1945, the BBC reported. They had reportedly turned these idyllic isles into an 'impregnable fortress' in line with Adolf Hitler's orders. Advertisement However, while the Brit knew that the site had been used as an enemy gun emplacement, he didn't realize it also housed a concealed bunker. 4 The bunker featured bottles, water, and even an escape hatch. Shaun Tullier / SWNS The pair had reportedly wanted to turn their garden into a turnabout, so they dug it up and paved it over with gravel, right above where the secret space was situated. Shaun, who works as a carpenter, finally figured out what lay beneath while hawking some chopped boards on Facebook Marketplace. The owner of the house contacted the woodworker and tipped him off about the wartime structure. Advertisement 'She said, 'Oh did you find the rooms below your house?'' Shaun recounted.'I then replied, 'Oh, so there are rooms!', to which she said, 'Yes, we used to play in there when we were kids, my dad filled it in — I know they're at the front of the house.'' 4 The chilling inscription reads, 'Beware, the enemy is listening.' Shaun Tullier / SWNS That's when he made the decision to uproot the driveway once again — a mere week after putting it down. Shaun and his friend ended up using an excavator to remove 100 tons of earth, uncovering the entrance to the underground lair. The space reportedly measured 17ft by 10ft and 17ft by 20ft, and featured a hallway that was 30ft by 4 feet wide. Advertisement It also housed the remnants of the occupants who sheltered there, including old bottles, water, a tiled floor, and an emergency exit. 4 Shaun said he knew the Germans stored weapons there, but never expected to find a wartime shelter as well. Shaun Tullier / SWNS Perhaps most notable was the chilling German phrase 'achtung feind hort mit,' which translates to 'beware, the enemy is listening.' 'You can't really put it into words,' said Tullier, who knew about the bunkers but didn't expect to find one under his home. 'I always knew about bunkers, but when Guernsey people came back to Guernsey after the war, they wanted to fill all the bunkers up,' he said. 'A lot of people still have bunkers here, but they are down the road and in gardens — not underneath the house!' The homeowner was reportedly so enamored with the discovery that he took pains to preserve it. They reportedly filled it with 80s tons of concrete to encase the walls and steps, and are in the process of converting the space into a games room with a snooker table and a gym. The pair hopes to install the floor and finish painting the space by November. Advertisement They even plan to preserve the eerie message. 'We are definitely keeping the writing — and might get someone that can calligraphy it back on, otherwise it gets lost,' said Shaun. 'Even the air getting to it has faded it a bit.' Ultimately, the Brit believes the restoration is worth it, declaring, 'It's not just rooms for us, it's a part of history.'

Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines
Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines

