Latest news with #warzone
News.com.au
a day ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Operation Spiderweb: How Ukraine pulled off the unthinkable
Massive over-the-horizon radars. Interceptors capable of flying 3000km/h. Hundreds of fighter jets. Dozens of missile batteries. Highly mobile, anti-aircraft tanks. But Russia's trillion-dollar defence infrastructure could not do anything about a few truckloads of wi-fi connected toy drones. 'Enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia,' Ukraine's Security Service has declared. It's a devastating blow for the Kremlin. It's a daring display of resistance by Kyiv. And the broad-daylight raid may have cost Russia a significant portion of their nuclear 'mutually-assured destruction' force. Ukraine claims attacks on four military airfields as far as 4000km from the war zone have cost Russia 41 combat aircraft - chief among them being highly prized cruise-missile-carrying strategic bombers. There are also unconfirmed reports that the Northern Fleet Headquarters in Murmansk - home of Russia's cruise-missile armed nuclear submarines - has also been hit. Military analysts say it is one of the most significant raids in modern warfare. It is clear evidence that the world's militaries can do little to protect exorbitant expensive combat jets - such as Australia's $16 billion worth of 72 F-35 Lightning stealth fighters - against commercially available drones costing just a few thousand dollars each. But the full impact of the strikes is yet to be seen. The Kremlin had hoped to enter ceasefire talks later today on a high after one of its own largest attacks of the war. A record 472 drones and dozens of missiles were sent to attack Ukrainian cities on Saturday night. But the loss of its prized strategic bombers has cast a whole new light on today's Istanbul peace talks. It's also turned decades of military thinking on its head. 'It's actually having an effect on how the US is thinking about investments in the future,' says Professor Mai'a Cross of Boston's Northeastern University. 'Instead of these huge, expensive projects, like the F-35 (stealth fighter), you have these relatively cheap fleets of drones that are able to destroy a whole line of Russian tanks. That has changed how many countries think about the future of security.' Operation Pavutyna (Spiderweb) 'Of course, not everything can be revealed at this moment, but these are Ukrainian actions that will undoubtedly be in history books,' Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in an overnight post on X. 'Ukraine is defending itself, and rightly so — we are doing everything to make Russia feel the need to end this war. Russia started this war, Russia must end it. Glory to Ukraine!' President Zelensky says the clandestine operation was 18 months in the making. Truckloads of small disposable drones were slipped across Russian borders to staging points across the country. These were then armed with explosives and programmed to locate particular targets. Then they were hidden in timber pallets placed on the back of trucks before being driven within range of their targets. Kyiv says their ability to connect with local commercial telephone and wi-fi networks allowed the special forces agents to escape up to a day before the remote-controlled attack was unleashed. Up to 150 drones and 300 grenade-sized explosives were reportedly used in the attack. Russian military blogger Sergey Kolyasnikov claims some of the drones had been intercepted. 'We found a warehouse where containers with drones were collected, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk,' he posted to Telegram. 'It was rented for 350,000 rubles ($6,500). That's why the truck in the Amur region had Chelyabinsk license plates – they were leaving from there.' The quadcopters were assembled in Russia before being loaded in pallets and concealed in the back of lorries. 'At the right moment, the roofs of the (pallet-huts) were remotely opened, and the drones flew to hit Russian bombers,' an anonymous official told AP. Russia's governor of Siberia's Irkutsk district, Igor Kobzev, posted a video showing drones flying overhead as a plume of smoke grew in the distance. 'It is known that this was a drone attack on a military unit in the village of Sredniy,' he stated on Telegram. 'The source from which the drones were launched has already been blocked. It's a truck. The main thing is not to panic. There is no threat to the lives and health of civilians.' Another witness described the same attack: 'I work at a tyre shop,' one Telegram post reads. 'A truck pulled in, and drones flew out of it.' A new way of war 'FPV drones are about tactical dominance,' one Russian military analyst has commented since the attack. 