Artist reinstated to biennale after Hezbollah artwork furor
July 2 (UPI) -- Australia has reinstated Lebanese-born artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino to represent the country at the 2026 Venice Biennale after they were dropped earlier this year over furor at decades-old artworks depicting Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Creative Australia, the country's national arts and cultural funding and advisory body, announced the decision Wednesday to reinstate Sabsabi and Dagostino after an external report commissioned to examine its decision-making and risk management processes.
The firm Blackhall & Pearl, which conducted the review, found that the board of Creative Australia had exercised its judgment in accordance with its obligations outlined by federal law and that there was "no single or predominant failure of process" when the invitation to Sabsabi and Dagostina was rescinded in February.
"There were, however, a series of missteps, assumptions and missed opportunities," Creative Australia said in its statement. It did not specify what those might have been.
But after Sabsabi and Dagostino were dropped from the Venice Biennale, artists and other institutions expressed support for the artist-curator duo as Creative Australia staffers resigned in protest.
Investment banker and cultural philanthropist Simon Mordant resigned from his role as an international ambassador for the Australian Pavilion and criticized the decision at the time and called it "a very dark day for Australia and the arts" in comments to The Guardian. Mordant will also return to his role.
"The board has considered and reflected deeply on all relevant issues to find a path forward," acting board chair Wesley Enoch said in a statement. "The board is now of the view that proceeding with the artistic team, Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino represents the preferred outcome."
The controversy stemmed from new attention to resurfaced works by Sabsabi made in 2006 and 2007, including one video installation featured images of Nasrallah in a speech after the 2006 war with Israel and another compiled video clips of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and former President George W. Bush.
After Creative Australia announced that Sabsabi had been selected, a column in The Australian criticized the decision and pointed to the two works by Sabsabi that it particularly deemed controversial.
"We don't know exactly what Sabsabi feels about Nasrallah, or his death, or what he meant by taking a bunch of beams and shining them out of Nasrallah's face, or painting him on a watercolor, as he did for a separate exhibition," the authors wrote in The Australian.
"But, we do know how Sabsabi feels about Israel: he was one of several artists who boycotted the 2022 Sydney Festival after its organizers committed the grievous sin of accepting $20,000 in funding from the Israeli Embassy to pay for a production put on by an invited Israeli choreographer."
Sabsabi and Dagostino released a joint statement Wednesday after learning of the decision to reinstate them to the pavilion.
"This decision has renewed our confidence in Creative Australia and in the integrity of its selection process. It offers a sense of resolution and allows us to move forward with optimism and hope after a period of significant personal and collective hardship," they wrote.
"We acknowledge that this challenging journey has impacted not only us, but also our families, friends, the staff at Creative Australia, and many others across the broader artistic community here and abroad.
We would not have reached this point without the unwavering support of the Australian and international creative community. Their solidarity, belief, and encouragement sustained us throughout this difficult time, making it possible for us to continue our work and remain in a position to accept this recommission."
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The Hill
20 minutes ago
- The Hill
Mamdani faces flurry of anti-Muslim attacks following NYC primary victory
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has faced a litany of derogatory attacks concerning his religion in the week since he became the presumed winner of the Democratic primary. The attacks have primarily come from the right, with Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) calling for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported and President Trump even chiming in on Tuesday referencing false claims that Mamdani entered the country illegally. But Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) also faced backlash in recent days for a comment she made claiming Mamdani had called for 'global jihad,' which her communications director said was a misstatement and for which she has apologized. Experts said comments referencing the religion of Muslim political figures isn't anything new but has expanded its reach over time. 'That's the decades-long pattern,' said Corey Saylor, the research and advocacy director for the Center on American-Islamic Relations. 'What's new in the last couple of weeks is figures with mainstream reach using some of the most vile possible stereotypes.' Mussab Ali, a Muslim Democratic candidate running for mayor in Jersey City, N.J., just over the Hudson River from New York, said he's been disappointed that more Democrats haven't publicly pushed back against the comments Mamdani has received. 'I don't think we expected Republicans to even push back at all at this point,' he said. 'But I think the fact that Democrats have not been more vocal in holding the line and having Mamdani's back, I think, is very telling.' As Mamdani rose in the polls in the primary and pulled off a shocking upset win over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to become the Democratic nominee, he received a wide range of attacks for his political positions, identifying as a democratic socialist. But a handful of right-wing figures have made personal attacks on Mamdani, directly or indirectly referencing his religion. If elected, Mamdani would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City. Some of the comments have come from right-wing media figures, connecting the 9/11 attacks to Mamdani's religion and potential election. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote last Tuesday that a 'group of Muslims' killed more than 2,750 people on 9/11 and 'Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.' Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who has a history of anti-Muslim sentiments and is also a Trump ally, said New York City is 'about to see 9/11 2.0' given Mamdani's nomination. Staunchly conservative members of Congress have also made comments leaning into Mamdani's identity as a person rather than his politics. Ogles, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called for Mamdani to face denaturalization proceedings and be deported, dubbing him 'little muhammad' in an apparent reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. And Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), another member of the caucus, went after Mamdani for a video in which he was seen eating biryani, a rice dish, with his hands. 'Civilized people in America don't eat like this,' he said in a post on X. 'If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.' Saylor said the comments mirror a pattern that members of both parties have engaged in. He referred to former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) saying that the U.S. could 'take out' Islamic holy sites if al-Qaeda launched a nuclear attack on the country and the Obama administration restarting its Countering Violent Extremism Initiative that heavily targeted Muslim Americans. Saylor said the rhetoric has remained the same, but the rise of social media has given it even more attention. He argued the closeness that figures like Loomer have to the White House 'suggests that kind of vile rhetoric has greater access to the highest levels of power in our country than it did a decade ago.' Ali, the mayoral candidate in Jersey City, said the best way to combat these types of comments is to continue electing Muslim political candidates. He said many people in the country don't know any Muslims personally because they make up a small minority, so depictions on television are their only picture of them. 'It's not the idea that people should be elected because they're Muslim,' he said. 'But once you get into power, once you get into office, I think it makes it less acceptable for people to tolerate racial slurs or these religious slurs, because people [say], 'Look, this is someone who I respect. This is someone who is in power. This is somebody that I know.'' While Trump himself hasn't made the same kind of comments as some of his allies, he has targeted Mamdani personally and hinted that the administration may look into his legal status. Trump said during a press conference on Tuesday that 'a lot of people are saying' Mamdani entered the country illegally and 'we're going to look at everything.' Mamdani legally immigrated to the U.S. as a young child with his family after first growing up in Uganda. Trump also suggested Mamdani may be arrested if he tries to interfere with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents trying to conduct operations to deport people. Mamdani responded that Trump's words were a 'message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you.' Preston Nouri, the director of government affairs for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said using this type of messaging as a political tool has been common since 2001, but he was surprised by the extent of the 'hatred and genuine vitriol.' 'They're calling into question citizenship, his motives, trying to say that he's an actual terrorist or something like that,' Nouri said. 'It's quite frankly disgusting when he ran on a platform of trying to support all New Yorkers.' He argued Mamdani proved his ability to have widespread appeal and interest in representing the coalition he put together. In the primary, Mamdani performed well with groups like young voters and those with a college degree, but he also outperformed expectations with other groups, winning some mixed Black-Hispanic neighborhoods and wealthy older white areas. But the criticisms of Mamdani haven't just come from the right. Gillibrand stirred a significant reaction for comments she made last week calling on Mamdani to denounce the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' which has been a lightning rod throughout the war between Israel and Hamas. Activists disagree on the meaning of the phrase, with various groups deciphering it in different ways, from it being a broader call for peaceful resistance against Israeli occupation to promoting violence against Jews. Mamdani has avoided denouncing it, saying it has different meanings to different people. But Gillibrand also claimed Mamdani made references to 'global jihad,' which religious extremists have used to refer to conducting violent attacks against those not aligned with their beliefs. Mamdani hasn't made references to this. A spokesperson for Gillibrand said after her remarks that she misspoke, and she called Mamdani to apologize on Monday for the comment and her tone. Ani Zonnevald, the president of Muslims for Progressive Values, said Gillibrand's apology 'really goes a long way.' 'It does matter, particularly after you've said such mean things about someone and for Gillibrand to correct herself the way she did, I think it's a huge plus,' she said. Zonnevald attributed grassroots pushback to helping lead to Gillibrand's apology. 'Violence starts with hate speech. And this is what it is. It's hate speech, and the fact that we have our government officials doubling down on hate speech is really appalling, but that's where we are at this moment,' she said. 'We really have to count on the masses, the American population, to step forward and to say, this is unacceptable.'
