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Saudi Gazette
a day ago
- Politics
- Saudi Gazette
Funerals held for journalists killed in Israeli strike on Gaza City
JERUSALEM — An outpouring of grief and condemnation has followed Israel's assassination of prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, including and five other staff members. Crowds have gathered in Gaza to mourn the journalists who were among seven people killed by Israel in a military strike on Gaza late Sunday. The Israeli military said it targeted 28-year-old al-Sharif, alleging he had "served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas", but has produced little evidence to support that claim. Al Jazeera called it a "targeted assassination" and "yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom". The UN condemned the killings as a "grave breach of international humanitarian law", while the Committee to Protect Journalists said 186 journalists have now been killed since the start of Israel's military offensive in Gaza in October 2023. Al Jazeera English's director of news, Salah Negm, has just said the Israeli strike amounted to 'killing the messenger and trying to eliminate any eyewitness to atrocities and genocide.' 'They have been working for two years under very difficult circumstances, risking their lives in order for one thing to happen, to bring the truth about what is happening in Gaza to the outside world,' Negm told CNN's Christina Macfarlane on Connect the World. 'Our correspondents died doing this.' The Israeli government does not allow international news organizations into Gaza to report freely, so many outlets rely on Gaza-based reporters for coverage. The Palestinian group Hamas has decried Israel's assassination of Al Jazeera's journalists in Gaza. In a statement, Hamas described the attack as part of a 'widespread targeting of journalists unprecedented in any war', saying it aimed to silence media coverage in Gaza ahead of 'major crimes' planned against Palestinians in the besieged territory. It called on the United Nations Security Council and the international community to condemn the killings and take immediate action to hold Israeli leaders accountable for what it called war crimes. It added that al-Sharif had been a 'symbol of free journalism', documenting scenes of famine in Gaza and the impact of Israel's crippling siege. The drone attack late on Sunday hit a tent for journalists positioned outside the main gate of Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital, killing seven people. Among the dead were Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammed Noufal. A sixth journalist, Mohammad al-Khaldi, a local freelance reporter, was also reported killed in the air attack. Reporters Without Borders said three more journalists were wounded in the same strike. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei has called on the world to hold Israel to account after the killing of the five Al Jazeera staff. 'A press badge is no shield against genocidal war criminals who fear the world witnessing their atrocities,' said Baghaei, accusing Israel of assassinating the journalists 'in cold blood'. 'Strong condemnation is the bare minimum for any decent human being, but the world must act immediately to stop this harrowing genocide and hold the criminals accountable,' he added. 'Indifference and inaction are complicity in Israel's crimes.' Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, has strongly criticised Israel over the killing of Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza, calling it a shocking violation of press freedom. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, offered condolences to 'the Al Jazeera family' and called for an investigation. 'We have always been very clear in condemning all killings of journalists,' Dujarric said. 'In Gaza, and everywhere, media workers should be able to carry out their work freely and without harassment, intimidation or fear of being targeted.' The Israeli strike came less than a year after Israeli army officials first accused al-Sharif and other Al Jazeera journalists of being members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a 24 July video, Israel's army spokesperson Avichay Adraee criticized the Qatar-based network and accused al-Sharif of being part of Hamas' military wing. Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) raised concerns for his safety, saying he was targeted by "an Israeli military smear campaign.' Al-Sharif has extensively reported on the war in Gaza from inside the Strip amid an ongoing media blackout imposed by Israel. Just hours before the attack on him, al-Sharif had posted on X about Israel's 'intense, concentrated bombardment' on eastern and southern Gaza City. Known for his fearless reporting from northern Gaza, he had become one of the most recognisable voices documenting the ongoing Israeli genocide in the enclave. Meanwhile, a video of Anas al-Sharif's daughter has resurfaced following his assassination by Israeli forces. The clip, which had been posted on al-Sharif's X account on June 16, shows four-year-old Sham speaking from the northern Gaza Strip and is accompanied by the caption: 'My little Sham Anas Al-Sharif's message to the world, after 620 days of the war of extermination in Gaza: How can this small heart bear these heavy burdens?! Our children are the fruits of pain ripened by the war!'. In the video, the girl says: 'I am the child Sham Anas al-Sharif from the northern Gaza Strip. I am four years old. I have lived through the war. 'The occupation bombed us and bombed the houses. Netanyahu doesn't want to stop the war. I wish I could go back to our home in Jabalia. 'The occupation bombed our house and killed my grandfather [Sidou]. I want to live like the children of the world. The occupation keeps bombing us. 'We want the war to end because we are tired. We want food. We want chicken. We want meat. We want water. We want everything. I am scared for my dad because of the bombing. We want the war to stop. We call on the world. End the war.' — Agencies
Egypt Independent
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Egypt Independent
The US may be headed into another Middle East war – and no one is talking about how it ends