'They bring chaos, fear and uncertainty to close combat. They are not feared. They are hated. They are cheap, massive and deadly effective. And their potential grows with each passing day: AI guidance, automated launches, swarms. These are no longer makeshift weapons, but new close-combat artillery.' It's not a new claim. What is new is the physical demonstration of the extent to which this is new. Russian President Vladimir Putin was promised by his generals that his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine would last just three days. Three years - and several purges of top generals - later, the fighting continues. That's largely due to Ukraine's rapid recognition of the power of drones. And its equally rapid development of an emergency war drone production line. 'Even though Ukraine is experiencing a number of setbacks at the moment, the way in which it has made its overall military capability and production of drones so efficient is absolutely remarkable,' says Professor Cross. 'What we're seeing is the sheer ingenuity of those on the front lines in dealing with a weaponry shortfall, and innovating in a way that is really quite unprecedented.' And the drones are proving to be much cheaper and quicker to produce than advanced artillery shells or precision-guided missiles. Some specialist varieties are built in backyard factories from about $15,000 of imported electrical components and motors. Frames and fairings are 3D printed. As are adaptors to turn grenades into bomblets. But many are the same $2000 hobbyist quadcopter drones you can find on the shelves of local electrical stores. Troops simply strap explosives on them and fly them directly into enemy bunkers, trenches, warehouses, tanks, trucks … anywhere. They're making it difficult to step out into the open on the battlefield. And equally difficult to hide. However, their innocuous nature and small size are huge assets for special operations forces. The ability to conceal, move and deploy mass drone attacks will unsettle commanders of largely open-air military facilities from Australia's main F-35 base at RAAF Williamtown in New South Wales to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Deep strike 'Russian strategic bombers, all burning delightfully,' the Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Lieutenant General Vasily Maliuk, comments in footage released about the attack. One attack - on the Olenya airfield in Murmansk - has apparently proved particularly successful. 'The driver's running are flying from his truck toward the base,' one Russian observer posted. Dozens of strategic bombers had deployed to the facility in preparation for Saturday night's attacks on Ukrainian cities. These had reportedly returned and were lined up on the airfield for refuelling and rearming. Russia is generally believed to have less than 90 operational strategic bombers. These include the ungainly Tu-95 'Bear' four-engined turboprop, which entered service in 1952. The Tu-22M 'Backfire' swing-wing bomber began operations in 1962. And Only a handful of the more modern Tu-160 'Blackjack' heavy strategic bombers (built in the late 1980s) remain in service. All are designed to carry nuclear-capable cruise missiles. All have been extensively used - carrying conventional explosive missiles - against Ukraine. Ukraine's counter-intelligence agency, the SBU, has stated on Telegram, that '34 per cent of strategic cruise missile carriers at the main airfields of the Russian Federation were hit.' Also among the destroyed were A-50 surveillance aircraft. It is Russia's equivalent to the US E3 Sentry and Australian E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control (AWAC) jets. Such aircraft have been high-priority targets since the onset of the war. Yesterday's raids included four airfields. Dyagilevo Base in Riazan. IIvanovo Base in Ivanovo. Belaya Base in Irkutsk, some 4000km from Ukraine in south-eastern Siberia. And Olenya air base in Russia's Murmansk region - 2000km north of Ukraine. Previous successful Ukrainian drone attacks had forced Russia's bomber fleet to seek safety in these more distant airfields. Russia can no longer produce Tu-95 and Tu-22M bombers. Their production lines have long since been retired and dismantled. Its recently restarted Tu-160 construction facility is delivering just three new aircraft per year. It will take Moscow years to recover from the loss. 'The strategics were not completely destroyed, but their damage is unlikely to be repaired by the Russian military-industrial complex in its current state in the near future,' Ukrainian analyst Alexander Kovalenko commented on Telegram. Drone warriors Almost every aspect of warfighting is being taken over by drones. Ukrainian media reports that just one dedicated drone unit - the Birds of Magyar - launched 11,600 drone sorties (flights) in just one month, striking more than 5300 targets. In April, Ukraine's total drone force reportedly hit 83,000 targets. Two-thirds involved small first-person-view (FPV) remote drones. The remaining third were heavier 'bomber' drones with a degree of autonomous control. All are specialised in destroying troop bunkers, ammunition and supply dumps, transport infrastructure - and tanks. Drones are an alternative to heavy artillery and strike jets. Ukraine's drones reportedly give its front-line troops a 15km-deep 'attrition zone', where attacking Russian forces can be engaged before they come into direct contact. 