As a doctor, I believe turning away from desperately ill kids – be they in Palestine or elsewhere – is a far greater crime
I have never walked away from a fight involving the wellbeing of children. I have never abandoned the right for Palestinian health workers to train in Israel for the benefit of those same children.
Why is this something I need to speak about publicly now?
Continue reading...Expulsion ordered a day after similar move by Saudi Arabia in response to criticism of the Riyadh-led intervention
Kuwait has given Lebanon’s envoy to the emirate 48 hours to leave, a day after Saudi Arabia made a similar move over a minister’s criticism of the Riyadh-led military intervention in Yemen.
The diplomatic row, in which Saudi Arabia has also suspended imports from Lebanon and Bahrain has expelled Beirut’s envoy to Manama, is another blow for a country already in the grip of crippling political and economic crises.
Continue reading...World leaders appeal for peace in Lebanese capital as militia groups prepare to bury dead
A day after the worst sectarian violence in Beirut in more than a decade, a fraught calm hung over the city on Friday with streets largely empty and government offices closed as militia groups started to bury their dead.
Gunfire briefly resounded through areas that on Thursday were the scenes of intense fighting, but armed men were shooting into the air – a defiant precursor to funerals that were due to start.
Continue reading...Five people have died in armed clashes that broke out in Beirut during a protest demanding an end to a judicial investigation into the massive blast in the city’s port last year. The rally was led by members of Amal and Hezbollah, whose respective leaders have increasingly opposed the investigation, which is seen by many Lebanese as a make-or-break event for the crippled state. Little progress has been made in establishing the culprits behind one of the biggest industrial accidents in modern history
Continue reading...Armed clashes erupt at demonstrations demanding end to judge’s investigation of huge blast last year
At least six people have died in Beirut’s worst street violence in 13 years, as hundreds of armed militia men took to the streets and much of the city was forced into lockdown by heavy fighting.
The bloody violence took on a sectarian tone that invoked images of the Lebanese civil war and alarmed residents who had long feared that the multiple crises ravaging the country could spark a deadly conflagration.
Continue reading...Israel prime minister tells Knesset of ‘bold’ mission concerned with fate of missing navigator Lt Col Ron Arad
The Israeli spy agency, the Mossad, launched a complex intelligence operation last month to find information on the whereabouts and fate of an Israeli airman who was shot down over southern Lebanon in 1986.
The existence of the operation to find Lt Col Ron Arad, a navigator on an Israeli jet whose plane went down during a bombing raid, was confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who told the country’s parliament on Monday that he could share no more details of the “courageous mission”.
Continue reading...After 10 years of bloodshed, foreign allies are seeking to rehabilitate the Syrian leader
For almost a decade he was a pariah who struggled to get a meeting abroad or even to assert himself on his visitors. Largely alone in his palace, save for trusted aides, Bashar al-Assad presided over a broken state whose few friends demanded a humiliating price for their protection, and weren’t afraid to show it.
During regular trips to Syria, Vladimir Putin arranged meetings at Russian bases, forcing Assad to trail behind him at functions. Iran too readily imposed its will, often dictating military terms, or sidelining the Syrian leader on decisions that shaped the course of his country.
Continue reading...Serious themes are undercut by the flippant tone of this story about a Syrian refugee who becomes a conceptual art object
Here is a muddled caper of movie that doesn’t know what it wants to say; it doesn’t work as a satire of the international art market, nor as a commentary on the racism of white European culture. And its attitude to Syria is undermined by a silly and unconvincing ending that leaves a strange taste in the mouth. It is inspired by the Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye and his human artwork called Tim: in 2008, Delvoye tattooed an elaborate punk-crucifixion scene on the back of a Zurich tattoo parlour owner named Tim Steiner, who in return for a cash payment agreed to sit still with his tattooed back on show in galleries for a certain number of times a year and have his tattooed skin surgically removed and put on display after his death. And of course it is this macabre destiny that lends fascination to the ongoing live events.
This movie from writer-director Kaouther Ben Hania imagines a Syrian man, Sam Ali (Yahya Mahayni) in love with a well-born woman Abeer (Dea Liane). But when he is wrongfully arrested by the tyrannical Assad government, Abeer’s family pressures her into marrying a smooth diplomat, Ziad (Saad Lostan), who takes her to live with him in Brussels where he is an embassy attache. Sam Ali manages to escape from police custody (the least of the film’s implausibilities) and get over the border into Lebanon where, hungry and hard up, he gatecrashes art exhibitions and gobbles the free canapes. And this is where he is approached by a preeningly arrogant artist, Jeffrey Godefroi (Koen De Bouw), who looks like Roger De Bris, the theatre director in Mel Brooks’s The Producers. If Sam will agree to the humiliation of having a massive “Schengen visa” tattooed on his back, then Jeffrey will be legally able to transport him to Brussels as a conceptual art object rather than a human being, as part of a show about the commodification of humanity, and Sam will be able to see Abeer.