CNN — It might be happening again. A president is being driven – by events, fear of proliferating weapons of mass destruction and the need to back up his own words – toward a shock-and-awe entry into a Middle East conflict with no guaranteed way out. Expectations are growing in Washington that Donald Trump will soon heed Israeli calls to try to strike a decisive blow against Iran's nuclear program, using bunker-busting weapons that only the US can deliver. The president's rhetoric took a sharp turn following the apparent success of Israel's early barrage that wiped out top military leaders and nuclear scientists and severely degraded Iran's capacity to defend itself. And CNN reported Tuesday that Trump was warming to the idea of using US military assets to strike Iranian nuclear sites and was souring on his previous unsuccessful attempt to settle the issue through talks with Iran. A satellite image taken on June 14, 2025, shows no visible damage to Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. Maxar Technologies As always with Trump, we must ask whether his tough talk is for real. Perhaps he is trying to bully Iran back to diplomacy and the 'unconditional surrender' he demanded on social media. This looks like a pipe dream. 'As long as President Trump is trying to capitalize on Israeli aggression against Iran, to get the Iranian leadership to surrender, it is just simply not going to work,' Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told Becky Anderson on CNN International's 'Connect the World' Tuesday. 'What they see at the end of this slippery slope is basically full capitulation and regime collapse.' And since Israel's preemptive attack on Iran seems partly motivated by the desire to derail US diplomacy, who's to say a president who has recently been ignored by Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping could stop Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? But Trump may be on the brink of a huge gamble that would repudiate his own political principles. His own scathing contempt for US presidents who pushed regime change played a huge role in the former reality star's dive into politics in 2015. If he goes to war in Iran, Trump will be ignoring a loud sector of his MAGA movement. The 'America First' president would become the kind of interventionist he despised. Still, there is a loophole in Trump's isolationism. He's always insisted that Iran, given its threats to eradicate Israel and sworn enmity with the US, would never be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. A trail of failed US interventions In this photo released by the US Air Force on May 2, 2023, airmen look at a GBU-57, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri. US Air Force/AP Trump is deliberating whether to use 30,000-pound 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator' guided bombs to destroy Iran's nuclear plant at Fordow, which is entombed below several hundred feet of concrete in a mountain. But something important is missing: any public talk by top officials about what might happen next. This is an extraordinary omission given Washington's 21st-century misadventures, when it started wars and spent the best part of 20 years trying to get out. 'Anyone who is cheerleading the United States into a war with Iran has very quickly forgotten the disasters of the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war,' Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. The Connecticut Democrat recalled those conflicts 'became a quagmire that ultimately got thousands of Americans killed and created new insurgencies against US interests and against our allies in the region.' Bombs fall on government buildings located in the heart of Baghdad along the Tigris River on March 20, 2003. Carolyn Cole/LosThe United States rolled into Iraq in 2003 and quickly toppled the tyrant Saddam Hussein. But it collapsed the Iraqi state and unleashed a vicious insurgency that ultimately ended in a US defeat. Fragile stability has only now returned to Iraq more than two decades later. In Afghanistan, President George W. Bush's post 9/11 invasion drove out Taliban leaders harboring Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. But two decades of failed nation-building led to a humiliating US withdrawal in 2021 that shattered then-President Joe Biden's claims to be a foreign affairs guru. President Barack Obama had his own debacle. He was persuaded by European allies and some of his own aides to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to protect civilians in 2011. 'We came, we saw, he died,' then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview. US hubris over Libya faded long ago. But it remains dangerous and impoverished. Trump knows all this. The moment it became clear that he'd change the hawkish Republican Party forever occurred when he slammed primary rival Jeb Bush in a 2016 debate over his brother's wars. 'The war in Iraq was a big fat mistake' Trump said. And he hasn't forgotten. He reminded the world of it just last month in a major speech in Saudi Arabia. 'The so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,' Trump said. 'They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.' Is Trump now going to become one of his own examples? How Iran might respond Iran is not Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. History doesn't have to repeat itself. Maybe the hawks are right this time that a devastating, contained US military strike can destroy Iran's nuclear program and remove an existential threat to Israel and national security risk for the United States. But Iran's clerical regime would almost certainly have to respond, if only to protect its own authority. Depending on its remaining military capacity after the Israeli onslaught, it might attack US personnel and bases in the region. Trump would have to respond in a cycle of escalation with no clear endgame. Oil tankers pass through the Strait of Hormuz, December 21, 2018. Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters It's easy to draw up nightmare scenarios. Iran might shut down the Strait of Hormuz to choke the flow of oil to trigger a global energy crisis. Or it might target oil fields of its regional rivals, such as Saudi Arabia. Only one nation could lead a response: the United States, as it got sucked deeper into a regional war. Then there's the possibility of mass Iranian cyber-attacks that could bring war to the homeland. Few Americans would mourn Iran's regime if Israel's push for regime change or encouragement for Iranians to revolt against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pays off. But political forces likely to be unleashed by the fall of the Islamic revolution, or the regime's crown jewel – its nuclear program – could cause immense upheaval. Anarchy or worse could be the result if a nation of 90 million people – which includes ethnic and sectarian fault lines among Persians, Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Turkmen, Turk and Arab tribes – is suddenly leaderless. A failed-state meltdown could send millions of refugees into the Middle East and Europe when immigration is already straining societal cohesion and fomenting extremism. A sudden security vacuum could lead to civil wars, or a brutalist takeover from the military or elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya know how quickly terror havens can spring up. Unrest could spread throughout the region and threaten already unstable nations like Pakistan. It's also worth asking how the US and Israeli governments would secure stocks of nuclear material left exposed by raids on Iran's atomic plants to prevent them falling into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. As dire as these possibilities sound, they may be immaterial to Israel's thinking. After all, Netanyahu says the prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb could lead to the eradication of his country and the Jewish people. But history, current and distant, challenges the idea a joint US and Israel effort would be short and conclusive. Israel still hasn't eradicated Hamas despite many months of bombardments in Gaza that have inflicted a terrible toll on tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Iran is likely to be a bigger challenge. And US efforts to shape Iran – including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, support for the repressive Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi that led to the Islamic revolution, and Washington's backing for Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s – almost always made the situation worse. The factors that may push Trump toward an attack So why has Trump apparently shed his earlier reticence over foreign wars? If he gives the go-ahead for a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, he could end up in a spot that any president might have reached. All his recent predecessors warned that Iran could never be allowed to get the bomb – although Trump may be blamed for failing with diplomacy to stop it happening on his watch. But if Israel's warnings that Tehran was racing toward a nuclear weapon were accurate, no US president could stand by and risk a second Holocaust – especially one who in his first term trashed a nuclear deal that Iran was respecting. It probably not coincidental that Trump's thinking evolved given the apparent success of early Israeli operations. He revealed on Tuesday that 'we' now have 'complete and total control of the skies over Iran.' A potential low-risk environment for US bombers might tempt a president who worships Gen. George Patton. He might sense a quick foreign policy win to make up for his failures to be the peacemaker he promised. And he'd love to crow that he – and not Bush, Obama or Biden – eradicated the threat from Iran. Still, he's a problematic war leader, having done nothing to prepare the country for a possible new escapade in a region stained by American blood and lost treasure. And Trump's strategy of governing as a divisive strongman may deprive him of the bipartisan public trust all warrior presidents need to succeed. Suddenly, a man who took great pride in never starting new wars has landed in a familiar place. He's a president debating whether to send Americans into a new Middle East conflict based on possibly questionable intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. The fallen from the Iraq and Afghan wars lie in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. The very least they are owed is an explanation of what happens next, if the first US bombs start dropping in Iran.
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Business Standard
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Business Standard
Pakistan is 'trying to avoid' full-fledged war, says Defence Minister Asif
Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday said Islamabad is "trying to avoid" a full-fledged war, hours after India carried out a military strike on terror targets in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Punjab province. India launched Operation Sindoor early Wednesday, hitting nine terror targets in PoK and Punjab in retaliation for the terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22 that killed 26 people. "There is a possibility of expansion of this conflict into a full-fledged war, which we are trying to avoid," Asif told CNN's Becky Anderson on Connect the World. He said that they (India) last night crossed an international boundary. The attack early Wednesday was a "clear-cut violation, and an invitation to expand the conflict and maybe convert it into something much wider and much more dangerous for the region," he said. When asked what happens next, the minister said Pakistan "is prepared for an all-out war". "There is absolutely no doubt, because India is increasing the intensity, the stakes of this conflict, Asif said. "So we can't be caught with our guards down. Earlier in the day, Asif was quoted as saying by Bloomberg Television that Pakistan is ready to "wrap up" tensions with India, if New Delhi de-escalates the situation. "We have been saying all along in the last fortnight that we'll never initiate anything hostile towards India. But if we're attacked, we'll respond. If India backs down, we will definitely wrap up this tension," he said. According to Pakistan Army spokesman Lt Gen Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry, at least 26 people were killed and 46 injured in the missile strikes by India.