'Ukrainian commanders aim to hamper the logistics of Putin's invasion force and significantly reduce the potential for future Russian advances,' says National Institute for Strategic Studies analyst Mykola Bielieskov. 'This approach is being dubbed the 'drone wall,' and may well come to play a far bigger role in efforts to freeze the front lines.' Drones are an alternative to fighter jets and anti-aircraft missile systems. 'Ukraine has, for some time, been expanding its ability to knock down Russian reconnaissance drones using its own drone interceptors, thereby blinding Russian units that would otherwise direct glide bombs and ballistic missiles against targets in the Ukrainian rear,' explains Dr Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). Drones are an alternative to tanks and shoulder-fired missiles They can be flown into the vulnerable exhaust ports, open hatches and thin top armour of the battlefield behemoths. Attempts to add hoods and spikes to fend off these bite-sized attackers have proven unsuccessful. Drones are an alternative to saboteurs. 'Imagine, on game day, containers at railyards, on Chinese-owned container ships in port or offshore, on trucks parked at random properties… spewing forth thousands of drones that sally forth and at least mission-kill the crown jewels of the USAF', warns the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) analyst Tom Shugart. But every action has a reaction. '(Russia) is attacking Ukraine's UAV pilots,' says Dr Watling. 'Here the methodology is to use direction finding, signals intelligence and reconnaissance to pinpoint the location of pilots and then target them with wire-guided drones and glide bombs.'
Telegraph
2 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
‘We spent five months as Saddam's hostages – BA and the government risked our lives'
On 1 Aug 1990, British Airways (BA) Flight 149, scheduled to fly from London Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur, via stops in Kuwait and Madras (now Chennai), was briefly delayed before takeoff. 'Right at the end of the boarding period, our ground controller told me that there were additional passengers who had just checked in,' recalls Clive Earthy, the flight's cabin services director, one of 367 passengers and 18 crew onboard. 'The passengers turned up and boarded the flight. They were a group of young, fit-looking men. They were all seated at the back of the aircraft.' The Boeing 747-136 finally took off just after 6pm. As soon as they landed in Kuwait, Earthy opened a door at the front of the plane to be greeted by a British military officer in full uniform. 'He said to me: 'You're very late, Flight 149, I've come to meet some people from London, and it's very important I get them off quickly now.' All those men were escorted off the aircraft. Instead of going down the arrivals channel into customs and immigration, the officer took them down some side steps and disappeared. 'I thought that was most peculiar. But I didn't put two and two together for a long, long time.' Flight 149 never made it out of Kuwait. While the plane was in the air, and unbeknown to the passengers and crew, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait, after months of build-up on the border, and were making rapid progress towards the airport. For the civilians on board, their flight into a war zone was the start of a 35-year tale of mistreatment and government cover-ups, which is the subject of a gripping and beautifully made new documentary, Flight 149: Hostage of War. The story remains unresolved: more than 100 (at the time of writing) of the survivors are suing the British Government, and British Airways, for knowingly putting them in harm's way. 'Personally, I don't want money,' Earthy says. 'What I do want is an apology.' From boarding gate to battleground While the plane waited on the tarmac in Kuwait, another passenger, 12-year-old Jennifer Chappell, heading to Madras with her brother and parents, got her first inkling something was wrong. 'The cleaners could not get off the plane fast enough,' she recalls. ' I looked out of the window and saw fighter planes flying very low, with what I thought were things falling off them.' Moments later, the bombs went off. Kuwaiti soldiers appeared onboard to order all passengers and crew off the plane into the airport. There, they watched the fighting through the large plate-glass windows of the terminal building. 'You could see the planes dogfighting and the tanks rolling over the horizon,' Chappell says. 