USA Today

time13 hours ago

  • USA Today

Terrible thirst hits Gaza with polluted aquifers and broken pipelines

GAZA/CAIRO, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Weakened by hunger, many Gazans trek across a ruined landscape each day to haul all their drinking and washing water - a painful load that is still far below the levels needed to keep people healthy. Even as global attention has turned to starvation in Gaza, where after 22 months of a devastating Israeli military campaign a global hunger monitor says a famine scenario is unfolding, the water crisis is just as severe according to aid groups. Though some water comes from small desalination units run by aid agencies, most is drawn from wells in a brackish aquifer that has been further polluted by sewage and chemicals seeping through the rubble, spreading diarrhoea and hepatitis. More: Netanyahu meets security officials as Israel considers full Gaza takeover COGAT, the Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating aid in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, says it operates two water pipelines into the Gaza Strip providing millions of litres of water a day. Palestinian water officials say these have not been working recently. Israel stopped all water and electricity supply to Gaza early in the war but resumed some supply later though the pipeline network in the territory has been badly damaged. Most water and sanitation infrastructure has been destroyed and pumps from the aquifer often rely on electricity from small generators - for which fuel is rarely available. COGAT said the Israeli military has allowed coordination with aid organisations to bring in equipment to maintain water infrastructure throughout the conflict. Moaz Mukhaimar, aged 23 and a university student before the war, said he has to walk about a kilometre, queuing for two hours, to fetch water. He often goes three times a day, dragging it back to the family tent over bumpy ground on a small metal handcart. "How long will we have to stay like this?" he asked, pulling two larger canisters of very brackish water to use for cleaning and two smaller ones of cleaner water to drink. His mother, Umm Moaz, 53, said the water he collects is needed for the extended family of 20 people living in their small group of tents in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. More: Israel says it will allow controlled entry of goods into Gaza via merchants "The children keep coming and going and it is hot. They keep wanting to drink. Who knows if tomorrow we will be able to fill up again," she said. Their struggle for water is replicated across the tiny, crowded territory where nearly everybody is living in temporary shelters or tents without sewage or hygiene facilities and not enough water to drink, cook and wash as disease spreads. The United Nations says the minimum emergency level of water consumption per person is 15 litres a day for drinking, cooking, cleaning and washing. Average daily consumption in Israel is around 247 litres a day according to Israeli rights group B'Tselem. Bushra Khalidi, humanitarian policy lead for aid agency Oxfam in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories said the average consumption in Gaza now was 3-5 litres a day. Oxfam said last week that preventable and treatable water-borne diseases were "ripping through Gaza", with reported rates increasing by almost 150% over the past three months. Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza and says it provides adequate aid for the territory's 2.3 million inhabitants. QUEUES FOR WATER "Water scarcity is definitely increasing very much each day and people are basically rationing between either they want to use water for drinking or they want to use a lot for hygiene," said Danish Malik, a global water and sanitation official for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Merely queuing for water and carrying it now accounts for hours each day for many Gazans, often involving jostling with others for a place in the queue. Scuffles have sometimes broken out, Gazans say. Collecting water is often the job of children as their parents seek out food or other necessities. "The children have lost their childhood and become carriers of plastic containers, running behind water vehicles or going far into remote areas to fill them for their families," said Munther Salem, water resources head at the Gaza Water and Environment Quality Authority. With water so hard to get, many people living near the beach wash in the sea. A new water pipeline funded by the United Arab Emirates is planned, to serve 600,000 people in southern Gaza from a desalination plant in Egypt. But it could take several more weeks to be connected. Much more is needed, aid agencies say. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said the long-term deprivations were becoming deadly. "Starvation and dehydration are no longer side effects of this conflict. They are very much frontline effects." Oxfam's Khalidi said a ceasefire and unfettered access for aid agencies was needed to resolve the crisis. "Otherwise we will see people dying from the most preventable diseases in Gaza - which is already happening before our eyes." (Reporting by Ramadan Abed in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

A Palestinian home kitchen reopens in Watts with falafel and fundraisers for Gaza
A Palestinian home kitchen reopens in Watts with falafel and fundraisers for Gaza

Los Angeles Times

time15 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

A Palestinian home kitchen reopens in Watts with falafel and fundraisers for Gaza

