24 hours in pictures, 24 June 2025
Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world.
Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero speaks at a press conference, 24 June 2025, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on Eskom's dispute resolution. The briefing provided updates on the resolution of the electricity billing and debt dispute between Eskom and City Power. The collaborative effort is to ensure uninterrupted electricity service. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen
DA, leader,John Steenhuisen and members at the Democratic Alliance (DA) 25th anniversary celebrations at Hanover Cottages in Hanover Park on June 24, 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. The visit is part of the party's ongoing engagement with communities as it celebrates a quarter-century of political presence. (Photo by Gallo Images/Brenton Geach) A view of the 'Godzilla' room at Hotel Gracery Shinjuku in Tokyo, Japan, 24 June 2025. At Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, located in Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment area, foreigners account for 90 percent of the guests. Ten years after its opening, the hotel unveiled a new themed room, 'Godzilla vs King Ghidorah,' to the media. The 30th floor, known as the Godzilla Floor, features rooms decorated with memorabilia from the 'Godzilla Series.' Picture: EPA-EFE/FRANCK ROBICHON Sipho Lucas Phiri (former Prasa security guard) at the High Court Sitting in Benoni on June 24, 2025 in Ekurhuleni, South Africa. The former Prasa security guard, Sipho Phiri (39) is accused of raping at least 37 women and girls, between 2018 and 2023, including minors. (Photo by Gallo Images/OJ Koloti) A reveller carries a girl on his back while walking on burning embers during the night of San Juan in San Pedro Manrique, Soria province in northern Spain on June 24, 2025. The ritual consists in starting a bonfire and for the locals to step barefoot on hot coals without burning the soles of their feet, and most times with someone on their back. (Photo by CESAR MANSO / AFP) People are sprayed with water as they celebrate the feast day of Saint John the Baptist in San Juan, metro Manila on June 24, 2025. Residents traditionally greet everyone with splashing water in a belief that it is a way of spreading the good blessings on Saint John's day. (Photo by Jam STA ROSA / AFP) People walk in downtown Jerusalem, 24 June 2025. Israel's military on 24 June, accused Iran of violating a ceasefire by launching missiles into Israeli airspace, saying it will 'respond with force'. Israel has been conducting a campaign across Iran since 13 June, targeting nuclear, military, and energy facilities, prompting Iran to launch retaliatory waves of missiles and drones toward Israel. Picture: EPA/ABIR SULTAN An aerial photo shows the accident scene of the collision between JR Sobu Line train and a truck in Sanmu City, Chiba Prefecture on June 24, 2025. The truck driver was seriously injured and taken to hospital, while two other passengers on the train suffered minor injuries. (Photo by Takuya Matsumoto / The Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP) Devotees of the small farming village of Bibiclat celebrate the Feast of Saint John the Baptist while covered in banana leaves and mud on June 24, 2025 in Aliaga, Philippines. Known as the 'Taong Putik' (mud people), the ritual happens yearly in this small farming village as their own version of expressing their faith and celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist whom the survivors of the Japanese occupation in 1944 in their area prayed to for rain to save their fellow villagers. A marker near the church entrance of the village tells a story of a heavy torrential rain that happened that day that forced the Japanese military to call off the execution of 14 villagers. The Philippines is the only predominantly Catholic country in Southeast Asia after more than 300 years of Spanish rule. (Photo by) Israeli rescue teams work at the site of a missile strike on a residential area in Be'er Sheva, southern Israel, 24 June 2025. Israel's military stated Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel overnight. Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel's national emergency services, reported at least four killed and dozens injured in southern Israel. Picture: EPA-EFE/ATEF SAFADI Mduduzi Trevor Mnisi appear at Roodepoort Magistrate's Court for the murder of Likhona Fose (14) on June 24, 2025 in Roodepoort, South Africa. It is reported that the victim's mutilated body was found in an open field near her home in Roodepoort, a day after she went missing. (Photo by Gallo Images/Luba Lesolle) Fishermen pull their nets as they return ashore after fishing at sea at Lam Awe village in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 24 June 2025. The Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has issued a warning to the public, especially fishermen, to be cautious of potentially severe weather, including strong winds expected to affect several areas in Aceh, particularly in the afternoon and evening. Picture: EPA-EFE/HOTLI SIMANJUNTAK Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa speaks at a press conference, 24 June 2025, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on Eskom's dispute resolution. The briefing provided updates on the resolution of the electricity billing and debt dispute between Eskom and City Power. The collaborative effort is to ensure uninterrupted electricity service. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen Afghan refugees arrive in a truck from Pakistan, in Takhta Pul district in Kandahar province on June 24, 2025. (Photo by Sanaullah SEIAM / AFP) An Afghan farmer harvests tomatoes, in a field on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif on June 24, 2025. (Photo by Wakil Kohsar / AFP)
MORE: 24 hours in pictures, 23 June 2025
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Daily Maverick
5 hours ago
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IOL News
9 hours ago
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Red Wedding Warfare: How Israel Turned War Into A Spectacle To Conceal The Gaza Genocide