'The crew had to tell some of the adults to stand back from the windows'. The Iraqis seized the airport. Chappell and her family were transferred, along with several other guests, into a series of facilities where they were held prisoner as Hussein's 'honoured guests', during the build-up to the first Gulf War. Initial media reports portrayed their stay as a kind of extended holiday in the sun. The reality was much harsher. The captives were released after five months, apart from one Kuwaiti who was shot trying to escape, after a concerted campaign for their release by British and US officials as well as a surprising parade of celebrities, including Edward Heath, Sir Richard Branson, Rev Jesse Jackson and Muhammad Ali. But during their time as 'guests' the prisoners, not just those on that flight, were variously used as human shields, kept hungry, paraded on TV and subjected to mock executions. Possibly the most famous image of the time was of five-year-old Stuart Lockwood with Saddam Hussein (as seen as the top of this article). Lockwood was not on board the plane but lived in Kuwait – his father was in the oil industry. Today Lockwood says 'I was shielded, completely unaware of the gravity of the events unfolding around me. However, when I stood next to him, surrounded by guards, TV cameras and everyone else who were also being held as human shields, I knew instinctively that this situation was important. This surreal chapter from my early childhood remains a profound and formative part of who I am.' Meanwhile Jennifer Chappell says, 'I've never recovered. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 15. I've suffered with depression and anxiety my whole life, emotionally unstable personality disorder, which has led to numerous suicide attempts. I've never been able to hold anything down or settle down. I've lived my life on benefits. At 12 years old I was a straight-A student at boarding school.' One of them, Charlie Kristiansson – a steward on the flight – says an Iraqi soldier separated him from the other hostages and raped him. 'I feel proud to have survived,' Kristiansson says. 'We survived inhumane conditions. I saw a 10-year-old girl chased by Iraqi soldiers jump to her death. Having witnessed that, and after what happened to me personally, which was horrible, you have to recalibrate and reconfigure yourself.' He recently switched nationality to Luxembourg, part of the process of exorcising his demons from that time. For Kristiansson and Chappell – like Earthy and the other souls aboard Flight 149 – captivity marked the beginning of a nightmare that has lasted 35 years. Throughout that time, their account has been repeatedly denied by British Airways and successive governments, even as new evidence has steadily corroborated their story. Last July, it was announced that around a hundred survivors are suing British Airways and the British Government, believing their civilian flight was deliberately endangered to enable a covert intelligence-gathering mission. As the infected blood and Post Office scandals have shown, such betrayals are far from history. The controversy hinges on the extent to which British Airways and the government were aware of the rapidly developing situation on the ground in Kuwait. And if they knew about the Iraqi invasion, why was a British civilian aircraft allowed to land? Flight 149 was the only plane to land in Kuwait in the small hours of the morning on August 2nd. At the time, British Airways and the government claimed not to have been aware of how fast the invasion had taken place. In a now infamous statement in parliament on 6 Sept 1990, Margaret Thatcher said: 'The British Airways flight landed, its passengers disembarked, and the crew handed over to a successor crew and went to their hotels. All that took place before the invasion: the invasion was later.' Subsequent governments repeated this claim, despite testimony from passengers and crew such as Chappell, who witnessed gunfire from the plane. It also contradicted the timeline set out in Thatcher's own memoir, The Downing Street Years. A long road to accountability A major breakthrough came in 2021, when documents released under the thirty-year rule (the period after which most government records are transferred to the National Archives and made available to the public) revealed that the Kuwaiti Ambassador had rung the Foreign Office at midnight, when the plane was in the air, to warn that the invasion had begun. The information was passed on to Downing Street, MI6, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence, but not British Airways. Liz Truss, foreign secretary in 2021, apologised for the deceit. 'This failure was unacceptable,' Truss said in a written statement. 