Latest news with #IsraeliAssault
Al Arabiya
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Saudi Arabia's current priority is permanent ceasefire in Gaza: Foreign minister
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said on Friday that the Kingdom's current priority is reaching a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, when asked about the possibility of normalizing ties with Israel. He was speaking during a visit to Moscow. 'What we are seeing is the Israelis are crushing Gaza, the civilian population of Gaza,' he said. 'This is completely unnecessary, completely unacceptable and has to stop.' Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stated its firm stance that there can be no normalization of ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state. The local health ministry in Gaza says more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's assault on the region since an October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.
Asharq Al-Awsat
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Saudi Arabia Stresses Int'l Community's Role in Establishing Peace in Palestine
The Saudi government stressed on Tuesday the role of the international community in ending the 'catastrophic consequences' of the Israeli assault on the Palestinian people, as well as 'protecting innocent civilians, and creating a new reality where Palestine can enjoy peace' in line with international resolutions. Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, chaired the cabinet meeting that was held in Jeddah. At the outset of the meeting, the cabinet expressed gratitude to God Almighty for the honor bestowed upon the Kingdom in serving the Grand Mosque and the Prophet's Mosque, and for the continued success achieved during last year's Hajj. Over 1.6 million pilgrims were facilitated in performing their rituals with ease and tranquility, as the Kingdom dedicated all its resources and efforts under the constant guidance of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, it added. The cabinet praised the efforts of the Supreme Hajj Committee and all personnel involved in serving the pilgrims for their effective implementation of security, preventive, organizational, and health plans. These efforts have established the Kingdom as a global model in crowd management and in providing high-quality services to visitors of the Two Holy Mosques and the holy sites. The cabinet reviewed the efforts of the relevant authorities in meeting the needs of pilgrims from Iran and securing hundreds of flights and overland journeys to ensure their safe return home amid its brief war with Israel. It stressed that serving and caring for pilgrims remains one of the Kingdom's highest priorities and most important responsibilities. Crown Prince Mohammed briefed the cabinet on the contents of messages received by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques from Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, Vietnam's President Luong Cuong, and Angola's President Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco. The messages addressed bilateral relations with the Kingdom and ways to support and strengthen them across various fields. Moreover, the cabinet reviewed regional and international developments, reiterating the Kingdom's positions, as expressed by the Crown Prince in his communications with leaders of brotherly and friendly countries, and its continued support for international efforts to promote regional and global peace and security, address crises, ease tensions, and advance dialogue through diplomatic means as an effective path to resolving disputes. The cabinet underlined the statement issued by the Kingdom that expressed solidarity with Qatar and the categorical rejection of any infringement on its sovereignty or any threat to its security and stability. The cabinet reiterated that the Kingdom welcomes the signing of the peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, hoping that it will fulfill the aspirations of both nations' peoples for development and prosperity, while upholding regional and international security and stability. Furthermore, the cabinet highlighted the commencement of operation of the Global Water Organization (GWO) from its headquarters in Riyadh as a reaffirmation of the Kingdom's commitment to boosting international initiatives. This development underscores Saudi Arabia's eagerness to strengthen cooperation among countries by supporting collaborative efforts to address the growing challenges related to water, as an essential resource for life. The cabinet noted Saudi Arabia's election as vice chair of the World Health Organization (WHO) Executive Board as well as its selection as a member of the High-Level Group for Partnership, Coordination, and Capacity-Building for Statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (HLG-PCCB). Additionally, it highlighted the inclusion of the Uruq Bani Ma'arid Protected Area in the Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The cabinet welcomed the concluding statement issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) experts regarding the 2025 Article IV consultation with Saudi Arabia. The statement praised the Saudi economy's high resilience in the face of global economic challenges, the expansion of non-oil economic activities, the containment of inflation, and the unemployment rate reaching historic lows, aligning with the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030. Moreover, the cabinet highlighted the results of the 7th King Abdulaziz Quality Award, lauding the commitment of the winning entities to adopting the principles of institutional excellence and enhancing performance quality, which contributes to improved outcomes and helps achieve national objectives.
