Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • Egyptian-born doctor and Gaza volunteer wins New Jersey Democratic primary

    Egyptian-born doctor and Gaza volunteer wins New Jersey Democratic primary

    In a primary election result that underscores shifting currents within U.S. Democratic politics, Egyptian-American combat surgeon Adam Hamawy has secured a decisive victory in New Jersey’s 12th District Democratic primary, all but guaranteeing him a seat in the U.S. Congress next year.

    With over 93% of ballots counted by 10 a.m. local time Wednesday, Hamawy captured more than 28% of the vote, outpacing his closest competitor by a substantial margin. The 12th District, home to the prestigious Princeton University, has been a reliably Democratic stronghold for at least 15 years, leaving little doubt that Hamawy will defeat his Republican challenger in the November general election. If he wins as expected, he will make history as the first Muslim to represent New Jersey in Congress; the candidate grew up in the state and still resides there today.

    Hamawy’s political profile weaves together a rare combination of military service, frontline medical experience, and high-profile progressive and centrist endorsements. A veteran combat surgeon, Hamawy’s path to politics first intersected with current U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth in 2004, when he treated the then-soldier for life-threatening injuries in Baghdad that required a double leg amputation. Duckworth has long credited Hamawy with saving her life, and she repaid that debt 20 years later by supporting his campaign from its launch, marking a rare centrist endorsement for an candidate aligned with the modern progressive Democratic movement.

    Hamawy catapulted to national attention earlier this year for his harrowing 2024 medical mission to Gaza, where he was deployed to the European Hospital in Khan Younis as part of a delegation organized by the Palestinian American Medical Association. When Israel closed the Rafah Crossing into Egypt, Hamawy and 19 other U.S. healthcare workers were trapped inside the besieged enclave. After the Biden administration negotiated safe passage for the 17 delegation members who held U.S. citizenship, Hamawy refused to evacuate until every member of his team was guaranteed exit. He eventually reached Jordan in late May 2024, and upon returning to the U.S., he repeatedly pressed congressional leaders to address the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.

    ideologically, Hamawy runs on a progressive platform aligned with the wave of new left Democrats who have found electoral success across the U.S. in recent months, prioritizing cost of living affordability and universal equitable access to healthcare. His campaign earned early and widespread support from leading progressives, including the full Congressional Progressive Caucus, Senator Bernie Sanders, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. He also secured backing from climate advocacy groups, the national nurses union, and multiple veterans organizations. He entered the primary as the clear frontrunner in both polling and fundraising, with his campaign reporting a total haul of $1.4 million ahead of election day.

    Democratic Party leaders welcomed Hamawy’s primary win. “Democratic voters throughout New Jersey have once again demonstrated that they understand the stakes of this moment,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement Tuesday night. “As a veteran, combat surgeon, and small business owner, Adam Hamawy has continually served his community and our country. He is a proven fighter for working families. We look forward to welcoming him to Congress.”

    Progressive and pro-Palestinian advocacy groups framed Hamawy’s victory as a watershed moment for the Palestinian cause in U.S. electoral politics, noting that the crisis in Gaza has become a defining issue for young Democratic voters in 2024. “Voters were drawn to Dr Hamawy’s candidacy because he knows firsthand the reality of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza like few do – having worked to save the lives of Palestinian children under bombardment and unimaginable conditions. His experience is necessary in Congress now more than ever, as too many of the people meant to represent us continue to look the other way while our tax dollars fund injustices here and abroad,” the IMEU Policy Project and Justice Democrats said in a statement Tuesday night.

    Jewish Voice for Peace linked Hamawy’s win to a growing global movement that is reshaping domestic U.S. politics. “Last night, Palestine was on the ballot – and won,” the group wrote. “We are on our way to solidifying Palestine as part of popular politics that is intertwined with the fight for working people across the country.”

    Hamawy’s path to the primary win was not without conflict, as he faced sustained attacks from pro-Israel and right-wing political actors ahead of the vote. When asked ahead of the election about the criticism he faced, Hamawy downplayed the attacks, noting he had endured far greater adversity during his medical and military career. “I have done harder things than mount a political campaign,” Hamawy told Middle East Eye on the eve of the election. “What’s the worst thing they’re going to do? Call me some names, attack me? I have seen much worse.”

    Last month, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed that drew a false equivalence between Hamawy’s values and those of Omar Abdel Rahman, the convicted “Blind Sheikh” who was found guilty of plotting terrorist attacks in the 1990s and died in U.S. prison in 2017. Notably, Hamawy himself testified as a witness in Rahman’s 1995 trial, the largest terrorism trial in U.S. history at the time, where he told the jury that while the cleric expressed anti-American views, he never explicitly outlined plans for a murder plot. Later, Jewish Insider published an article tying Hamawy to al-Qaeda, citing his 1994 volunteer medical mission to Bosnia with the Benevolence International Foundation, a Saudi charity that was not blacklisted by the U.S. or United Nations until 2002, eight years after Hamawy’s work with the group.

    The attacks drew national condemnation from progressives, and even reached the Senate floor, where Montana Republican Senator Tim Sheehy, who drew international attention earlier this year for breaking the arm of a pro-Palestinian activist who disrupted a Senate hearing, tweeted, “Democrats are now running actual terrorists for Congress. Surprising? No. Disappointing? Yes.”

  • Warriors star Curry lands long-term shoe and apparel deal with Chinese sportswear company Li-Ning

    Warriors star Curry lands long-term shoe and apparel deal with Chinese sportswear company Li-Ning

    SAN FRANCISCO – One of the most iconic figures in modern basketball, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry, has locked in a landmark long-term shoe and apparel partnership with leading Chinese sportswear manufacturer Li-Ning, his in-house Curry Brand confirmed in a formal announcement this Monday.