Mid East Eats — a popular falafel pop-up turned private dinner service — is now open as a fast-casual destination for homestyle Palestinian cuisine with an L.A. edge. It's also the first legally permitted home kitchen in Watts. Sumer and Andrew Durkee's nearly 700-square-foot home on Grape Street has a white banner stretched across the front gate, with blown-up photos of pita wraps, rice bowls, tacos and nachos topped with falafel. Enter the front yard, outfitted with a few tables, and maybe one of the home cooks will greet you, if they're not busy wrapping burritos or throwing meat on a grill. Business has kicked up since the Durkees relaunched Mid East Eats three weeks ago. The restaurant initially began as a private dinner service in February, when Sumer and Andrew offered Palestinian feasts in a decorated tent on their front lawn. For the July 12 opening, the pair added halal chicken and beef shawarma to their largely vegan menu — think fast-casual food like Shawacos (corn tortillas filled with shawarma, cilantro-lime hummus and feta) alongside dishes like the El Jifnawi falafel wrap, named after Sumer's father's Palestinian village, and the West Bank burrito, with fresh fries like the wraps served by street vendors in Ramallah and Jerusalem. From the ages of 9 to 12, Sumer and her family lived in Jifna — a village outside the West Bank city of Ramallah, where she and her brother went to school. The Maryland native recalls living through the Second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation, which began in 2000. 'My brother and I saw a lot of terrible things just by crossing the checkpoint to get to school in the city,' Durkee said. 'When they would close the checkpoints, we'd have to travel over the hills. … We've been shot at.' For Durkee, being able to serve Palestinian food in L.A., sometimes to local Palestinians, is bittersweet. As an entire generation of Palestinian children suffer irreversible damage from starvation and malnutrition, Durkee grapples with her role and platform as an owner-operator of a Palestinian restaurant. A week after reopening Mid East Eats, she announced that she would stop posting pictures of her restaurant's food on Instagram until Israel ended its blockade of food aid into Gaza. 'It feels insensitive to hold a grand opening during these times, but the time has come to open consistent business hours. Mid East Eats is our only source of income,' read an Instagram post from the restaurant. 'Our grand opening is dedicated to all oppressed communities. We need each other more than ever now.' Before it opened as a microenterpise home kitchen operation (MEHKO) in Feburary, Mid East Eats got its start as a pop-up last summer. The Durkees served dishes like falafel tacos at events across L.A., sometimes up to five per week. It's the same food they now serve in Watts, where many residents live more than half a mile from the closest supermarket, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Access Research Atlas. 'I wanted to make food more accessible to our neighborhood — Watts is a bit of a food desert,' said Sumer, whose bubbly personality and warm hospitality has helped the restaurant maintain a flow of customers. 'There's a lot of fast food … there's no Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Palestinian food.' Mid East Eats is one of the greater L.A. area's roughly 150 MEHKOs, thanks to a state program that was passed in 2018 and was implemented in L.A. County last November. It allows residents to cook and sell food out of their homes and plans to subsidize 1,000 home businesses through June 2026. MEHKOs are limited to serving up to 30 meals per day and 90 meals per week, with no more than $100,000 annual gross sales. Since its pop-up days, a common thread throughout the Durkees' business has been advocacy for Gaza. Many of the pop-ups Mid East Eats attended were fundraisers for families in Gaza, along with other causes such as local wildfire relief. The restaurant's reopening, which featured a few local vendors, raised money for two local community organizations and $100 for a family in Gaza. On the last weekend of July, Mid East Eats fundraised with sales of its West Bank burrito, donating $400 to two other families in Gaza. 'We [donate] direct to families that are unable or too far away from aid distribution,' Sumer said. 'Unfortunately, they have to buy food at inflated prices, so that's why I try to focus on rotating families.' Mid East Eats is best known for its herbaceous falafel, which Sumer stuffs with mint, cilantro and parsley. While she doesn't use an exact family recipe, Sumer said that it 'comes from my soul,' and tastes like the falafel her aunt would make. She and Andrew also take pride in cooking with olive oil made by a Palestinian family in Garden Grove. Vanessa Guerra, a loyal customer who discovered Mid East Eats through a fundraising falafel-making class the Durkees held last year, has no problem driving from her home in Northridge to Watts for falafel. 'They're amazing people — if someone needs help, they're there to help you,' said Guerra, whose great-grandfather is Palestinian, of the Durkees. 'I'm not just paying for the food. I'm paying for the service, everything. … It's very home-like. It's like going to your mom's house.' Open the Durkees' front gate to find tomato plants growing along the fence. To the left is another table accompanied by fig and lime trees. Next to the house, a young watermelon plant, and in front of it, the colorful tent where the couple formerly held private dinners for $95 per person. 'I really wanted to do the Palestinian experience — I wanted people to come over, feel like they're at home, come sit on the ground,' Sumer said. 'Back in the village, we would sit on the floor and eat. Most modern-day Palestinians don't do that anymore, but we did … I wanted to have that vibe, and I wanted to cook traditional food.' Though the Durkees have paused the private dinners until mid-August to focus on their fast-casual service, it remains a core aspect of Mid East Eats, according to Sumer. Now, for $195 per person, diners will sit inside the tent on colorful cushions around a circular wooden table, feasting on a selection of mezze and mint lemonade followed by Sumer's maqlubeh, or fragrant rice flipped upside down, revealing a layer of eggplant, cauliflower and tomatoes. 'When we do the private dinners, what I really focus on is the foods that we really eat back home — the stuffed grape leaves, stuffed cabbage, stuffed zucchini,' Sumer said. 'It's important to me to preserve my culture through food.' The Durkees continue to support both families in Gaza and their Watts neighbors however they can — which, after the reopening, most often manifests as falafel wraps and forearm-length shawarma burritos bursting with garlic toum, tahini and Andrew's homemade jalapeño sauce. 'Of course I'm gonna fight for Palestinian liberation. These are my people,' Sumer said. 'I want to bring people here, and I want them to come and experience that Palestinian hospitality, and that is important to me — to show people that we are humans.' Mid East Eats is open in Watts on Thursday through Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. 9613 Grape St., Los Angeles,

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store