'I apologise to the House for this, and I express my deepest sympathy to those who were detained and mistreated.' When it came to why British Airways was not informed, one scapegoat was Anthony Paice – the MI6 station chief in Kuwait, working undercover as aviation security at the embassy. He was accused of failing to warn the airline of the risks. Some reports even suggested that he and his service were complicit in the clandestine operation – a claim he denies. 'In subsequent years there were press reports that claimed I was responsible for telling British Airways it was safe to fly through [Kuwait], where in fact I advised them exactly the opposite,' he says. 'I had to live with this because I had signed the Official Secrets Act, so my only comment could be 'no comment'.' It was only in 2019 that his 'worm turned' and he decided to tell the truth. In 2022 he published a book, Overkill or Under-kill, about his story, which he says has 'never been disputed' by MI6 or any other department. 'I thought, 'damn it all', we're a long time after the events [of Flight 149] and I'm still being blamed for something I had nothing to do with,' he says. As with the captives, living in the shadow of so much deceit has taken a personal toll. 'It made me a difficult person to live with,' he says. 'You are totally frustrated. But I'm happy with my account. People know the truth. My only concern is to get compensation for those people who were wronged. It caused me an enormous amount of anger and it makes me feel all the more sore about other instances of governments not owning up and apologising and doing the right thing. The post office scandal is a good case in point. Another, much further back, is the squaddies who were exposed to radiation during our nuclear tests in the Pacific.' Given that the government of the time admitted it knew about the invasion earlier than it claimed, the question remains: why was the flight allowed to go ahead? Many believe the answer lies with the young men who boarded at the last minute. Paice is now 'convinced' that a 'military intelligence exploitation of British Airways flight 149 did take place, despite repeated official denials'. He says: 'Somebody should come up with an apology for not having accepted that something was going on on the aeroplane, and that that was responsible for the discomfort experienced by nearly 400 people, which was quite unnecessary. British Airways had been warned and took no notice of the warning, and the British government was also warned and also took no action as it could have done. Both organisations are culpable.' Paice's account aligned with the version of events being pieced together by Kiwi journalist Stephen Davis, a former member of The Sunday Times 's insight team and The Independent on Sunday, who was writing a book about Flight 149. The Secret History of Flight 149 was published in 2021 – the same year Liz Truss admitted the government had covered up the true timeline. Much of the legal case against British Airways and the Government now rests on Davis's reporting, which took nearly 35 years to complete. He was alerted that all was not as it seemed almost as soon as the invasion took place. Like other journalists, Davis – then on the news desk at The Independent on Sunday – was fed the official line that the hostages were enjoying 'an extended holiday'. 'Ironically enough, it was true for about three days,' he says. 'The Iraqis were astonished they had been gifted this British Airways plane with all these people. The invasion was pretty disorganised.' It was not long before he was tipped off that something was amiss. 'I'd done a lot of work reporting on special forces and intelligence services and I got a call from a contact saying 'what they're saying about this plane isn't right, you should look into it,'' he says. 'That was the start of an epic battle, which has taken more than half my life.' Davis's version of events is that, as the threat of Iraqi invasion loomed, intelligence services cobbled together a last-minute plan to get a group of operators into Kuwait discreetly. He believes this was a group known as 'The Increment', more recently known as E Squadron, a secretive British paramilitary group mostly composed of ex-servicemen who work closely with the intelligence services. Davis believes their air fares were paid by a military account and that BA were aware of the operation, which was intended to activate an underground intelligence network during the invasion. 'The initial briefing was predicated on the fact that when the Iraqis invaded, the Kuwait military would hold out for three to five days,' he says. 'This team would fly on the plane, get off, go to their assigned positions, the plane would fly on and nobody would be the wiser. What actually happened was the Kuwaiti military collapsed like a pack of cards. The tanks reached the airport in five hours. 