    The collaboration is designed to expand Curry’s global footprint across three key segments: professional basketball, competitive golf, and casual athletic lifestyle. Beyond just product releases, the pairing will see both sides work hand-in-hand on end-to-end brand building, innovative product development, and community-focused sports culture projects. Central to the agreement is a shared core mission: to motivate and empower the next generation of athletes across every corner of the globe.

    Describing the agreement as “the partnership of a lifetime”, Curry opened up about the alignment between his own athletic values and Li-Ning’s brand vision. Earlier this year, during what industry insiders labeled a “sneaker free agency” period following his exit from his previous sponsor, Curry was spotted on multiple occasions wearing Li-Ning signature models designed for retired NBA star Dwyane Wade and his current Warriors teammate Jimmy Butler.

    The 38-year-old four-time NBA champion ended his more than 10-year affiliation with American sportswear brand Under Armour back in November 2024. For the remainder of the 2024-25 NBA season following the split, Curry switched up his footwear almost every game night, pulling different pairs from a large storage crate stationed beside his locker in the Chase Center, drawing widespread attention from basketball and sneaker fans worldwide.

    The multi-year deal marks a major shift in the global athletic footwear market, bringing one of the most recognizable active NBA stars to a brand that has rapidly expanded its international presence over the past decade, while giving Curry the autonomy to grow his own Curry Brand alongside an established global manufacturer.

  • As Trump attacks anew, Iran says Europe’s ‘appeasing aggressors’

    As Trump attacks anew, Iran says Europe’s ‘appeasing aggressors’

    Escalating cross-border hostilities between the United States and Iran have sparked a sharp diplomatic rebuke from Tehran, which on Monday slammed the European Union for what it calls a blatant display of biased moral judgment in the group’s response to recent Iranian strikes against US military sites in the Middle East. The condemnation comes as the Trump administration carried out new offensive operations against Iran over the weekend, leaving tentative peace negotiations deadlocked.

  • ‘Mornings and nights no longer exist’: A day in the hottest place in India

    ‘Mornings and nights no longer exist’: A day in the hottest place in India

    By early June 2026, a historic and unrelenting heatwave has pushed Banda, a dusty rural district in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state, into the center of a growing climate crisis. For more than a straight week, temperatures hovered between 47°C and 48°C (116°F to 118°F) — an extraordinary stretch of extreme heat that even long-term residents describe as unprecedented, marking a dangerous shift from the region’s familiar seasonal weather patterns.

    Located just a short distance from the Tropic of Cancer, Banda is no stranger to sweltering summers. But this year’s heatwave has broken all patterns of persistence, bringing a grinding, non-stop heat that alters every part of daily life for the district’s 2.3 million residents, most of whom rely on outdoor labor like farming, construction, road work and small-scale trade to survive. With little access to air conditioning or even reliable cooling for millions of low-income households, Banda’s population has been forced to completely restructure their lives around the deadly heat.

    By 6 a.m., when most urban centers across India are just waking to morning, the sun over Banda already blazes with the harsh intensity of a mid-afternoon summer sun. Atarra’s wholesale vegetable market, which once bustled with trade until late morning, now clears out completely by 8 a.m. Farmers and traders travel to the market before dawn to unload their harvests of tomatoes, gourds, chillies and melons, rushing to sell all stock before the heat becomes unbearable — a necessity that grows more urgent by the day, as high temperatures cut the shelf life of fresh produce drastically. “It’s only 6:15 a.m., but it already feels like 8 or 9 a.m.,” explained Himanshu, a local vegetable trader, wiping sweat from his brow as he leaned against crates of ripening tomatoes. “A box of tomatoes has to be sold today or tomorrow; in this heat, it simply won’t last.”

    Across the district, this compressed daily schedule governs nearly every activity. As veteran Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński once observed of equally sweltering African landscapes, Banda’s residents now devote most of their energy to a constant, daily search for shade and cool air. Pappu Verma, a local mason, has rearranged his work schedule to start at 7 a.m., wrap up by noon, take a four-hour break to avoid the peak midday heat, then return to work from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. While the break protects him from dangerous heat exhaustion and headaches, it stretches his workday out to 12 or 13 hours — and his pay remains the same regardless. “Otherwise, whatever I earn would just end up being spent on medicine for heat sickness,” he shrugged, a common trade-off for low-income workers across the district.

    Outdoor laborers bear the brunt of the crisis most directly. On a 46°C day last week, three female road construction workers were found huddled in the thin sliver of shade cast by a water tanker chassis on a highway bridge spanning the Ken River, eating their simple lunch of flatbread with onion, salt and pickle. “If we brought cooked vegetables, they’d spoil before noon,” explained Shanti Devi, one of the workers, who walks six kilometers to her job site every morning and another six kilometers back home each evening. She summed up the reality for Banda’s working poor in a blunt, memorable line: “Poor people don’t have the luxury of worrying about the heat.”

    The Ken River, which once provided a natural cooling effect for surrounding communities, has itself been weakened by decades of overexploitation. Researchers note that widespread illegal sand mining and steady groundwater depletion have eroded the river’s ability to moderate local temperatures, creating a vicious cycle where water scarcity amplifies extreme heat, which in turn worsens water demand.

    The economic and public health impacts of the prolonged heatwave are visible across every corner of the district. E-rickshaw drivers report almost no passengers during midday hours; shopkeepers now open before sunrise and close their doors from noon to 4 p.m., and customer numbers have fallen by half. Local hospitals report a steady stream of heat-related illnesses, with 15 to 20 new cases arriving daily, most involving children and elderly patients. Common symptoms include diarrhoea, vomiting and high fever, all brought on by constant exposure to extreme heat.