The Intercept
26 minutes ago
- The Intercept
The Israeli Plot to Extinguish the Journalists Documenting Genocide
Support Us © THE INTERCEPT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Mourners after an Israeli airstrike killed five people, including one journalist, in Gaza on June 25, 2025. Photo: Saeed M. M. T. Jaras/Anadolu via Getty Images In partnership with On Monday, journalist Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh was on his way to meet his friends and colleagues at Al-Baqa Cafe, an area of relative 'normalcy' near the beach in Gaza City where civilians and journalists used to meet and work. Just before he stepped inside, a missile hit the building, killing his friend Ismail Abu Hatab and injuring another, alongside more than 20 other civilians. Hatab was a Palestinian filmmaker, the founder of a TV production company, and 'a great person,' Ghazaleh said. 'He served his people and photographed everything in Gaza City, conveying the suffering through pictures.' 'In Gaza, a camera is a threat.' Israeli forces have killed hundreds of Palestinian journalists as Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continue the ongoing genocide of Gaza and the West Bank. Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has murdered close to 60,000 Palestinians, leaving an uncountable number vaporized, trapped under the rubble, dying of starvation, or shot while attempting to receive food. The bloodshed coincides with a ban on international media and a calculated extermination campaign to assassinate the limited number of people left to document and expose Israel's atrocities. 'In Gaza, a camera is a threat,' Ghazaleh said. 'When you witness the truth, you become a target.' In Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli soldiers consistently threaten journalists and their families. Before attacking, they warn reporters to cease reporting, pressuring them to abandon what is often the most urgent story of their lives. Last month, the Washington Post obtained audio of a threatening call from an Israeli intelligence operative to an Iranian general: 'You have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child. Otherwise, you're on our list right now.' The calls and messages journalists report receiving aren't much different. Reporters are often killed when most identifiable — while wearing their press vests. Ibrahim Abu Ghazaleh stands in front of Al-Ahli Hospital while reporting in November 2024. Photo: TKTK Ghazaleh is one of five Palestinian journalists targeted by Israeli military forces who spoke with The Intercept about how Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestinian people go hand in hand with the suppression of a free press. These reporters face a constant tension between competing urgencies: exposing the truth and protecting their personal safety. Two have since evacuated from Gaza with their families. Two are in north Gaza and continue reporting under the constant bombardment and manmade famine. One is reporting from the illegally occupied West Bank. Living through Israel's relentless attacks on civilians, and knowing they risk being targeted for their work, these reporters and a sparse set of their colleagues are those left to tell the world of the atrocities they have faced as Palestinians during the deadliest years in journalism's history. Over 230 journalists, and counting, have been killed since October 2023. At 6:05 a.m. in Gaza on October 7, 2023, Youmna El Sayed broke the news of the attack on Israel that Hamas called Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. A former Al Jazeera English correspondent and mother of four, El Sayed said she has covered all of the escalations in Gaza since 2016, including the 11-day war in May 2021, where Israel destroyed many media offices in Gaza. After October 7, she knew things would be different. 'It was very clear from the beginning that it is going to be unprecedented retaliation,' El Sayed said. In the first frantic days of Israel's assault, El Sayed documented mass civilian killings as missiles fell. She described being 'thrown by the pressure of a missile falling, and it just blows you away, with everything else. That strong sound beeping in your ears when you stop hearing anything. Wearing my very heavy vest and helmet, I kept on running and running because I was trying to escape for my life.' Then Israel began its ground invasion. El Sayed and her family had tried to escape Gaza City, but she said it was hard to find housing because many people did not want to rent apartments to journalists as they are seen as a threat. When the ground invasion came, the family was trapped in their apartment. 'I couldn't get any signal [on my phone] so I got another SIM card that was not on my name, and two days later, my husband received this call,' El Sayed recalled. 'It was someone who identified himself as an [Israel Defense Forces] officer. He first identified my husband's full name, and he said, 'We know who you are, take your wife and kids and leave your home, otherwise your lives will be in danger in the upcoming hours.'' The call was not unique. Mohammed Mhawish, a journalist born and raised in Gaza City who was reporting for Al Jazeera, said that he was one of the few journalists covering his area for the network when he began receiving threatening calls. On December 6, he said, 'I received [another] call from a military officer saying, 'You have to leave the house or we're going to bomb it.'' He was living in a three-story building with several of his family members and others trying to find refuge under bombardment. Youmna El Sayed reports for Al Jazeera with the rest of the bureau from the Al Tabaa Tower when a drone missile hit Palestine Tower, a 14-story building behind them in central Gaza City, in October 2023. ' The next morning, on December 7th, at around 7:30 in the morning, the house collapsed in milliseconds,' Mhawish said. 