Lebanon mourns iconic composer Ziad Rahbani as mother Fayrouz makes rare appearance
Rahbani, also known as a political provocateur, died Saturday at age 69. The cause of death was not immediately known.
His passing shocked much of the Arab world, which appreciated his satire, unapologetic political critique and avante-garde, jazz-inspired compositions that mirrored the chaos and contradictions of Lebanon throughout its civil war from 1975 until 1990. He also composed some of his mother's most famous songs.
The Rahbani family was a cornerstone in Lebanon's golden era of music theater that today is steeped in idealism and nostalgia in a troubled country.
Top Lebanese political officials and artists paid tribute after the death was announced. Rahbani, a leftist Greek Orthodox, often mocked Lebanon's sectarian divisions in his work.
Hundreds of people holding roses and photos gathered by Khoury Hospital near Beirut's busy Hamra district, solemnly singing some of his most famous songs and applauding as a vehicle carrying his body left its garage.
Reem Haidar, who grew up during the civil war, said Rahbani's songs and their messages were what she and others associated with at a time when there was 'no nation to belong to.'
The vehicle made its way to a church in the mountainous town of Bikfaya before burial in the family cemetery.
Fayrouz, 90, had spent many years away from the public eye. Wearing black sunglasses and a black veil, she greeted visitors who came to pay respects. She had not been seen publicly since photos surfaced of her meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited her residence in 2020 to award her France's highest medal of honor.
In recent years, Rahbani also appeared less in the public eye, yet his influence never waned. Younger generations rediscovered his plays online and sampled his music in protest movements. He continued to compose and write, speaking often of his frustration with Lebanon's political stagnation and decaying public life.
Rahbani is survived by his mother and his sister Reema and brother Hali.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Israeli PM says to brief army on Gaza war plan
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Monday to update Israel's Gaza war plan, a day before a UN Security Council meeting on the fate of hostages still held in the Palestinian territory. Addressing a cabinet meeting with the war well into its 22nd month, the Israeli leader told ministers that later in the week he would instruct the military on how "to achieve the three war objectives we have set". Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 and the Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted officials in Netanyahu's office saying that the "updated strategy" would be to re-occupy all of Gaza, including areas in Gaza City where the military believes hostages are being held. The cabinet would meet on Tuesday to endorse the plan, the reports said. There was no immediate official confirmation, but the Palestinian Authority's foreign ministry denounced what it called a "leaked" plan and urged the international community to intervene to quash any new military occupation. Netanyahu is facing mounting domestic and international pressure to bring the remaining hostages in Gaza home and allow much more aid into the starving territory. Israel -- backed by the United States and Panama -- is preparing to convene a UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday to highlight the fate of the hostages. Netanyahu on Monday reiterated that Israel's three war goals remained "the defeat of the enemy, the release of our hostages and the promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel". His statement came after hundreds of retired Israeli security chiefs wrote to US President Donald Trump to urge him to convince Netanyahu to end the war. - 'Immediate mortal danger' - Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said ahead of the UN meeting that "the world must put an end to the phenomenon of kidnapping civilians. It must be front and centre on the world stage". Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, 49 are still being held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead. The UN session was called after Palestinian militant groups last week published three videos showing hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appearing weak and emaciated, causing shock and distress in Israel. Netanyahu said he had asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide food and medical treatment to the Israeli captives. Hamas's armed wing said it was willing to allow access to the hostages in exchange for opening aid corridors into all of Gaza, where UN-mandated experts have warned famine is unfolding. Netanyahu's government has faced repeated accusations by relatives of hostages and other critics that it has not done enough to rescue the captives. "Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to ruin," said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group. "For 22 months, the public has been sold the illusion that military pressure and intense fighting will bring the hostages back. "The truth must be said: expanding the war endangers the lives of the hostages, who are already in immediate mortal danger." - 'Only through a deal' - Mediation efforts led by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to secure a truce. Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US President Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war. "It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media on Monday. The war "is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity", said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service, in a video released to accompany the letter. The letter argued that the Israeli military "has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas's military formations and governance". "The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home," it added. - 'We are starving' - The October 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally of official figures. Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,933 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which are deemed reliable by the UN. Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli fire on Monday killed at least 19 Palestinians, including nine who were waiting to collect food aid from a site in central Gaza. In Gaza City, Umm Osama Imad was mourning a relative she said was killed while trying to reach an aid distribution point. "We are starving... He went to bring flour for his family," she said. "The flour is stained with blood. We don't want the flour anymore. Enough!" UN rights chief Volker Turk on Monday said "the images of people starving in Gaza are heart-rending and intolerable. That we have reached this stage is an affront to our collective humanity." He called on Israel to urgently allow aid into the territory, adding that denying it "may amount to a war crime". He also described the videos of hostages as "shocking", calling for the ICRC to be allowed immediate access to them. bur-ami/dc/smw
News24
43 minutes ago
- News24
‘We become more and more divided': Gaza war setting Israel friends and families against each other
Israel and Hamas have been battling in Gaza for nearly two years. Attitudes in Israel have shifted from the start of the war. The country has become more polarised. As it grinds on well into its twenty-second month, Israel's war in Gaza has set friends and families against one another and sharpened existing political and cultural divides. Hostage families and peace activists want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to secure a ceasefire with Hamas and free the remaining captives abducted during the October 2023 Hamas attacks. Right-wing members of Netanyahu's cabinet, meanwhile, want to seize the moment to occupy and annex more Palestinian land, at the risk of sparking further international criticism. The debate has divided the country and strained private relationships, undermining national unity at Israel's moment of greatest need in the midst of its longest war. 'As the war continues we become more and more divided,' said Emanuel Yitzchak Levi, a 29-year-old poet, schoolteacher and peace activist from Israel's religious left who attended a peace meeting at Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Square. 'It's really hard to keep being a friend, or family, a good son, a good brother to someone that's - from your point of view - supporting crimes against humanity,' he told AFP. 'And I think it's also hard for them to support me if they think I betrayed my own country.' As if to underline this point, a tall, dark-haired cyclist angered by the gathering pulled up his bike to shout 'traitors' at the attendees and to accuse activists of playing into Hamas' hands. Khames Alrefi/Anadolu via Getty Images Dvir Berko, a 36-year-old worker at one of the city's many IT startups, paused his scooter journey across downtown Tel Aviv to share a more reasoned critique of the peace activists' call for a ceasefire. Berko and others accused international bodies of exaggerating the threat of starvation in Gaza, and he told AFP that Israel should withhold aid until the remaining 49 hostages are freed. 'The Palestinian people, they're controlled by Hamas. Hamas takes their food. Hamas starts this war and, in every war that happens, bad things are going to happen. You're not going to send the other side flowers,' he argued. 'So, if they open a war, they should realise and understand what's going to happen after they open the war.' The raised voices in Tel Aviv reflect a deepening polarisation in Israeli society since Hamas' October 2023 attacks left 1 219 people dead, independent journalist Meron Rapoport told AFP. Rapoport, a former senior editor at liberal daily Haaretz, noted that Israel had been divided before the latest conflict, and had even seen huge anti-corruption protests against Netanyahu and perceived threats to judicial independence. Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images Hamas' attack initially triggered a wave of national unity, but as the conflict has dragged on and Israel's conduct has come under international criticism, attitudes on the right and left have diverged and hardened. 'The moment Hamas acted there was a coming together,' Rapoport said. 'Nearly everyone saw it as a just war. 'As the war went on it has made people come to the conclusion that the central motivations are not military reasons but political ones.' According to a survey conducted between 24 and 28 July by the Institute for National Security Studies, with 803 Jewish and 151 Arab respondents, Israelis narrowly see Hamas as primarily to blame for the delay in reaching a deal on freeing the hostages. Mahmoud Issa/Anadolu via Getty Images Only 24% of Israeli Jews are distressed or 'very distressed' by the humanitarian situation in Gaza - where, according to UN-mandated reports, 'a famine is unfolding' and Palestinian civilians are often killed while seeking food. But there is support for the families of the Israeli hostages, many of whom have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war artificially to strengthen his own political position. 