    Banda’s current ordeal is not an isolated anomaly: it is a local manifestation of a growing climate crisis unfolding across northern India. Climate researchers have identified the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the vast fertile belt that covers most of northern India including Uttar Pradesh, as one of the world’s fastest-growing hotspots for dangerous humid heat — a combination of high temperatures and high humidity that places far more physiological stress on the human body than dry heat alone. With a dense population of low-income outdoor workers, widespread irrigation that adds moisture to the air, and limited access to residential cooling, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to deadly heatwaves, according to Delhi-based think tank Climate Trends.

    Local geographic and development choices have amplified Banda’s risk dramatically. Data from Banda University of Agriculture and Technology shows that nearly one-sixth of the district’s dense forest cover disappeared between 1991 and 2022, driven by agricultural expansion, mining and urban development. Tree cover now sits far below the recommended levels to moderate local temperatures, while concrete infrastructure and exposed sand river beds absorb and radiate heat, pushing daytime temperatures even higher. While Banda has recorded extreme temperatures of 48°C to 49°C in the past, including two consecutive days of 49°C heat in 2024, local meteorologist Dinesh Sah notes that this year’s heatwave is unprecedented for its persistence. “For eight or nine straight days, 47°C to 48°C without a break — that is what is new this year,” he explained.

    The heat does not fade when the sun sets. Overnight temperatures remain stuck around 30°C, meaning residents never get a chance to fully cool down and recover from the day’s heat. “It feels as if mornings and cool nights no longer exist,” Sah said. By 7 or 8 a.m., it already feels like mid-afternoon.

    In rural Achharaund village, 20 kilometers from Banda’s district headquarters, the crisis is as much about water as it is about heat. A single deep well supplies most of the village’s drinking water, and women spend up to five hours a day queuing under the blazing sun to fill buckets for their households. Eighteen-year-old Kranti Vishwakarma says that when afternoon power cuts cut off access to the village’s few electric pumps, the only relief comes from the shade of ancient neem trees. “We don’t have coolers or air conditioners, so for us, the neem trees play that role,” she said.

    Eighty-year-old Chunubadi, one of the village’s oldest residents, relies on a rickety table fan held together with string to circulate air in her small home. Even when the power stays on, the fan only blows dry, hot air. “In my 80 years, I’ve never seen heat like this,” she said, watching the fan blades turn slowly. “Old people die in extreme cold or extreme heat. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to endure this one.”

    Even as residents adapt their daily routines to survive the heat, adaptation does not equal safety. Research from the University of California, Berkeley estimates that a single severe five-day heatwave in Uttar Pradesh could cause more than 8,000 excess deaths, with the burden falling overwhelmingly on the elderly, outdoor workers and low-income households without access to cooling. What worries climate scientists is not that Banda is hot — it is that heatwaves are growing longer, more intense and more frequent, as the natural systems that once kept temperatures in check are destroyed by human activity.

    After more than a week of record heat, a western disturbance finally brought brief relief: dust storms and scattered rain dropped temperatures by 8 to 9°C, and Banda’s residents were finally able to step outside during midday without fear. But the respite is only temporary. The daily routines that Banda’s population has adopted to survive this heatwave — starting work before dawn, retreating indoors during peak heat, constantly searching for shade — are no longer temporary adaptations. They are quickly becoming the new normal, a preview of what climate change will bring to millions of vulnerable people across South Asia in the coming decades.

  • Leen Ezzeddine, the US-Lebanese graduate at Harvard Medical School who chose to speak out

    Leen Ezzeddine, the US-Lebanese graduate at Harvard Medical School who chose to speak out

    On the surface, Leen Ezzeddine’s 2026 commencement address at Harvard Medical School could have fit neatly into the beloved narrative of immigrant achievement: a young Lebanese woman earning a medical degree from one of the world’s most selective elite institutions. But Ezzeddine rejected that sanitized script, choosing instead to center stark personal and political contradiction in a speech that quickly went viral and reignited long-simmering debates on U.S. campuses over Palestine, academic complicity, and the moral obligations of medical professionals.

    Ezzeddine’s connection to the crisis unfolding in her home region is not abstract. Just 18 months before she crossed the commencement stage, a U.S.-supplied Israeli missile destroyed her family’s summer home in Arab Salim, a village in southern Lebanon. Her grandparents, who had lived in the home for decades, were forced to flee to Beirut, and the village has remained under repeated Israeli bombardment even as Ezzeddine delivered her speech. Standing in the sanctity of Harvard’s graduation ceremony, she drew a clear, unflinching line between her own privileged path to medicine and the experiences of equally ambitious medical students across Lebanon and Palestine, who are forced to pursue their degrees amid collapsing infrastructure, bombardment, displacement, and the constant threat of death.

    “The only difference between me and students who shared the same dream, the same work ethic, and the same devotion to medicine is that they had to pursue that dream in conditions no student should ever have to endure,” Ezzeddine told Middle East Eye in an interview following her speech. She rejected the common narrative that her success at Harvard stemmed solely from hard work or merit, framing her position as the product of luck and circumstance, not inherent worth.

    Ezzeddine’s speech entered a charged, long-running battle over Palestine that has roiled U.S. campuses for years, including at Harvard. Since the outbreak of Israel’s expanded military campaign in Gaza, student activists demanding university divestment from companies linked to the war have faced widespread disciplinary action, police raids, suspensions, and accusations of antisemitism. Just one year before Ezzeddine’s graduation, hundreds of Harvard graduates walked out of the commencement ceremony to protest the university’s decision to bar students who participated in a pro-Palestinian encampment from graduating. The university’s handling of Gaza-related activism has become a central flashpoint in a national debate over whether U.S. academia protects dissenting speech – or punishes it when it centers Palestinian rights.