'So initially it was a cock-up. Everything that's happened since has been the most blatant cover-up. A group of guys boarded the plane while it was delayed at Heathrow, got on at the front and walked through the plane to the back. They were seen by dozens of people. Yet British Airways maintains to this day that no group boarded the plane to the delay.' A key figure in Davis's enquiries was Lawrence O'Toole, the manager of British Airways in Kuwait. It was O'Toole who went to be briefed by Tony Paice on whether it was appropriate to proceed with the flight. 'British Airways have always maintained they were told it was safe to fly,' Davis says. 'When Liz Truss finally made her statement, it completely shot that down.' Paice had actually warned that if a plane went through Kuwait at that time, it would get into trouble. 'Further to that, I discovered his wife and child had just come from Switzerland,' Davis adds. 'I tracked down his PA, who was sitting in the office when O'Toole came back from the briefing. He was anxious and told his PA, 'get my wife and kid out on the next flight'. That is not a man who has just been told that nothing is about to happen.' During disclosure to US lawyers over a comparable claim in the US, British Airways admitted that O'Toole knew of the invasion when he was 'awakened by the sound of tanks and gunfire' at 4am, 15 minutes before the plane landed and when it had not yet entered Kuwaiti airspace and could have been diverted, potentially to Bahrain. But it insisted he was powerless to help. 'Laurie O'Toole could not have turned the aircraft back,' BA said at the time. 'He was aware of military movement. He tried repeatedly to contact airport staff and the embassy, but could not raise either.' Davis believes both the Government and British Airways are cautious about admitting culpability, fearing the financial costs as well as reputational damage. In 1995, a French court ordered BA to pay at least £3 million in damages to 61 French nationals on board, ruling the airline had exposed passengers to undue danger by stopping in Kuwait. In 2021, another French court awarded £1.1 million to seven additional passengers. In the mid-90s, BA settled claims from US passengers out of court, requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements. In a 2024 statement, British Airways said: 'Our hearts go out to all those caught up in this shocking act of war 34 years ago, who had to endure a truly horrendous experience. UK government records released in 2021 confirmed British Airways was not warned about the invasion.' Stephen Davis says, 'Liz Truss's statement to the House said: 'On 1 August the British Embassy in Kuwait told the local British Airways office that while flights on 1 August should be safe, subsequent flights were inadvisable'. That is a warning, obviously: BA149 was due to arrive on August 2. BA just ignored that part of the statement and focused on the part that they did not get a call after the invasion had started.' The Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, has previously referred to earlier statements in the House of Commons. 'In 2007, the UK government clearly confirmed in parliament that the government in 1990 did not exploit the flight in any way for military personnel.' A source reiterated to The Telegraph that 'no military personnel were onboard or deployed on BA149 on 2 Aug 1990.' It echoes a denial by John Major in 1993, who responded to letters from John Prescott by denying that there were 'military personnel' on the plane and refusing to set up an enquiry. Davis believes this is a verbal 'sleight of hand' as the Increment isn't technically military. In a footnote in the government's defence, it says it cannot rule out that there were 'military intelligence' people on the plane 'by coincidence.' A turning point The new documentary is directed by Jenny Ash – who first encountered the story eight years ago while interviewing Richard Branson. When asked what he was proudest of, Branson didn't mention ballooning or his business empire – but his role in helping to free the hostages. For Ash, the Flight 149 story is vital not only because of its devastating human toll but because it marked a turning point in history. The film highlights the often-overlooked destruction of Kuwait during the Gulf War – and the profound shift in relations between the West and the Middle East that followed. 'It's four months when the world completely changed,' she says. 'Up to this point the Americans are calling Osama Bin Laden a freedom fighter. Both Britain and the USA were totally in bed with Saddam Hussein. It all imploded when he invaded Kuwait. It's the beginning of everything. 9/11, all of it. And these poor people were caught in the middle of it and spent 30 years being told it never happened.' Matthew Jury, the lawyer representing more than 100 claimants suing the Government and British Airways, believes that based on what he has seen, this is another in the seeming 'lineage' of British government cover-ups. 