标签： Asia

It has been exactly 12 months since a brutal militant attack targeting tourists in the scenic Himalayan town of Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, snatched 26 innocent lives and shattered dozens of families forever. The attack, counted among the deadliest assaults on civilians in the restive region in decades, did not just trigger a dramatic escalation of cross-border tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan – it also left a generations-long trail of private pain that time has not erased, only reshaped. For the widows and parents of the victims, learning to live with absence has become a daily, quiet act of resilience, carried out in vastly different ways that all bear the weight of unthinkable loss.

The contested region of Kashmir has been claimed in full by both India and Pakistan since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, with the two nations splitting control of the territory and fighting multiple full-scale wars over it. On April 22, 2025, militants opened fire on civilians visiting Baisaran Valley, a stunning alpine meadow that draws thousands of tourists to Pahalgam every year. Most of those killed were young Hindu men, many of whom were at the very start of their adult lives: newlyweds, rising professionals, whose futures were cut down in an act of targeted violence.

In the immediate aftermath, New Delhi formally accused Pakistan of enabling the attack, claiming the assault was carried out by a militant group based on Pakistani soil – a claim Islamabad quickly and firmly denied. Two weeks after the killings, India launched preemptive air strikes targeting what it said were militant group training bases inside Pakistani territory. The strike set off four days of intense cross-border shelling and aerial exchanges that pushed the two nuclear-armed powers to the brink of full-scale conflict, until a widely unexpected ceasefire was announced to de-escalate tensions. While international attention has long moved on from that crisis, for the families of the 26 victims, the grief remains an unshakable daily presence.

For 26-year-old Aishanya Dwivedi, the attack stole her husband Shubham just two months after their wedding. Today, in the Kanpur home she once shared with Shubham, the bedroom they lived in remains frozen in time. Every item – the unmade bed, the standing cupboard, even the small wall mirror Shubham installed after she joked about the empty space above their dresser – sits exactly where it was the day they left for their Kashmir holiday. “That side of the bed is still Shubham’s,” Aishanya explains, gesturing to the unused half she keeps piled with pillows. “I never sit or lie there. I even avoid it in my sleep.”

Aishanya still recalls the day of the attack in sharp, unwavering detail. After arriving in Kashmir with a group of 11 family members, the couple ventured alone to the Baisaran Valley meadow while the rest of their group stayed behind in Pahalgam. As they walked through the grass, a man approached them, asked Shubham what his religion was, and opened fire. Aishanya says she begged the attackers to kill her too, but they left her alive, alone with the grief that would shape the rest of her life.

“I didn’t get enough time to build a lifetime of memories with him,” Aishanya told BBC Hindi in an interview marking the one-year anniversary. “But the memories he did give me are enough to carry me through the rest of my life.” Her phone lock screen still holds an unposed candid from their wedding day, and she often scrolls through her photo gallery to find old pictures of Shubham, replaying old voice notes and videos to hold onto the smallest details: the sound of his laugh, the way he would giggle at bad jokes.

In the months after the attack, Aishanya found that speaking publicly about Shubham and her grief became a form of quiet therapy. What started as answering questions from reporters and family friends became a way to keep his memory alive, even when it drew harsh online backlash. After she publicly called out Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to name the Pahalgam victims in his parliamentary address following India’s air strikes, she was targeted by online trolls who criticized her public grief. But the harassment has not silenced her. “I will speak, I will go out, I will do everything I want,” she says. “Those people have no right to tell me how to grieve my husband.”

Every evening, Aishanya sits with her in-laws for an hour, and the three of them talk about Shubham, circling back to the same small stories and memories, each time softening the edge of the pain just a little. She has started writing down her feelings, and even though she often ends up crying mid-entry, she says releasing the pain is a necessary part of healing. A trained classical dancer, she has not yet been able to return to the stage – “My feet just won’t move,” she says – but she holds out hope that she will find her way back to the art one day. Small, unexpected moments still feel like signs Shubham is with her: a rainbow visible from a plane window while playing one of his favorite songs, a glance at the full moon from her balcony that brings a split second of feeling he is right beside her. “The grief of losing a husband will never go away completely,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stop living.”