    Rather than delivering an abstract political address, Ezzeddine anchored her argument in personal testimony and the core principles of medical practice. Citing Black liberation activist Assata Shakur, she emphasized that dehumanization is a precondition for violence, noting that people affected by war in the Middle East are too often reduced to statistics or political talking points instead of being recognized as full human beings with their own dreams, families, and aspirations. “Lives no less full, no less sacred, and no less worthy than their own,” she said of those caught in the conflict.

    For Ezzeddine, medicine cannot be separated from the political structures that determine who gets access to safety, shelter, clean water, and healthcare. “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale,” she explained. “Our work does not begin and end at the bedside. A patient’s health is shaped by whether they have housing, clean water, food, safety, freedom of movement, and access to a hospital that has not been bombed or defunded. So when political decisions determine who is allowed to live with dignity and who is denied the basic conditions of survival, doctors cannot pretend medicine and politics are separate.”

    She also challenged the hypocrisy she sees embedded in modern medical education: while students are routinely taught to recognize structural violence, health equity, and the social determinants of health, those very principles are often abandoned when the lives at stake are politically inconvenient for institutional power holders. That contradiction has left countless students and faculty across the U.S. disillusioned since the start of the Gaza war, as universities navigate donor pressure, political backlash, and internal divisions over how to address the conflict.

    When asked about the personal and professional risks of speaking out, Ezzeddine situated her choice within a long history of dissident activists whose moral stances were once condemned before being widely celebrated, including Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. “Moral clarity is often most costly before it becomes widely accepted,” she said, echoing activist and thinker Audre Lorde’s famous declaration: “Your silence will not protect you.”

    Beyond rhetoric, Ezzeddine has turned the attention drawn by her speech into tangible action. She launched a GoFundMe campaign to provide urgent essentials – including baby formula, diapers, medical supplies, mattresses, and blankets – to pregnant people, newborns, and displaced families in southern Lebanon. What began as a speech has already grown into a community-led response, with Ezzeddine noting that many people in the U.S. are hungry for concrete ways to support those affected by the conflict. Longer term, she plans to build a formal grassroots organization that meets emergency needs in Lebanon while creating pathways for more people from marginalized conflict-affected communities to enter elite institutions like Harvard and enter positions of power. “Because we need more of us in these rooms,” she said.

    Ezzeddine’s speech did not resolve the deep contradictions she laid bare. Harvard remains an elite institution embedded in existing power structures, U.S. academia remains a deeply contested terrain over Palestine, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and southern Lebanon continues unabated. But her address cut through the comfortable ritual of graduation to demand that medical professionals live up to the ethical principles they claim to uphold. At its core, her message rejects the idea that medicine is separate from the systems that decide which lives are worthy of care – and in a moment where silence too often passes for neutrality, she chose to speak.

  • Lebanese flee their homes as Israel orders attacks on Beirut

    Lebanese flee their homes as Israel orders attacks on Beirut

    Fresh escalation along the Israel-Lebanon border has sent civilians back into displacement, as Israel’s top security official’s threat to expand attacks into the Lebanese capital dashed the fragile normalcy residents of Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh had only just begun to rebuild.

    On Monday, thousands of residents who had trickled back to their homes following an April ceasefire began packing their belongings to evacuate once again, after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a blunt warning that no part of Beirut would be spared from violence if Hezbollah’s cross-front hostilities did not stop. Katz explicitly equated Dahieh, a dense, heavily residential district in southern Beirut long associated with Hezbollah, to Israeli communities in northern Israel that have faced frequent cross-border attacks. “If there is no calm in the north [of Israel], there will be no calm in Beirut,” he stated.

    Katz’s warning came amid a sharp intensification of Israel’s ground and air offensive across Lebanon over the past week, a campaign that has already pushed far beyond the country’s southern border regions. The latest point of contention centers on the ancient Beaufort Castle, a strategic hilltop fortress in southern Lebanon. While Israeli officials announced Sunday they had seized the site and raised the Israeli flag there, Hezbollah contradicted the claim in a Monday statement, confirming its fighters were continuing a “battle of attrition” against Israeli troops in the area.

    Israel frames its expanded military campaign as a necessary operation to push Hezbollah forces away from its northern border communities. Katz added that the Israeli military aims to establish full security control over the entire Litani River basin, turning the region into a weapons-free zone cleared of what Israel terms “terrorist elements.” The Litani, which runs roughly 30 kilometers north of the Israel-Lebanon border, has long been a focal point of Israeli demands for Hezbollah to withdraw its military assets from southern Lebanon.

    In recent days, Israeli military operations have pushed even further north past the Litani. Last week, the Israel Defense Forces designated all territory south of the Zahrani River — located 40 kilometers from the border and encompassing the major population centers of Tyre and Nabatieh — as an official combat zone, issuing mandatory evacuation orders for all local residents. On Monday, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee extended these expulsion orders to additional towns and villages located north of the Litani River.

    For residents of Dahieh, the new threats have resurrected trauma many had only just started to process after months of displacement. Thousands of residents had gradually returned to the district following the April ceasefire, repairing damaged homes, reopening shuttered businesses, and working to rebuild a fragile sense of daily normalcy. That progress has now been completely upended.

    Thirty-one-year-old Batoul Fawaz, who had spent the duration of the conflict in rented temporary accommodation, had just finalized plans to move back to her Dahieh home and returned the keys to her rental when the Israeli threat was released. Now, she is forced to rent another short-term space just to have a place to sleep. “We are no longer afraid for our lives only. We are afraid for our homes,” Fawaz told Middle East Eye. Her entire family, she added, has been scattered by displacement once again: one of her sisters had just given birth and returned to Dahieh, only to flee again with her newborn just days later.