A woman mourns over the shrouded body of a Palestinian killed during a reported Israeli strike on a humanitarian aid distribution warehouse in the Sabra neighbourhood in Gaza City, in the central Gaza Strip on June 30, 2025. The global silence on Gaza is not accidental. It is rooted in decades of settler colonial ideology, dehumanisation, and the strategic rebranding of oppression as self-defence, says the writer. Image: AFP Phakamile Hlubi-Majola In June 2025, the Israeli military executed a strike so surgically devastating it borrowed its name from the popular television series, Game of Thrones. It was named the 'Red Wedding' operation, a name inspired by one of the most brutal betrayals in TV history. Just a brief recap, the Red Wedding was a massacre that occurred in Game of Thrones during the wedding of Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey. Lord Walder Frey orchestrated the event as revenge against Robb Stark for breaking a marriage pact that had been forged between the House of Stark and the House of Frey. The guests had their guard down as a result of the wedding celebration, and they were unable to respond decisively to defend themselves against a bloody ambush. This was the impact that Israel hoped to have on Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he was compelled to attack because Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon. But this excuse is wearing thin. For nearly 30 years, Israel has claimed Iran was 'months away' from a bomb, but there is still no bomb. Meanwhile, Israel holds a nuclear arsenal of its own, which is undeclared, unchecked, and untouched. Both the U.S. intelligence community and the International Atomic Energy Agency have confirmed that Iran is not building nuclear weapons. What we witnessed was not a genuine call for disarmament, but rather, it was about domination. We have seen this play out before in 2002 when Netanyahu misled the U.S. and the U.K. that Iraq was manufacturing 'weapons of mass destruction' to push Western allies into attacking Iraq. This is the same script, just a different cast. The Red Wedding was an ambush against key leaders of Iran's military. Over 200 Israeli fighter jets took off quietly, targeting 100 sites inside Iran. The strike eliminated some of Iran's most senior defence officials. Among the dead were General Hossein Salami, the head of the Revolutionary Guard; Iranian military chief Mohammad Bagheri; and Gholam Ali Rashid from the emergency command. The outcome was devastating. Iran lost several key military leaders within hours. At the same time, they launched Operation Narnia, a parallel mission that killed nine of Iran's leading nuclear scientists. It was a fast, unexpected, and ruthless attack. Within hours, Iran's nuclear and military elite were shattered, and hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians had been killed. It was swift, cold and calculating. And it was branded like prime-time television. It is deeply disturbing when a state-sponsored military assault is packaged with a pop culture metaphor, soaked in betrayal and carnage. This demonstrates that for Israel, war is not only a strategy, but also a spectacle. And in the shadow of this 'performance' is the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, whose destruction continues largely untelevised. The 'Red Wedding strike' and 'Operation Narnia' were not just military operations designed to neutralise threats. The goal was to dominate the narrative by playing on Hollywood-style theatrics. Israel was sending an ominous message: We can strike with impunity, and we will find you in any corner of the world. But more importantly, it was designed to distract from the ongoing state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To emphasise this, U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly views the war between Iran and Israel as 'the perfect war'. This is a reflection that, in his mind, it is the kind of war that captured imaginations, because it presented strength. Note that Trump is not at all concerned with peace or diplomacy, only the entertainment value of destruction. But this is not entertainment. Real people died. Over 1,100 Iranians were killed and thousands more wounded. And this is not an isolated event; it is part of a long and dangerous pattern of framing militarised violence as bold leadership, and the erasure of its human cost, by disguising it beneath the language of precision and power. Meanwhile, Gaza continues to bleed, largely off-camera. Since its campaign in Gaza in October 2023, Israel has killed over fifty-six thousand people and uprooted nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people, according to Al Jazeera. More than 16,750 children have been murdered, and over 1,000 have lost limbs, many amputated without anaesthesia due to Israel's deliberate targeting of Gaza's medical infrastructure. Hospitals have been bombed, and doctors and nurses are targeted by the military and attacked. Aid convoys and food have been blocked from entering. Those who have miraculously survived are slowly starving to death. The UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner issued a report that even if Palestinians can reach food distribution points, the 'Israeli military has shelled and shot Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points, leading to many fatalities'. This is not a tragedy. It is deliberate, systemic, state-sponsored ethnic cleansing. There is an attempt to distract the world's attention by focusing on the 'Red Wedding', a spectacle designed to dominate headlines while war crimes against Palestinians are reduced to background noise. This kind of selective outrage reveals the machinery beneath global diplomacy. Israeli military aggression toward Iran is applauded, but its sustained violence against Palestinians is ignored and even justified. What we are witnessing is not just hypocrisy; it is complicity. The global silence on Gaza is not accidental. It is rooted in decades of settler colonial ideology, dehumanisation, and the strategic rebranding of oppression as self-defence. From Washington to Brussels, the narrative is tightly controlled, and platforms like TikTok have joined the censorship regime. Creators documenting the Palestinian crisis face shadow bans or content removal for using words like genocide. To stay visible, activists now spell it as 'g3nocide' or 'g*nocide', a digital code for what many in power refuse to name aloud. It was Chinese philosopher Confucius who said, 'The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name'. And so those of us who know the truth, and who survived Apartheid in South Africa, must act with courage and call it what it is. It is genocide, erasure and Apartheid. There is no other vocabulary that captures the scale and intent of what is unfolding against Palestinians.