Continue reading...Contents will be trucked to Lebanon to ease energy crisis, a plan that could challenge US resolve towards two foes
An Iranian tanker carrying fuel bound for Lebanon was at anchor in the Red Sea on Friday ahead of the final leg of a voyage to Syria, which is set to pose the biggest test yet to US sanctions imposed on two arch regional foes.
The tanker is expected in the Syrian port of Baniyas early next week, in defiance of US sanctions that prevent oil exports from Iran and imports to Syria, which have both been subject to stringent US-imposed restrictions on trade. The imminent arrival is being hailed by the Lebanese militant group turned political bloc, Hezbollah, as a sanctions-busting solution for an energy crisis that has brought Lebanon to a standstill and led to widespread blackouts.
Continue reading...Travellers from Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia also affected by move
The EU has removed six countries, including the US, from a Covid “white list” of places whose tourists should be permitted entry without restrictions such as mandatory quarantine.
A majority of EU countries had reopened their borders to Americans in June, in the hope of salvaging the summer tourism season although most required a negative test ahead of travel. The move was not, however, reciprocated by the US.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Afghanistan to Greece
Continue reading...Hospitals were reportedly turning away burns victims after the blast at a storage tank that had been confiscated by the army
At least 20 people were killed and 79 others injured when a fuel tank exploded in Lebanon’s northern region of Akkar, the Red Cross said on Sunday.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.
Continue reading...A round-up of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Thailand to Mexico
Continue reading...This short film collection from the True Story platform ranges across continents to look at how we interact with our environments
Deeply psychogeographical, this collection of documentary shorts from the streaming platform True Story roams among spaces old and new, and across continents. Personal and public memories are intertwined, creating portraits of how human beings interact with their environments, and vice versa.
Paul Heintz’s nocturnal Shānzhài Screens is a meditative study of liminal urban spaces, shot in a Chinese district that specialises in fine-art reproductions. Rectangular frames populate the screen, from flickering apartment windows, hurried video calls, to endless replicas of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Authenticity is elusive, and loneliness reigns.
Continue reading...Israeli military says jets struck rocket launch sites, in a marked escalation of hostilities
Israel escalated its response to rocket attacks this week by launching airstrikes on Lebanon, the Israeli military has said.
The military said in a statement that jets struck the launch sites from which rockets had been fired over the previous day, as well as an additional target used to attack Israel in the past. Several militant groups operate in Lebanon but none claimed responsibility.
Continue reading...Thousands of Lebanese people gathered in Beirut to mark the first anniversary of a catastrophic explosion at the port, holding pictures of the dead and demanding justice.
No senior official has been held to account for the disaster, caused by a huge quantity of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at the port for years. infuriating many Lebanese as their country also endures financial collapse.
As a memorial service got under way at the port, water cannon and teargas were fired at protesters who had been throwing stones towards security forces near parliament
Continue reading...‘Shortly after arriving, I was kidnapped by a militia group who said I was a spy. A decade later, I went back to show life and beauty returning to the city’
I spent my childhood in Madrid and I went to the Prado every week from the age of seven. I would cry at the works by Goya. His paintings of the Spanish war of independence moved me like nothing else. I never grew up around photography – I grew up around Goya. Even as a child, I was attracted to the dark fates of the world.
Over the course of my career, I’ve covered 13 conflicts, more than many of the famous war photographers of my generation. I’ve worked in Vietnam and Cambodia, Eritrea and Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iran. I’ve always tried to capture a glimpse of hope against a background of drama and destruction. That has not always been possible.
Continue reading...A year on from the devastating explosion, people are struggling to sleep and PTSD is widespread – amid economic chaos
Rayan Khatoun has been dreading 4 August. She has been constantly on edge as the anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut approached.
The blast threw Khatoun into a wall as she came home from work and left her with a head injury, a fractured cheekbone and torn tendons. Since then, she has suffered from recurring nightmares, insomnia and anxiety attacks.
Continue reading...One year on from the huge explosion in the port of Beirut in Lebanon the devastation from the blast is still visible
At least 200 people were killed, and more than 6,000 injured in the Beirut blast that devastated the port area on 4 August 2020. The explosion is believed to have been caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse.
Away from the broken grain silos, and their rotting contents, Lebanon remains paralysed and anguished. The investigation into the blast has flatlined, and its perpetrators are as far away from accountability as ever. The global aid pledged in the wake of the destruction remains forsaken by the country’s rulers, who prefer the narrow privileges that flowed to them from a crippled system to a global rescue plan that could save the country.
Continue reading...Lebanese capital remains a shell of a city as efforts to find who is to blame for tragedy have made little progress
When his workplace blew to pieces, dockworker Yusuf Shehadi was waiting to hear back from colleagues who had scrambled to help firefighters extinguish a blaze in the port of Beirut. The fire was bad and getting worse, they told him in their last conversation before a giant explosion killed them, and 210 others, a year ago today.
The catastrophic blast laid to ruin the place Shehadi had worked for a decade. And he immediately knew its cause. “I had taken the nitrate from the dock to the hangar six years earlier,” he said of the massive stockpile of military-grade fertiliser that he had helped move from a freighter to a nearby hangar in 2014.
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