    The new threats against Beirut come after weeks of mounting pressure from Israel’s far-right ruling coalition to escalate operations against Hezbollah, in response to the group’s increasing use of explosive FPV drones targeting Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. A recent report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan found that Hezbollah’s advanced drone capabilities are currently limiting roughly 80 percent of Israeli ground assaults in southern Lebanon.

    Senior far-right ministers have publicly pushed for massive retaliation against Lebanese civilian centers. Last week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the Lebanese capital to be collectively punished for Hezbollah’s drone attacks, arguing that “for every explosive drone, 10 buildings should fall in Beirut.” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has additionally urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume full-scale war in Lebanon, calling for Israel to cut the country’s national electricity supply and seize all territory up to the Zahrani River. Netanyahu has aligned with the hardline position, vowing last Friday to push Israeli forces deeper into Lebanese territory and confirming that large swathes of southern Lebanon are now classified as combat zones.

    Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the latest Israeli escalation, labeling it “a vicious and reprehensible Israeli aggression.” The expanding offensive has also disrupted regional diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the wider conflict across the Middle East. Iran’s foreign ministry stated Monday that a full ceasefire in Lebanon remains a non-negotiable prerequisite for any indirect talks with the United States to end the broader regional war. Iranian state news agency Tasnim later confirmed that Iran has paused all indirect negotiations with the U.S. in response to Israel’s ongoing attacks.

    For the displaced families of Dahieh, the political and diplomatic standoff translates to a far more immediate crisis: the ceasefire that gave them a chance to return home has already been rendered meaningless, and any hope of resuming normal life has been delayed indefinitely once again.

  • ‘Ridiculous’: Social media reacts as Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur denied entry to UK

    ‘Ridiculous’: Social media reacts as Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur denied entry to UK

    On Monday, two high-profile American political commentators, Cenk Uygur, founder of the progressive media outlet The Young Turks, and Hasan Piker, a prominent left-wing critic of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, confirmed that the United Kingdom government had rejected their Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) applications and blocked their entry to the country. The decision has ignited a firestorm of debate across global social media, with critics accusing the British government of bowing to external pressure to suppress legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and undermining long-standing commitments to free expression.

    Uygur and Piker had been scheduled to make multiple public appearances during their UK trip, including speaking slots at the newly launched SXSW London festival and a planned debate at the Oxford Union, one of the world’s most prestigious and historic collegiate debating societies. Piker, who has previously addressed the Oxford Union, used his 2025 speech to condemn U.S. military and diplomatic backing for Israel, arguing that mainstream Western media systematically manufactures public consent for Israeli policies that violate international law. Piker also confirmed he was set to hold private meetings with Zack Polanski, leader of the UK Green Party, and former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn during the visit, details first reported by the independent outlet Middle East Eye. In a YouTube explanation of the decision, Piker confirmed his ETA application had been formally denied.

    Shortly after Piker’s announcement, Uygur took to social platform X to confirm his own entry ban, publicly stating that his longstanding criticism of the Israeli government was the clear motivation behind the Home Office’s ruling. “I’ve been banned for criticizing Israel,” Uygur wrote. “Are we free anymore?” Piker echoed Uygur’s claim, writing in a social post that the ban was “at the behest of israel,” adding that Western powers were betraying their own stated liberal values to accommodate what he called a “genocidal fascist foreign government.”

    In an official statement provided to press outlets, the UK Home Office only confirmed that the pair’s ETAs had been cancelled “on the grounds that their presence in the UK may not be conducive to the public good.” The department added that entry decisions are “based solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to UK society,” but declined to specify which comments or actions by Uygur and Piker formed the basis of the risk assessment.

    The decision drew immediate criticism from across the UK political spectrum and from public figures across the globe. Green Party leader Polanski described the ban as a “grim decision” in a post on X, warning that the move signals a dangerous erosion of civil liberties under the current Keir Starmer administration. “People often talk about [the] dangerous road we’d go down under a Reform government – this is another clear warning we’re down there already,” Polanski wrote.

    Even critics of the two commentators’ political views condemned the entry ban. American-Jewish political commentator Shabbos Kestenbaum, who was scheduled to debate Uygur on Piers Morgan Uncensored on the day the ban was announced, called the ruling “completely unfounded and must be reversed. Free speech must always be protected and allowed. Shame on Prime Minister Keir Starmer.” Conservative commentator Sohrab Ahmari, who has debated Uygur in the past and disagrees with nearly all his political positions, echoed that sentiment, writing on X: “But he’s no extremist or threat to public order — ridiculous to have to even type that — and I hope the UK government reconsiders.”

    Dimi Reider, co-founder of Israeli independent magazine +972 Magazine and a longstanding domestic critic of the Israeli government, argued that the Starmer administration’s decision was setting a dangerous precedent for future authoritarian policy. “The Starmer government is creating the mechanisms, precedent and, worst of all, legitimacy for the authoritarian Reform government they keep warning us about. They’re paving the way,” Reider wrote.

    Many social media users have highlighted what they call a blatant double standard in the UK’s entry policy, pointing out that Israeli President Isaac Herzog was not only permitted entry to the UK last September, but was personally welcomed by Starmer at 10 Downing Street. Herzog has been named in a UN Commission of Inquiry report as making statements that amount to direct and public incitement to commit genocide, stemming from comments he made after the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, in which he claimed all Palestinians in Gaza were “unequivocally” responsible for the violence, rejecting distinctions between militant groups and civilian civilians.