Arab News
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Instagram influencer Motaz Azaiza brings the Gaza story to US
PHILADELPHIA: At a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hundreds of people gathered recently for a weeknight charity fundraiser hosted by a celebrity guest. The venue was not announced in advance due to security concerns, and attendance cost at least $60 a pop — with some spending $1,000 to get a photo with the host. Yet, the event was not a gala hosted by a movie star or famed politician, but by a photojournalist: Gaza native Motaz Azaiza, whose images of the Israeli assault following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack launched him to international recognition. Wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and gold-framed glasses, the 26-year-old boasts nearly 17 million followers on Instagram for his images from the war in Gaza. 'I wish you had known me without the genocide,' Azaiza told the crowd, his voice faltering. Before the war, Azaiza was a relatively unknown figure, posting photos from his daily life in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, to his roughly 25,000 Instagram followers at the time. But as soon as the first strikes from Israel hit Gaza, he became a war photographer by virtue of circumstance, and his wartime posts soon went viral. 'As a photojournalist, I can't watch this like anyone else, I'm from there, this is my home,' Azaiza said. After surviving 108 days of Israeli bombardment, Azaiza managed to escape Gaza via Egypt, and he has since become an ambassador of sorts for the Palestinian territory, sharing the story of his people as the conflict rages on. 'Every time you feel like you regret leaving, but then you lose a friend, you lose a family, you say, OK, I saved my life,' Azaiza said. Before the war, Azaiza had been hired to manage the online content for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, the humanitarian agency accused by Israel of providing cover for militants. This month, he is touring the US to raise money for UNRWA USA, a nonprofit that collects funding for the agency. 'I can't handle this much of fame ... it's a real big responsibility,' Azaiza said from the fundraiser in Philadelphia. 'This is not me ... I'm waiting for the genocide to stop. I want to go back to Gaza, continue my work capturing pictures,' he added. At one point, he blended into the crowd, posing for a selfie before shaking hands with the donors. At the fundraiser, a UNRWA USA official solicited donations. 'Is there someone who wants to give $20,000? I would like to have $20,000. Nobody? Is there someone who wants to give $10,000? I would like to have $10,000,' the official calls out. Once the call lowered to $5,000, five hands raised, and even more went up when asked for donations of $2,000 and $1,000. One of the donors, Nabeel Sarwar, said Azaiza's photographs 'humanize' the people in Gaza. 'When you see a picture, when you see a child, you relate to that child, you relate to the body language, you relate to the dust on their face, the hunger, the sadness on their face,' Sarwar said. 'I think it's those pictures that really brought home the real tragedy of what's going on in Gaza.' Veronica Murgulescu, a 25-year-old medical student from Philadelphia, concurred. 'I think that people like Motaz and other Gaza journalists have really struck a chord with us, because you can sense the authenticity,' she said. 'The mainstream media that we have here in the US, at least, and in the West, lacks authenticity,' she added. Sahar Khamis, a communications professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in Arab and Muslim media in the Middle East, said Gazan journalists like Azaiza who have become social media influencers 'reshape public opinion, especially among youth, not just in the Arab world, not just in the Middle East, but globally and internationally, including in the US.' 'The visuals are very, very important and very powerful and very compelling ... as we know in journalism, that one picture equals a thousand words. 'And in the case of war and conflict, it can equal a million words, because you can tell through these short videos and short images and photos a lot of things that you cannot say in a whole essay.'
Mail & Guardian
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
Empire, knowledge and erasure: Bombing Iran is bombing memory
Iran has a long and magnificent intellectual history. Empire does not begin with bombs. It begins with stories. Before missiles strike, a narrative must be written to make the target bombable. Colonial narrative, as postcolonial historian Ranajit Guha shows in A Conquest Foretold , transforms conquest into destiny. It prepares the public to accept war as not only inevitable but righteous. It is not simply that Iran was bombed on 13 June 2025. It is that the idea of Iran and its right to hold memory, to produce knowledge, to exist as a civilisational subject was already rendered illegible. The Israeli assault on Iran was defended in familiar terms — an imminent nuclear threat, national security, surgical precision. But these are not explanations. They are scripts. Like the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the attack on Iran was rationalised through an architecture of claims that do not require evidence, only repetition. Intelligence reports denying Iran's weapons programme were irrelevant. The narrative had already been written. Guha's insight is clear — Empire writes the future in advance. The British conquest of India was not sealed at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. That battle was a minor military affair. And yet, in British imperial historiography, Plassey was elevated to a grand foundational moment, the start of British rule in India, the point at which the East India Company became a territorial power. As Guha points out, it was this narrative that was repeated in schoolbooks, official dispatches and parliamentary speeches. It provided the ideological foundation for expanding British rule. While the real event was modest and sordid, the story told about it became grand and civilisational. Guha painstakingly shows that conquest must be justified, not just enacted. He draws from the writings of figures like Robert Orme, an official historian of the East India Company, who openly declared that 'the sword is the charter'. This chilling phrase captures the heart of imperial logic — that might creates right. Violence, if victorious, rewrites itself as law. The act of domination becomes the foundation of legitimacy. What Guha reveals is that empires do not just win battles, they write the laws and the history books. They tell the story in such a way that the destruction appears noble, even necessary. The conquered are not only defeated on the ground; they are also written out of history. This symbolic process, Guha argues, is what transforms the 'instant of aggression' into the logic of rule. The colonial archive did not record India's conquest merely as fact. It reworked it as a historical necessity, a fulfilment of a moral and civilisational order. This allowed future wars, occupations and annexations to be narrated not as violence, but as