'There's an abundance of material pointing to BA and the government being culpable for the harm the passengers and crew have suffered yet they continue to deny it. We hope this litigation will allow the truth to be revealed and those responsible to be held to account.' No dates have been set – but jury hopes to have a trial before the end of 2026. For the victims, it cannot come soon enough. 'We'd have understood that governments sometimes have a choice between s--- decision and another s--- decision,' says Jennifer Chappell. 'We get that. But the utter disrespect to keep lying. The [soldiers] on the plane have spoken about it. We have their testimony. Why are [the authorities] still lying about it? Have the guts to stand up and say 'this is what we did, we're sorry you got caught in the crossfire and we're going to try to make it right.' 'That was all they had to do. Instead they've lied and lied and lied. They've gaslit us, in modern parlance, for 35 years. I want to see our names cleared. We haven't made it up. This stuff happened and it ruined our lives and they were responsible. The British government for using a commercial flight as a de facto military transport, and British Airways for putting 368 passengers and 36 of their own staff, at risk.' The 747 was eventually blown up. Subsequent wars in the Middle East have eclipsed the first Gulf War. For those caught up in Flight 149 – and those who have made it their mission to help them – the search for the truth goes on.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why is a pro-Israel group asking the US to investigate Ms Rachel?
If you believe that babies can tell when a person is truly good, then it should be no surprise that Ms Rachel – the beloved kids YouTube sensation – has remained on the right side of every socio-political debate since the image of her pink tee and denim dungarees became ubiquitous in households with children across the world. But when Ms Rachel, whose given name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, began speaking out about the genocide in Gaza, pro-Israel rightwingers put a massive target on her back. Accurso first made her stance public around May 2024, when she announced a fundraiser for children in Gaza and other war zones. Since then, she's consistently drawn attention to the tragedy in Palestine by sharing statistics on the crisis along with images of Palestinian children to her social media audience of tens of millions of followers, and the right has been after her since. Back in March, the New York Post ran an article about Accurso calling her a 'Woke brainwasher' and warning parents against the influence they were allowing into their homes. Then, last month, the pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Ms Rachel was operating as a foreign agent because of her posts about Gazan children. In an open letter to the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, they asked authorities to find out whether Accurso was 'being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers'. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of children have been killed or injured in Gaza since Israel began its onslaught in retaliation for Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack – and Israel isn't letting up, even as children face starvation. Last Saturday, Israeli airstrikes killed nine of a Gaza doctor's 10 children while she worked. If speaking up about a genocide makes you a foreign agent, what does that say about America's own values? 'I care deeply for all children. Palestinian children, Israeli children, children in the US – Muslim, Jewish, Christian children – all children, in every country,' Accurso said through tears on Instagram video from May of 2024. 'To do a fundraiser for children who are currently starving, who have no food or water, who are being killed, is human.' For this kind of thing – caring about innocent children – to be controversial is a clear sign of just how far we've strayed from our moral core as a society, and a reminder of the inhumanity that pervades this political moment. One of the distinct markers of pro-Israel rhetoric in recent times has been the way it intentionally and violently rejects the idea of children being vulnerable and innocent. Israel's supporters feel emboldened to cast babies as collateral damage at best, and 'enemies' at their most truly unhinged. And the pro-Israel crowd is angry at Accurso because in a war that does not want us to see them as such, she constantly reminds us that Palestinian children are people, and are deserving of the same kind of care and protection that the west gives its young. Her love for children has also made her an easy target for conservatives who like to label LGBTQ+ people and their allies as creeps and pedophiles looking to groom children. Last year, when Accurso shared a video celebrating Pride month on her Instagram and TikTok accounts (which are geared toward