'It was targeted by an Israeli warplane. I made it, but I lost family, people I loved, who are very close to my heart. I even lost neighbors to that attack and people who were only passersby at the moment.' 'The only thing I could do to protect my children is make them promise me they would never look at the ground. Even if you didn't, you could smell the decomposed bodies.' After El Sayed's husband received the call, ' the first thing I did was call our bureau chief in Jerusalem and confirm it was a direct threat,' she said. 'For the first time, it was not me in danger because I was in the field or in an unsafe area. I was a danger to my children, to my family. I waited for any of the other families [in our building] to receive any calls, and they didn't at all. None of them.' Two days later, the Israeli army surrounded El Sayed's home. 'The first thing they did was shoot at the windows,' El Sayed said. 'They rained the gate of the building with bullets. Then, the tank shelled the gate. Everyone in the building was screaming. It was 15 minutes of unprecedented hell. They called us on their mics and said, 'You have five minutes to leave the building.'' El Sayed said her family left everything and drove away while Israeli soldiers shot at them. They traveled on foot across what Israel called a 'safe corridor,' stretching seven kilometers from the north to the south, where no cameras were allowed. She described corpses strewn across the ground, where the Israeli army had barred ambulances from picking them up. 'I did not want my children to go through that trauma, but it was the only solution left to save their lives,' she said. 'The only thing I could do to protect them, is make them promise me they would never look at the ground. Even if you didn't, you could smell the decomposed bodies. I could see the formula [bottles] and the bags of children and families killed. We were instructed that whoever falls is not even to be lifted off the ground. It was, to this extent, dehumanizing.' El Sayed and Mhawish were lucky just to survive. Hassan Hamad, a 19-year-old journalist whose work frequently appeared on Al Jazeera, received a text from an Israeli officer saying Hamad and his family would be 'next' if he did not stop filming. On October 6, 2024, Israel struck his home in the Jabalia refugee camp and killed him. 'We either speak about it or we're gonna be erased,' said Mhawish. 'I kept filing stories through the voice [recordings] on my iPhone at the moment as I lived through it: the shortage of medical treatment, the collapse of supplies and food, and the rates [of killings] that were taking place across the city in northern Gaza.' Mohammed al-Sawwaf, like so many Palestinians from Gaza, has lost dozens of relatives to Israel's brutal assault. An award-winning filmmaker and founder of Alef Multimedia Company, al-Sawwaf is from a family of journalists: His father founded Falasteen, one of the largest circulating daily newspapers in Gaza. Al-Sawwaf recalled being a child witnessing the First Intifada, a multi-year protest and revolutionary movement when Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation between 1987 and 1993. 'I also witnessed the imprisonment of my father and most of my male relatives in Israeli prisons from my childhood until they were killed by Israeli bombs in November and December 2023,' he said. Al-Sawwaf said that in November 2023, with no prior warning, his family home was targeted in an Israeli attack. He believes the Israeli military was waiting for the whole family to be inside the building before bombing it. The attack killed his parents, two of his four brothers, their children, and several other family members. Al-Sawwaf and his two surviving brothers, Montaser and Marwan, continued their reporting of the genocide. Montaser was a videographer for Anadolu Agency who helped Al-Sawwaf with projects, and Marwan was a sound technician and film producer for Alef in the same month, not long after the short-lived ceasefire of November 2023, Israel bombed the house where the brothers were sheltering, killing Montaser and Marwan. In total, al-Sawwaf has lost 47 relatives. Montaser and Marwan al-Sawwaf assist their brother, Mohammed, on a film project about the students of Gaza as a part of the Al-Fakhoura scholarship for university education in 2021. 'Their deaths drained my desire for life,' al-Sawwaf said of his brothers. 