    Other users compared the ban on Uygur and Piker to previous UK entry restrictions on far-right and extremist figures, including 11 far-right activists barred from a Tommy Robinson-led rally in May, and American rapper Kanye West, who was blocked over repeated antisemitic comments including a song titled “Heil Hitler.” Critics of the ban were quick to distinguish these cases, noting that Uygur and Piker have never been accused of promoting targeted, racist hate speech against ethnic or religious minorities.

    Both commentators have forcefully pushed back against unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism from pro-Israel supporters, rejecting the widespread conflation of anti-Zionism and criticism of the Israeli state with hatred of Jewish people. In a statement to Middle East Eye, Uygur explained: “No one should equate the actions of the Israeli government with Jewish people at large. For example, I don’t blame the British people for this decision, I blame the British government. If that statement were declared to be racist against Brits, that would be patently absurd. Banning me from the UK for criticizing the government of Israel is equally absurd. Israel often says they’re our special ally because they help defend Western civilization, this is the exact opposite – tearing down our freedoms to protect their country and their crimes against humanity.”

    Piker has similarly explicitly condemned antisemitism on multiple occasions, including during his 2025 Oxford Union address, where he stated: “Antisemitism is a canary in the coal mine of fascism.” He criticized the long history of violence against Jewish people enabled by antisemitic propaganda, adding: “Valid criticisms against the state [of Israel] committing these atrocities and tying it back to Judaism is a cynical ploy to stop all manner of conversation.”

    Prominent British media personality Piers Morgan, host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, also rejected the idea that the ban was justified, writing on X: “I only support banning people who advocate violence or who spew hateful bigotry against people based on their ethnicity/religion. Where has Cenk done that? His rage has been against the Israel govt and its policies. Free speech should protect that.”

    Officials from SXSW London released a muted statement acknowledging the decision, noting that entry rulings are the exclusive purview of the Home Office. “SXSW London’s role is to convene a broad range of diverse voices and perspectives. We remain focused on delivering a programme this week fostering open dialogue and exchange of ideas,” the statement read. Oxford Union president Arwa Elrayess directly criticized the government’s decision and reaffirmed the society’s commitment to free expression. “To this day, we defend freedom of speech; the right for our invited speakers to express themselves, and to be challenged, irrespective of political viewpoint,” Elrayess told Middle East Eye, adding that the union is currently exploring virtual format options to allow Uygur and Piker to still participate in their scheduled events. “We will not allow this event to be shut down.”

    As of publication, Middle East Eye has stated that it has reached out to the Home Office and Piker for additional comment, and no further response has been issued.

  • Mandelson called Wes Streeting’s Israel criticism ‘wild’ and ‘hysterical’

    Mandelson called Wes Streeting’s Israel criticism ‘wild’ and ‘hysterical’

    Thousands of pages of confidential documents tied to Peter Mandelson, the disgraced former Labour cabinet minister and UK ambassador to the U.S., have been made public, pulling back the curtain on bitter internal divides within Britain’s ruling Labour Party over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and the recognition of a Palestinian state.

    Mandelson, who was appointed to the ambassador post by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in 2024, was forced to step down from the role in September 2025 after reports of his long-standing personal ties to deceased convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein became public. It was the 1,000-plus page release of files related to Mandelson on Monday that has now revealed the intense behind-closed-doors clash between Mandelson and current UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting over Streeting’s sharp condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza.

    An independent analysis of the released files by Middle East Eye confirms that in July 2025, just two months before the UK government formally recognized Palestinian statehood, Streeting reached out to Mandelson directly to share his unvarnished views and seek input on the pending recognition decision. Streeting argued that recognizing Palestinian statehood was the correct course of action on both moral and political grounds, writing that Israel was openly committing war crimes in Gaza for the world to see. He added that Israel’s ruling leadership used rhetoric matching ethnic cleansing, and that he had spoken to British medical personnel deployed in Gaza who described systematic, deliberate brutality targeting civilian women and children.

    Calling Israeli actions “rogue state behavior”, Streeting pushed for the UK to impose full state-level sanctions on Israel, writing that Israel should face consequences as an international pariah rather than only targeting a small number of extreme cabinet officials. These messages were originally released by Streeting himself earlier this year, and multiple anonymous Labour Party sources confirmed to Middle East Eye that the leak was intentionally orchestrated by Streeting to consolidate grassroots support ahead of a potential future leadership bid and increase political pressure on Starmer.

    Within days of receiving Streeting’s message, Mandelson launched a scathing personal attack on the Health Secretary in private text exchanges with Pat McFadden, the UK’s current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Mandelson described Streeting’s message as “a wild long hysterical message” and told McFadden he had pushed back against Streeting’s claims, adding that the comments reflected poorly on Streeting’s political maturity. McFadden responded by confirming Streeting was aggressively pushing his views on the issue across WhatsApp groups for sitting Labour MPs.

    Four days after that exchange, Mandelson shared a post from the U.S. State Department on X with McFadden, noting that the U.S. had rejected the upcoming UN two-state solution conference that the UK planned to attend. McFadden replied that Streeting had already circulated a set of videos and a redacted memo to the entire cabinet ahead of the conference, prompting Mandelson to dismiss the action as “pathetic” and joke that Streeting was “experiencing an early midlife crisis.”

    While large portions of the released files remain redacted, the texts offer rare insight into the internal deliberations of senior British cabinet ministers in the months leading up to the UK’s formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. In a July 19 exchange, McFadden described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as heavily redacted, and added that Starmer was not inclined to support symbolic political gestures but may have no other option, suggesting that the scale of humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza left the government with little choice but to move forward with recognition.