her adult supporters, of course), rightwing influencers called her 'sick' and complained that she was exposing children to 'things they shouldn't be exposed to'. For me, Accurso's speaking out also shines a harsh light on the absolute dearth of outrage from other far more powerful and influential celebrities. This month, more than 300 celebrities and Hollywood figures signed an open letter condemning the industry's silence on the genocide. This belated effort falls flat when you consider how people with much less power and way more to lose have risked their livelihoods and safety to speak up for what is right. Overall, though, the hatred for Accurso isn't just about Gaza. As a public figure, she is an indictment of everything that rightwingers want us to believe is bad. She's all about big feelings, standing up for vulnerable people, making people from all walks of life feel included, and celebrating what makes us different. Of course the right hates that. Figures like Accurso are an aberration in a world where bad news generates the most clicks and we are all supposed to be desensitized to the ways vulnerable people continue to have their lives, and the few protections they have left, snatched away from them. Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
RNZ News
5 days ago
- General
- RNZ News
Chch man killed in Ukraine fighting for the country
A Christchurch man who died in Ukraine while helping in the country's war efforts, had previously posted online that he was living the dream. Ron Mark, who has been in the Ukraine war zone spoke to Paddy Gower. Tags: To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Daily Mail
28-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Gaza's youngest influencer, 11, killed in Israeli strike after tragically offering war zone survival tips
Gaza 's youngest influencer, who posted survival tips for living in a war zone was killed in Israeli air strikes on Friday night. Yaqeen Hammad showed over 100,000 followers how to cook without gas but also how children living under bombardment found joy in daily life - posting images smiling and dancing. The 11-year-old was one of several children tragically killed in the strikes in central Gaza. Her body was torn apart and found between the rubble of the house that she lived in with her family in Al-Baraka area of Deir al-Bala. In one of her final posts, she wrote: 'Today was a day of joy for Gaza's orphans – we were giving them new clothes to bring a little happiness.' She also regularly shared videos of her work with Ouena collective, a Gaza-based non-profit organisation for humanitarian relief. They were posted under the handle @yaqeen_hmad, providing humanitarian updates and clips of her distributing toys to children with her brother Mohamed Hammad. When news of her death online hundreds of comments were left under her posts. One person wrote: 'What did a little girl do to deserve being killed?' Another added: 'I'm sorry we couldn't protect you.' Yaqeen is one of more than 15,000 children reported to have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to local health authorities. The strike was part of the latest influx of Israeli attacks, which killed 52 people on Monday, including 31 in a school turned shelter that was struck as people slept, igniting their belongings, according to local health officials. It follows an 11-week blockade on food, fuel, water and medicine, which has pushed the decimated civilian population of Gaza to the brink of famine, experts continue to warn. The Israeli military said 107 trucks carrying flour and other foodstuffs as well as medical supplies entered the Gaza Strip from the Kerem Shalom crossing point on Thursday. But getting the supplies to people sheltering in tents and other makeshift accommodation has been fitful and U.N. officials say at least 500 to 600 trucks of aid are needed every day. Israel imposed the blockade in early March, accusing Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas rejects the charge, saying a number of its own fighters have been killed protecting the trucks from armed looters. It has announced that a new system, sponsored by the United States and run by private contractors, will soon begin operations from four distribution centres in the south of Gaza, but many details of how the system will work remain unclear. The U.N. has already said it will not work with the new system, which it says will leave aid distribution conditional on Israel's political and military aims. Israel has maintained a presence in Gaza since the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023, which saw gunmen storm into southern Israel and kill some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seize 251 hostages. It's subsequent ground and air war has left Gaza in ruin, displacing nearly all its residents and killing more than 53,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.