'I still feel immense injustice, as we continue to endure suffering without accountability. Yet, I am still trying to rise and continue our work and mission.' Al-Sawwaf was injured in the bombing, too, leaving him paralyzed for months after the attacks. Two days after he was brought to Al-Awda Hospital in December 2023, it was besieged for the first time by Israeli forces. Two doctors overseeing his case were killed, and al-Sawwaf said he barely escaped. With little to no medical supplies, water, or food, al-Sawwaf has still not received proper care. Constant bombing, collapsed medical infrastructure, hunger, and thirst: Journalists in Gaza are forced to live through the same brutal conditions they cover. Mhawish experienced something similar in December 2023, after his family's house was toppled. Most of the hospitals in northern Gaza were already under siege, so he spent the next month trying to recover from his injuries until he could resume reporting. The Story Ghazaleh, now 26, has been reporting since he was 16. 'I have documented many massacres and offensive shellings on Gaza City since the genocide began,' he said. He was sheltering in Gaza's Indonesian Hospital in November 2023, he said, when 'the Israeli army advanced on the hospital and we were holding our breath whilst reporting on what was happening. There were so many sick and wounded who were sheltering in the hospital, and we were forced to leave or become martyrs ourselves.' Ghazaleh said he had to leave his laptop and camera equipment behind. He later found them vandalized and broken. His family moved to the Jabalia refugee camp, where, he said, 'many fellow journalists were targeted or directly threatened to stop their coverage of northern Gaza.' 'Documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession.' Israeli forces bombed the camp too, and Ghazaleh and his family have since been displaced over 12 times. Several of his friends, including Hossam Shabat, a journalist who worked for Al Jazeera Mubasher, have been killed. Shabat, along with five other journalists in north Gaza, was put on a 'hit list' by Israel in October 2024, and he received threatening phone calls to stop his reporting before Israeli forces targeted his car and killed him on March 24, 2025, claiming without evidence that he was a sniper for Hamas. 'The journalist here does not have protection,' Ghazaleh said, 'but despite the danger, we cannot back down because documenting the truth has become a moral duty before it is a profession.' In the West Bank, where Israeli settlers, emboldened by the ongoing genocide, have increased their violence against Palestinians, 24-year-old freelance journalist Mojahid Nawahda was reporting in Nablus when Israeli forces arrested him. Mojahid Nawahda reports on the Israeli occupation raids on September 7, 2024, in Jenin, north of the West Bank. He was detained before the October 7 attacks, on July 19, 2022. 'They vandalized and broke my camera equipment, and I was interrogated for 75 days at the al-Jalma Investigation Center,' Nawahda said. He was then held in Megiddo Prison for a year under 'indescribable and unbearable conditions,' without any form of due process. The prison is often compared to 'hell,' with several testimonials including reports of torture and sexual abuse. Upon his release, Nawahda resumed reporting on the occupied West Bank, where previous ceasefires in Gaza have not applied. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reported that over 17,000 people, including medical workers and journalists, have been arrested in the West Bank. Settlers have been responsible for many of the daily attacks on Palestinian journalists. In Nablus and Jenin, Nawahda said, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas bombs at him and other reporters on May 27. Meanwhile, under the protection of Israeli soldiers, settlers attacked their colleague Issam al-Rimawi in Ramallah. Again, on June 30, Israeli soldiers fired at journalists in Jenin while they were reporting on the demolition of Palestinians' homes in the Tulkarm refugee camp, part of a large-scale project Israel approved to build more illegal settlements across the West Bank. 'I am now always working on reports about the camps of the northern West Bank, specifically that the occupation has evacuated and displaced the people of these camps and is now blowing up and demolishing their homes,' Nawahda said. 'I like my city because it is always steadfast in the face of this occupation despite everything. People here reject the existence of the occupation and always do anything to get it out of the city. However, things are getting worse in the West Bank. The occupation is still working to demolish homes, close roads, and attack journalists and civilians.' 'I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world.' It can be hard, however, to keep the faith under such conditions. In a span of three months, El Sayed, the former Al Jazeera English correspondent, said her family was displaced six times, all while she continued reporting on atrocities committed against other families, the targeting of health care facilities, and the lack of menstrual products and overall aid. 'I felt this very strange feeling that whatever I was saying in front of the camera was not moving the world,' El Sayed said. ' When you're a journalist, you're not the story. You can't stand in front of the camera and say, as a mother, 'My children are suffering from diseases. My children are losing weight because there is no food. They're dehydrated because there's no water.' My 8-year-old was terrified. Every single night, she told me, 'Let's sleep very close to each other so that when the missile falls, it kills us all, and I don't become the only survivor.' Read our complete coverage In January 2024, after months of constant upheaval, El Sayed and her family evacuated from Rafah to Egypt. With his 2-year-old and pregnant wife, Mhawish left the same year in mid-April. 