    The files also confirm that former UK Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair remained actively engaged with current cabinet ministers throughout the decision-making process. Blair had been a key figure in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza Board of Peace initiative the previous year. When Mandelson asked McFadden if he had consulted Blair on Gaza, McFadden confirmed they had spoken, noting that Blair was focused on long-term solutions, including cooperation with Arab states and reform of the Palestinian Authority. Mandelson, who has long backed a two-state solution dating back to the 1970s, responded that if the party did not move carefully, the decades-long push for a two-state solution would stall entirely, recounting how previous attempts at a final agreement had collapsed due to spoilers on both sides over the past 50 years.

    Earlier this year, former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn publicly released a letter he sent to Streeting, accusing Streeting of a “shameful failure” to resign from the Starmer cabinet despite his private condemnation of Israeli war crimes. In the letter, Corbyn argued that if the UK government acknowledges Israel is committing war crimes, any continued military or political support for the country amounts to the UK knowingly aiding and abetting those violations of international law.

    To date, the Starmer government has only imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli cabinet ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, rejecting widespread calls to sanction the state of Israel itself. While diplomatic relations between the UK and Israel have grown strained under Labour, with the UK imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel, the Starmer government has maintained military cooperation with Israel throughout its ongoing military campaign in Gaza that has been widely described as genocide. As recently as March 2025, just months before Streeting sent his private messages, Starmer walked back comments from then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy that confirmed Israel had committed a breach of international law in Gaza.

  • Egyptian activist in ‘real danger’ in Oman as she faces extradition over social media posts

    Egyptian activist in ‘real danger’ in Oman as she faces extradition over social media posts

    A politically charged case spanning the Gulf and North Africa has sparked urgent alarm from human rights advocates, as an Egyptian dissident and her days-old newborn face forced extradition from Oman to Cairo, in what legal representatives say is a brazen misuse of international law enforcement frameworks built for transnational crime, not political repression.

  • Shias in Lucknow mourn Khamenei even as India strengthens ties with Israel

    Shias in Lucknow mourn Khamenei even as India strengthens ties with Israel

    Beneath the scorching dry-season winds that cut through the narrow lanes of Lucknow’s historic old city, an unmistakable display of solidarity with Iran fills every public space. At Hussainabad Chowk, the city’s bustling central open plaza, towering posters of the recently assassinated Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei billow, one bearing a Hindi inscription that reads: “Heartfelt and tearful homage to the great leader and guide of world peace and humanity, Martyr Ayatollah Sajjad Ali Husaini Khamenei Sahib.” Another poster positions Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, standing protectively behind his slain father, hands resting gently on his shoulders.

    Further into the warren of old city alleyways, reverence for Iran’s ayatollahs appears everywhere: hand-painted graffiti, framed portraits, and street-side murals line every wall. In a stark act of protest, Israeli and American flags are painted directly onto the dusty paving stones, alongside portraits of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, placed deliberately to be stepped on by passing pedestrians. Netanyahu’s image is the most heavily worn, reduced to faint fragments against the tattered blue-and-white backdrop of the Israeli flag, while Trump’s portrait remains partially intact—a vivid visual marker of the relative intensity of public anger toward each figure, shaped by their role in the strikes that killed Khamenei.

    This grassroots activism is not a new outburst: soon after the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, local shopkeepers in old Lucknow launched a grassroots boycott of American and Israeli-linked goods, pouring thousands of bottles of Coca-Cola down open drains. Today, the only cola stocked on store shelves is Campa Cola, a popular Indian-made alternative. What makes this display of anti-Israel protest particularly striking is its location: it unfolds in the country of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of Israel’s closest global allies.

    Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh, carries centuries of deep cultural and religious ties to Iran. Once ruled by the Nawabs of Lucknow, a Persian-origin dynasty that governed the Awadh region through the 18th and 19th centuries, the city grew into one of South Asia’s preeminent centers of Indo-Islamic culture, with its art, cuisine, music, and architecture all bearing enduring West Asian influences. Today, it is home to India’s largest Shia Muslim community, concentrated heavily in the old city’s winding neighborhoods.

    When news broke on February 28 of the joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Khamenei, spontaneous protests erupted across old Lucknow within hours. Chants of “America Murdabad” and “Israel Murdabad”—translated as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”—echoed off the Chowk’s historic sandstone walls. By sunset, thousands of mourners gathered at Bada Imambara, Lucknow’s iconic 18th-century Shia religious site and top tourist attraction, to light candles in honor of Khamenei, whom many now honor as a martyr.

    A historic slogan tied to the core of Shia identity was quickly reworked to reflect the moment: the centuries-old cry “Hussaini maaroge, har ghar Hussaini Niklega” (“If you kill one Hussaini, a hundred more will rise from every home”), rooted in the 680 CE martyrdom of Imam Hussain at the Battle of Karbala, became “Tum kitne Khamenei maaroge, har ghar se Khamenei niklega” (“If you kill one Khamenei, thousands more will emerge from every household”). The adaptation sent a clear message: the Shia community of Lucknow views itself as an integral part of the global Shia resistance movement.

    “Lucknow’s historical relationship with Iran is such that it was once called the Shiraz of the East,” explains Akbar Mehdi, a young Shia cleric originally from a small town east of Lucknow who now resides in the Iranian holy city of Qom. Mehdi returned to India for the holy month of Ramadan shortly before the strike and has been unable to return to Iran amid the ongoing conflict. “In dining customs, in everyday conversation, an Iranian imprint is clearly visible across our culture here,” he said.