destiny. Guha calls this 'a conquest foretold', a fate legitimised before it is ever enforced. This continues today. The West does not simply bomb places. It un-names them. In the mainstream media, Iran is rarely presented as a site of knowledge, history or intellectual contribution. It is a shadow space: nuclear, irrational, volatile, fanatical, alien, frightening. Colonial narratives render people fungible, bombable and, ultimately, forgettable. They reduce cities to targets, its people to collateral and magnificent civilisational archives to dust. Literary theorist Edward Said showed clearly that the Orient was never just misunderstood. It was constructed. It was imagined as timeless, barbaric, hyper-religious and fundamentally unfit for self-rule. This epistemic violence enabled actual violence. When the drones strike, they do so on the back of a long intellectual history that emptied the East of sovereignty. Said's Orientalism is a study of how European and American thinkers created a fictional image of the East, a world of despots, harems, fanaticism and mystery. This fantasy was not harmless. It underpinned policy, war and occupation. Said wanted readers to understand that power works not only through tanks and armies, but also through language, maps and books. How we speak about a place, whether on TV or in schools, shapes what we believe can or should happen to it. When the East is painted as irrational and dangerous, bombing it becomes not a horror, but a duty. Orientalism, Said shows, is not an error of perception. It is a system of power. Through universities, literature, policy and media, the West defined the East as the inverse of itself: irrational, feminine, despotic. This representation justified intervention. If the East could not govern itself, then governance must be imposed from without. Once internalised, this logic rendered bombing not only possible but legible as order, as responsibility, as peacekeeping. Violence becomes virtue. Iran has a long and magnificent intellectual history. The Academy of Gundishapur in Khuzestan, Iran, was one of the oldest universities in the world. Founded in the third century CE, it was a centre for multilingual scholarship where Sanskrit medical texts were translated into Middle Persian, Greek logic was systematised and Babylonian astronomy refined. It was here that clinical observation became a method of medical teaching, surgery was formalised and knowledge travelled across linguistic and cultural lines, centuries before Oxford opened its gates in 1096 or Cambridge in 1209. The very model of the Western university, its division into faculties, the logic of disputation, the canon of philosophy and science, was shaped by Iranian and Islamic precedents. The Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in Abbasid Baghdad, deeply influenced by Persian scholarship, became the template for later European institutions. When Arabic and Persian texts were translated into Latin in Andalusia and Sicily, they were not curiosities, they were the architecture of another world being absorbed. There would be no scholastic tradition without al-Farabi and al-Tusi, no experimental method without al-Razi and no algebra without al-Khwarizmi. These networks extended even further south. Persian texts and Islamic jurisprudence travelled along trans-Saharan trade routes into West Africa. At Sankoré University in Timbuktu, scholars studied Avicenna and al-Ghazali alongside local astronomers and jurists. Libraries in desert towns preserved manuscripts copied in Persian script. These were not isolated developments. They formed part of an intellectual system that preceded and shaped the European Enlightenment. From Baghdad's Bayt al-Hikma to the libraries of Timbuktu, Persian and Arabic texts travelled along trade routes, translated, adapted and taught across generations. The commentaries of al-Farabi, al-Tusi and Avicenna informed the very structure of the Western university. Algebra, optics and medicine — none of these can be understood without Iran. This history was not just ignored by European colonialism. It was actively erased. During colonial rule in India, the British administration removed Persian as a court and scholarly language, replacing it with English and thereby severing centuries of transregional intellectual continuity between South Asia, Central Asia and the Iranian plateau. Persian manuscripts were stripped of context and displayed as exotic artefacts in museums. Its philosophy was recast as mysticism. Its scientific legacy was reduced to footnotes or omitted altogether. Tabriz, struck in the June 2025 attack, is not just a military site. It is the city of Shams al-Din Tabrizi, Rumi's teacher and a centre of Persian mysticism and learning. It is a node in a centuries-old network of philosophy, theology, mathematics, astronomy and poetry that spanned from Khurasan to Mali. These were not isolated traditions. They were the foundations of a civilisational archive beyond the borders and imagination of Europe. And yet, in the dominant Western imagination, Iran is nothing but a sinister, irrational enemy of the West. This is not ignorance. It is design. It is an instance of what Guha and Said both expose: the strategic construction of the South as a site of absence. A place whose people are forgettable, whose knowledge is disposable, whose destruction is thinkable. We have seen this before. Iraq's libraries were looted. Mosul's university was razed. Gaza's schools, universities and archives were bombed into nothingness. In each case, what is attacked is not just infrastructure but the right to remember, to dream, to transmit. Epistemic erasure is not collateral damage. It is the method of neocolonial domination. To centre the epistemic is not to look away from the dead. It is to insist that their lives were lived in full. It is to understand that the people of Iran are not footnotes to someone else's future. That they are authors, carriers of meaning and custodians of a world that Empire has tried again and again to silence. This war, like all imperial wars, is not just about sovereignty. It is about the terms of knowledge. Who gets to define history. Who gets to remember. Until we refuse the stories that make us invisible and tell our own stories, we will never escape the imperial forces that deny our full and equal humanity. Vashna Jagarnath is a historian, political risk and diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, labour expert, pan-African and South Asian political analyst and curriculum specialist .
Bloomberg
22-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Gold Rises as US Joining Attacks on Iran Spurs Flight to Safety
Gold rose after the US joined the Israeli assault on Iran , raising the risks of a wider regional war that could push up energy prices. The precious metal climbed as much as 0.8% after the US struck three key nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic over the weekend, spurring a flight to havens. Oil prices jumped on Monday as the world awaited Iran's response, which could involve attacks on Middle East energy infrastructure or on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, both of which would be inflationary.