'It was a very difficult decision,' Mhawish said, 'you could be the story before you even file your story.' He said he had begun receiving more threats from Israeli forces, who told him, 'This time it's not going to be fun.' 'They really also indicated that I'm not gonna survive it this time,' Mhawish said. Nawahda remains in the West Bank, documenting settler violence, and al-Sawwaf and Ghazaleh are still in Gaza. Al-Sawwaf said that he's begun to recover from his injuries, but without better health care, the process is difficult. 'I still need an accurate diagnosis and MRI scans for my spine and head, tests that are unavailable in Gaza,' he said. 'Everything in Gaza is destroyed — buildings, homes, factories, infrastructure. Prices are exorbitant, with some items costing 10 times their original price. People have lost their sources of income, and many remain unemployed. How do we build again if another Israeli war will bring it down? Wars have not stopped since I was born.' Matters are worsened, Ghazaleh said, by the aid blockade imposed by Netanyahu, now stretching into its fifth month. Ghazaleh was nearly killed during an Israeli bombing attack on al-Ahli Hospital, where he'd been hospitalized due to lack of food. While Israel has claimed to allow 'dozens of aid trucks' into Gaza, Palestinian people and the United Nations have called this a gross misrepresentation. Ghazaleh noted that some of the food that does arrive is contaminated or expired. 'The markets have run out of food, and the aid that did reach [the north of Gaza] was not enough,' Ghazaleh said July 1. 'Once food arrives, some is contaminated or old, but we have no choice but to take risks and eat it because hunger is merciless. Some children have been poisoned, and some families have completely lost confidence in any truck that enters. Everything costs money, to buy tents, to buy food, which we do not have either.' The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started 'aid distribution centers' in May, which has resulted in over 400 civilians being killed deliberately by Israeli soldiers while trying to reach them. Others have also reported incidents of kidnappings and grenades being thrown at them. 'My friends and I went to the aid sites and it was a harsh experience,' Ghazaleh said. 'The queues stretch for kilometers, and the security is missing. I saw mothers crying from the intensity of hunger and sometimes you wait for hours, and come back with nothing.' Doctors Without Borders, which sends medical workers regularly to Gaza, has condemned the sites as 'slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid, while a total of 170 aid groups have called for the GHF to close. The U.S., meanwhile, has spent over $20 billion in military financing, weapons sales, and transfers from U.S. weapons stockpiles to aid Israel. The psychological effects of witnessing this massacre, up close and afar, are torturous, Mhawish said. 'As Palestinian journalists, we can't separate ourselves from Gaza or the struggles that we lived, and it just adds more to the weight of the emotional toll,' he said. ' Gaza is a piece of life, and that life is being taken out of it, one soul at a time. We lost children that we were never supposed to lose. We lost parents. We lost families. We lost loved ones, only for the sake of just proving to the world over and over that we are only ordinary human beings who should be able to live.' Join The Conversation
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Pro-Palestinian activists due to appear court after damaging planes at RAF base
LONDON (AP) — Four people are set to appear in a London courtroom on Thursday over charges connected with an incident in which pro-Palestinian protesters damaged two Royal Air Force planes with red paint and crowbars. The charges come after the group Palestine Action said two of its members entered RAF Brize Norton on June 20 and used electric scooters to approach two Voyager jets used for air-to-air refueling. The protesters used repurposed fire extinguishers to spray paint into the planes' jet engines and caused further damage with crowbars, according to the group, which released video footage of the incident. The four, all between the ages of 22 and 35, are charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage and conspiracy to enter a prohibited place for purposes prejudicial to the interests of the U.K., counter-terror police said in a statement. The Crown Prosecution Service will argue that that the offenses have a 'terrorist connection,' police said. Palestine Action has claimed responsibility for a series of incidents targeting Israeli defense contractors in the U.K. and other sites linked to the war in Gaza. Following the incident at RAF Brize Norton, the government introduced legislation to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. The measure means it will be a criminal offense to belong to or support the group, with a maximum of 14 years in prison. Palestine Action rejects that assertion, saying its protests are designed to end international support for Israel's war in Gaza. Planes from Brize Norton, 70 miles (112 kilometers) northwest of London, regularly fly to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, Britain's main air base for operations in the Middle East.