    While connections between Lucknow and Iran predate the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the depth of ideological alignment grew dramatically in the decades that followed, according to Ziyaullah Siddiqui, co-editor of the Urdu-language news portal Qasidnama. His co-editor Shibli Beg explains that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s introduction of the concept of Wilayat-e-Faqih—rule by Islamic jurists as a temporary guardianship before the messianic return of the Mehdi—shifted the entire orientation of Lucknow’s Shia community. After 1979, the community’s center of gravity moved from local religious affairs to an increasingly Iran-centric global outlook, with hundreds of young Lucknow Shias traveling to Iran for religious education, and nearly all of the city’s most prominent senior clerics completing their studies in Iranian seminaries.

    The ancestral ties binding the two regions run even deeper than the revolution: just a short drive from Lucknow, the small village of Kintoor sits amid the lush, fertile paddy fields of the Gangetic Plains, and it is the ancestral birthplace of Khomeini himself. Khomeini’s grandfather, Syed Ahmad Musavi Hindi, was born in Kintoor in 1790 before migrating to the Iranian village of Khomein at age 40.

    In the neighboring village of Rasulpur, Middle East Eye met Rehan Kazmi, a local doctor, descendant of Khomeini, and distant cousin of Iran’s first revolutionary supreme leader, who also founded the Imam Khomeini Foundation to preserve the family’s ancestral connection to the region. “The Kazmi family of Rasulpur and the Kazmi-Musavi family of Kintoor share the same bloodline,” Kazmi explained during an interview in his clinic, where four framed images hang on the wall: a local Sufi saint Haji Waris Ali Shah, a piece of embroidered Islamic calligraphy, Ali Khamenei, and Ruhollah Khomeini. “Around 900 years ago, our ancestors moved to this land from Nishapur in Iran and settled here. We have been Indians ever since,” he said, recalling that even during his childhood in the village, Farsi was so commonly spoken that “even the chickens understood Farsi commands.”

    Kazmi recalled that within hours of news of Khamenei’s assassination breaking on February 28, villagers across the region took to the streets to condemn the strike and express solidarity with Iran. They marched carrying portraits of Khomeini and Khamenei, all local shops closed their doors, and the village observed three days of official mourning.

    While Lucknow is home to India’s largest Shia community, the city’s overall population is majority Hindu, and Uttar Pradesh is governed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a controversial Hindu nationalist priest-politician infamous for his anti-Muslim rhetoric and repeated actions that stoke inter-religious communal tension. He once claimed “Muslims did no favour to India by staying here.” Yet despite this tense political context, local journalist Siddiqui noted that aside from a tiny number of isolated provocations early on, the widespread pro-Iran protests have seen remarkably little communal pushback. “Lucknow is a city where Hindu-Muslim riots have never taken root. During the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, the city was largely spared the bloodshed that tore apart other parts of the subcontinent. People here are sensible. This is a city of tehzeeb—of civilisation,” he said.

    By mid-March, the nature of the solidarity movement shifted: large, public street protests gave way to coordinated humanitarian fundraising for Iranian civilians affected by the ongoing war. Even the poorest members of the community contributed what they could, Kazmi said. “Even very poor daily wage labourers gave whatever small change they had. It shows how deeply people here care about this cause.” One young donor, who himself relied on casual work to support his family and clearly had little to spare, told organizers: “Such is my love for Iran, I could not give less.”

    The gap between this widespread grassroots solidarity and India’s official foreign policy could not be wider. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in New Delhi maintains extremely close ties to Israel: India is the world’s largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, and just three days before the joint U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran began, Modi completed a high-profile state visit to Israel. Standing alongside Netanyahu on February 25, Modi declared: “Israel is the Fatherland, India is the Motherland,” and even noted that his birthday falls on the same date that India first formally recognized Israel, framing the alliance as a personally fated bond. Just two days after that visit, the war on Iran began.

    The conflict has already delivered tangible economic harm to India, which relies almost entirely on energy shipments passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Nine out of 10 Indian households rely on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders for cooking, and roughly 60% of India’s total LPG imports pass through the strategic waterway. From the first day of the war, Indian households faced sharp price hikes and long waiting lines for refills, and widespread public panic has gripped the country ever since. When negotiations between the U.S. and Iran collapsed in mid-May, Modi publicly called on Indian citizens to cut energy use by using public transport and working from home wherever possible.

    “Both the ordinary people of India and Iran are unhappy with India aligning so closely with Israel,” cleric Akbar Mehdi said. “People here can tell truth from falsehood. Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine—this is the path of truth, the path of Karbala, the path of Islam.”

    Today, India presents a picture of two competing national narratives existing side by side. On one side is the BJP government, which has refused to condemn Israel’s military campaign, even as its own supporters grow increasingly anxious about the economic fallout of the conflict. On the other side is the grassroots pro-Iran solidarity movement, whose leaders are hesitant to openly challenge the central government: after 12 years of BJP rule, India’s Muslim community as a whole, and Shia Muslims in particular, are a marginalized minority with very little representation in national politics, and face widespread systemic pressure. “We cannot speak openly against the government, because of the fear and the constant pressure we live under,” Mehdi explained.

    Once a leading global voice for Palestinian statehood and the first large country to cut diplomatic ties with apartheid South Africa, India now maintains a deliberate silence on the violation of Iran’s sovereignty, though it has also walked back its early overtly pro-Israel rhetoric in the face of growing domestic and regional discontent. Many critics in Lucknow argue that the BJP’s current foreign policy is unmoored and weak, leaving India increasingly isolated across West Asia as anti-Western and pro-resistance sentiment spreads across Asia.

    For Rehan Kazmi, the shift in India’s longstanding principles is the core of the problem. “The leaders who built independent India experienced oppression themselves, they stood with the victims of colonialism. They understood what was happening in Palestine, because they had fought the same fight. Our ancestors sacrificed everything to free this country. Today, the soul of India is under attack. If the soul is gone, the body has no meaning.”