'In Israel there's a mandatory army service,' said Mika Almog, 50, an author and peace activist with the It's Time Coalition. So these soldiers are our children and they are being sent to die in a false criminal war that is still going on for nothing other than political reasons. Mika Almog In an open letter published Monday, 550 former top diplomats, military officers and spy chiefs urged US President Donald Trump to tell Netanyahu that the military stage of the war was already won and he must now focus on a hostage deal. 'At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,' said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service. The conflict 'is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity', he warned in a video released to accompany the letter. This declaration by the security officers - those who until recently prosecuted Israel's overt and clandestine wars - echoed the views of the veteran peace activists that have long protested against them. Ahmed Sayed/Anadolu via Getty Images Biblical archaeologist and kibbutz resident Avi Ofer is 70 years old and has long campaigned for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He and fellow activists wore yellow ribbons with the length in days of the war written on it: '667'. The rangy historian was close to tears as he told AFP: 'This is the most awful period in my life.' 'Yes, Hamas are war criminals. We know what they do. The war was justified at first. At the beginning it was not a genocide,' he said. Not many Israelis use the term 'genocide', but they are aware that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is considering whether to rule on a complaint that the country has breached the Genocide Convention. While only a few are anguished about the threat of starvation and violence hanging over their neighbours, many are worried that Israel may become an international pariah - and that their conscript sons and daughters be treated like war crimes suspects when abroad. Israel and Netanyahu - with support from the US - have denounced the case in The Hague.
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Canadian Armed Forces airdrop aid to Palestinians in Gaza
OTTAWA — Canadian aircraft carried out an airdrop Monday of nearly 10,000 kilograms of aid to Palestinians in Gaza as Prime Minister Mark Carney warned of a deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the region. The Canadian Armed Forces flew a CC-130J Hercules aircraft over the Gaza Strip to conduct the drop, said Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and Defence Minister David McGuinty in a statement. Carney, on social media, said the "humanitarian disaster in Gaza is rapidly deteriorating." "Canada is intensifying our efforts with international partners to develop a credible peace plan and will ensure aid moves forward at the necessary scale," he said. Carney posted video earlier in the week of Canadian aid pallets delivered to Gaza via Jordanian military aircraft. Anand said in a separate social media post that she remains in contact with her counterpart in Jordan to ensure Canadian aid reaches Palestinians via air and land. As international alarm mounts, Canada is one of several countries that have airdropped aid over Gaza. Many food parcels dropped by air have splashed into the Mediterranean Sea or landed in so-called red zones. On Monday, video footage of aid being dropped over Zuweida in central Gaza showed a desperate scramble by Palestinians, with hundreds racing toward the parcels on the ground. Fistfights broke out and some men wielded batons. At least one parcel fell on a tent where displaced people had been sheltering, injuring a man who had to be taken to hospital. The United Nations and other groups have said such drops are costly and dangerous and that they deliver far less aid than trucks. Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in March, arguing that Hamas had been selling vital supplies and food to pay its fighters. UN agencies say this was not happening to any large extent. After two and a half months, Israel allowed Americans to launch the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which set up aid distribution sites. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli army fire and American contractors while trying to access those sites. Israel recently loosened some restrictions on food and medicine reaching the Gaza Strip in response to an international outcry over starvation in the Palestinian territory. Global Affairs Canada said in a release Monday that Israel's ongoing aid restrictions were a violation of international law and called for them to end immediately. Last week, Carney cited Israel's aid restrictions and the need to preserve a path to a two-state solution as reasons for declaring that Canada would officially recognize a State of Palestine. Carney said the move was conditional on the Palestinian Authority undertaking serious reforms and holding an election next year for the first time in two decades. — With files from Dylan Robertson in Ottawa and The Associated Press This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 4, 2025. Craig Lord, The Canadian Press