For another family, grief takes a far quieter form. Rajesh Narwal lost his 26-year-old son Vinay, an Indian naval officer who was just six days into his honeymoon in Kashmir when he was killed in the attack. In the hours after the shooting, a photograph of Vinay’s bride sitting motionless beside his body spread virally across Indian social media, becoming a searing symbol of the attack’s senseless brutality. Today, back at the Narwal family home, none of Vinay’s belongings have been unpacked from the bags he brought on his honeymoon. Most family members still cannot bring themselves to say his name out loud, and the family has not hung a single photograph of him anywhere on the walls.

“None of us can find the courage to talk about it,” Rajesh says. “We can’t even bear to put his photo up.” But the memories do not stay buried. Rajesh still finds himself automatically falling into old routines: when he comes home from work every day, he still half-expects Vinay to be waiting in the courtyard, ready for their daily game of cricket, a ritual they kept from Vinay’s childhood through his early adulthood. “We just don’t know how to process this pain. We’re still grieving, every single day,” Rajesh says. “I can distract myself at work, but the second I walk through the front door, it feels like someone presses on a raw nerve. The pain is unbearable.”

One year after the attack that upended their lives, both families have carved out different ways to live with the hole the violence left behind. One keeps memory alive through open, unapologetic speech; the other holds it close through silence. Both are learning to rebuild their lives around the absence of the people they loved, carrying their memories forward even as they learn to breathe again. The attack that shook South Asia and brought two nuclear powers to the edge of war is now remembered most vividly not in official statements or security briefings, but in the frozen bedrooms and quiet courtyards of the families who will never be the same.

A growing international movement of artists and cultural figures is escalating pressure on the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to bar Israel from the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, with more than 1,100 signatories backing a public boycott call over Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that critics label genocide. The open letter, released jointly Tuesday by campaign coalitions No Music for Genocide and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (a core part of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement), argues that allowing Israel to compete serves to whitewash the country’s military actions against Palestinian civilians.

Co-signed by high-profile names including rapper Macklemore, British singer Paloma Faith, Irish rap group Kneecap, British trip-hop collective Massive Attack, and multiple former Eurovision champions, the letter challenges the moral legitimacy of holding the 70th edition of the contest in Vienna next year against the backdrop of crisis in Gaza. “How can any performer or Eurovision fan in good conscience participate at the contest’s next edition in Austria amidst US-Israeli plans for hyper-surveilled concentration camps in ‘New Gaza’?” the letter reads. “There are moments in time when passive silence is not an option. We refuse to be silent when Israel’s genocidal violence soundtracks and silences Palestinian lives.”

A core pillar of the signatories’ criticism is the EBU’s widely decried double standard in its handling of conflicting geopolitical conflicts. In 2022, just weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EBU quickly moved to ban Russia from competing, arguing that the “unprecedented crisis” meant Russian participation would “bring the competition into disrepute.” More than 30 months into Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which the Gaza Ministry of Health reports has killed over 72,000 people, the EBU has repeatedly rejected calls to eject Israel and upheld the eligibility of Israeli public broadcaster Kan to enter the contest.

“The EBU’s hypocritical responses to Russia’s and Israel’s crimes have removed any illusion of Eurovision’s claimed ‘neutrality’,” the letter continues. “Yet more than 30 months of genocide in Gaza – alongside ethnic cleansing and land theft in the besieged West Bank – aren’t considered sufficient to apply the same policy to Israel.”

The boycott call comes after a months-long chain of protests that have already split the 2026 contest. When the EBU rejected a proposal to hold a binding vote on expelling Israel during its December governing body meeting, five member broadcasters from Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain announced they would withdraw from the Vienna event entirely. