Latest news with #airstrikes
Fox News
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Iran's Jews caught in crossfire of regime's propaganda war
In mid-June, as Israeli airstrikes targeted Iranian military bases, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders and nuclear facilities, the Islamic Republic shifted its battlefield to a new front: the airwaves. On state-run television, a chilling propaganda campaign aired. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appeared flanked by Revolutionary Guard officers while a narrator declared, "We are all proud soldiers…we will uproot the Jews with our power." The message was clear, projecting defiance after the regime's military and nuclear apparatus were dealt a humiliating blow by Israel, while also carrying a more ominous signal to Iran's Jewish population. In the days following the 12-day war, regime forces launched a wave of arrests. Hundreds of Iranians were detained on espionage charges, including at least 35 Jews in Tehran and Shiraz. Many were interrogated and harassed. Their social media activity was reportedly scrutinized, and they were pressured to sever contact with relatives abroad, particularly those in Israel. This was not just a crackdown, but a calculated move to isolate and intimidate an already vulnerable community. Jews have lived in Iran for nearly 3,000 years. Their roots predate Islam and Christianity. Shaped by the legacy of Queen Esther, whose story is retold each year during Purim, Iran's Jews have survived persecution, war and revolution not through confrontation, but through careful adaptation and, often, silence. Iran's Jews are regularly used as pawns by the regime to fan anti-Israel sentiment, as was seen on Oct. 30, 2023, when reports showed Iranian authorities "coerced Iranian Jewish leaders and their communities" to engage in anti-Israel protests across five cities just weeks after the Iran-backed October 7 terror attacks. Today, roughly 10,000 Jews remain in Iran, constituting the largest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel. They are recognized in Iran's constitution as a "people of the book," and are permitted to pray in synagogues and run kosher restaurants, butcheries and schools — all under the watchful eye of the regime. This limited freedom comes not out of religious tolerance, but because it has served a strategic purpose and helps the regime deflect accusations of antisemitism. That same political calculus explains why Iran's parliament, or Majles, reserves one seat for a Jewish representative, and why Jewish representatives have occasionally joined the Islamic Republic's delegation to the United Nations General Assembly's high-level week held every September in New York. As Iranian American writer Roya Hakakian observes in The Atlantic, "the existence of Jewish Iranians inside the country became an important symbol [to the mullahs], especially in contrast with the absence of Jewish life in other Muslim countries in the region…Iran's Jews became the regime's principal defense against accusations of anti-Semitism, even as some leaders notoriously questioned the veracity of the Holocaust." Indeed, in 2005, then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted an international Holocaust cartoon competition — a grotesque display of Jew-hatred and Holocaust denialism that continues today with state backing. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when a theocratic, anti-American and anti-Israeli regime seized power, Iran's Jewish population has plummeted by 90% — from approximately 100,000 under the country's last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The shocking execution of Habib Elghanian, a Jewish Iranian businessman, philanthropist and community leader, in 1979 accelerated the exodus. Yet unlike other Jewish communities across the Middle East, Iran's Jews were never forcibly expelled en masse. Their presence has been continuous, but their safety has always been fragile. The recent arrests of Jews in Iran are just the latest reminder that the Islamic Republic sees loyalty to the regime as absolute – and any perceived deviation, whether through protest or even having a relative abroad, can be construed as a threat. The same regime that censors journalists, jails artists and musicians, and punishes schoolgirls for removing their hijab now targets Jews for having family ties abroad. This is one of the central themes of my forthcoming book, Unveiled: Inside Iran's #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt, which explores how the 2022-2023 uprising sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini revealed a growing rift between the Iranian people and the regime. The enemy of the Islamic Republic isn't just Zionism or the West—it's autonomy and dissent. Iran's Jews are once again caught in a geopolitical storm. Their silence is not complicity, but survival. And their endurance is not a reflection of the regime's tolerance, but of the Jewish people's resilience. They must not be forgotten by global Jewry nor by those who still believe in a future for Iran that is free and just.
Japan Times
8 hours ago
- General
- Japan Times
Woman recounts deadly U.S. bombings of Chiba 80 years ago
As the anniversary of the war's end comes into view, an 87-year-old woman from Chiba is recalling two rounds of deadly U.S. airstrikes that took the lives of over 1,200 people in the city, noting that she's fortunate to have survived. "If the attacks had hit slightly different places, I wouldn't be here," Fumiko Takayama, a former schoolteacher, said. The airstrikes burned down about 60% of the city's urban areas. The first bombing came on the morning of June 10, 1945. A warning siren went off after she finished her breakfast that Sunday. Soon after she started preparations to evacuate to a shelter, the siren changed into an air raid alert. Just as she was about to put on her shoes, a cloud of dust from a blast made it impossible to see anything. Takayama dropped to the ground, covering her eyes, nose and ears with her hands, as she had been taught to at school. Her family hid in a closet and was safe. A few days later, Takayama noticed that part of her protective head covering had been burnt off. "I would have been dead if I hadn't got down," she says. After a bomb hit a nearby hospital, dead bodies were placed on a vacant lot of land in front of her house and she saw corpses with bent arms and legs in a scene that left a lasting impression on her about the destruction of war. Takayama and her neighbors paid respect to the dead as a military truck took away the bodies. The second air raid struck in the small hours of July 7, 1945. Her heart started pounding as she thought "it's another bombing." Her father told his family to evacuate to the sea. As she walked west along the waterfront, the sky was red, and sparks of fire kept falling. Takayama kept walking while soaking her head covering into the seawater again and again so that her clothes would not catch fire. She learned later that people who evacuated in the opposite direction along the seafront were gunned down by U.S. warplanes and died. About 10 years ago, Takayama started to talk about her experience, mainly at elementary and junior high schools, at the suggestion of a former work colleague. "War destroys things, and kills people and hearts," she says. "There's nothing good about war."
Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
US envoy to lead meeting between Syria, Israel later this week: Report
US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack is expected to lead a meeting later this week between senior Syrian and Israeli officials, according to a report published Tuesday. The talks aim to reach new understandings on the volatile situation in southern Syria, Axios reported, citing a US official and another source familiar with the matter. According to the report, Barrack hopes to facilitate increased coordination and communication between Syria and Israel following last week's Israeli airstrikes on Sweida and subsequent attacks on Damascus. Israel has claimed the operations were conducted to protect Druze residents in Sweida. 'There is relative calm now, but the fundamental issues will not be resolved without comprehensive agreements between the US, Israel and the Syrian government,' a senior Israeli official told Axios.
LBCI
a day ago
- Politics
- LBCI
'Extremely high' risk of serious abuses amid expanded Israel Gaza operation: UN
The U.N. rights chief warned Tuesday that Israel's expanded operations in central Gaza created an "extremely high" risk of serious international law violations. "These Israeli airstrikes and ground operations will invariably lead to further civilian deaths and destruction of civilian infrastructure," Volker Turk said in a statement, cautioning that "given the concentration of civilians in the area, and the means and methods of warfare employed by Israel until now, the risks of unlawful killings and other serious violations of international humanitarian law are extremely high." AFP
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Israel bombs WHO facilities in Gaza as global outcry grows
Israel has bombed warehousing and staff accommodation in Gaza belonging to the World Health Organization amid intensifying international horror at its continuing attacks on starving civilians and on humanitarian efforts in the devastated Palestinian territory. The airstrikes, which struck the UN global health agency's facilities in Deir al-Balah – the focus of a recent offensive by the Israeli military – came as Israel cancelled the work visa of Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) inside Gaza and the most senior UN aid official in the coastal strip. Hours after a hard-hitting joint statement on Monday by 27 western countries including the UK, France, Australia and Canada harshly criticising Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid and calling for an immediate end to the war, the UN's secretary general, António Guterres, warned that the 'last lifelines keeping people alive [in Gaza] are collapsing', adding that humanitarian efforts were 'being impeded, undermined and endangered'. He said he 'deplored the growing reports of children and adults suffering from malnutrition' as health officials in Gaza reported a further 15 deaths from malnutrition in the previous 24 hours, including four children. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, on Tuesday amplified that message in an interview with the BBC, describing himself as 'appalled [and] sickened' by what was happening in Gaza. 'These are not words that are usually used by a foreign secretary who is attempting to be diplomatic,' Lammy said. 'But when you see innocent children holding out their hand for food, and you see them shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days, of course Britain must call it out.' The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also said on Tuesday that she had told the Israeli foreign minister that Israel's military 'must stop' killing civilians at aid distribution points in Gaza. 'The killing of civilians seeking aid in Gaza is indefensible. I spoke again with Gideon Saar to recall our understanding on aid flow and made clear that IDF [Israel Defense Forces] must stop killing people at distribution points,' she wrote on X. Graphically underlining the scale of the intensifying humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the head of the UN's main agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, said on Tuesday that more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces in recent weeks as they sought food aid, describing Gaza as a 'hell on earth'. Philippe Lazzarini said Unrwa's own staff, as well as doctors and humanitarian workers, were fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion as Israel limits access to life-saving humanitarian aid, and that many were surviving on a single small meal a day. 'Caretakers, including Unrwa colleagues in Gaza, are also in need of care now, doctors, nurses, journalists, humanitarians, among them Unrwa staff, are hungry. Many are now fainting due to hunger and exhaustion while performing their duties,' he said in a statement at a press briefing in Geneva. The UN's World Food Programme on Monday said its assessments show a quarter of the population of Gaza is is facing 'famine-like' conditions and almost 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Separately, the Roman Catholic church's most senior cleric in the Holy Land said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was 'morally unacceptable', after visiting the war-torn Palestinian territory. 'We have seen men holding out in the sun for hours in the hope of a simple meal,' Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told a news conference: 'It's morally unacceptable and unjustified.' Despite the high-profile criticism in recent days, aid agencies have criticised the lack of meaningful action by the governments who signed the joint statement, including the UK, against Israel. Kristyan Benedict of Amnesty International UK warned that the British government's 'failure to take robust measures to prevent genocide is no accident', adding that 'as a state party to the genocide convention, the UK has a legal duty to prevent and punish genocide – a duty it is failing miserably to uphold'. The growing international furore came as Israeli troops have pushed into Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a city where a number of international aid organisations are based, in what appeared to be the latest effort to carve up the Palestinian territory with military corridors. Deir al-Balah is the only Gaza city that has not seen major ground operations or suffered widespread devastation in 21 months of war, leading to speculation that the Hamas militant group holds large numbers of hostages there. Israel says the seizure of territory in Gaza is aimed at pressuring Hamas to release hostages, but it is a major point of contention in ongoing ceasefire talks. However, the latest Israeli offensive in Gaza comes amid fears that its ultimate aim is to expel large parts of its population of more than 2 million by making the territory uninhabitable. Israel justified its cancellation of Whittall's visa on the alleged grounds of anti-Israel bias. In a statement, however, Ocha defended its local head's strong remarks when describing what he was seeing in Gaza. 'Speaking about conditions we see on the ground is a core element of Ocha's mandate,' the agency said. 'Attempts to silence us are not new, but threats of reduced access to the civilians we're trying to serve are intensifying.'
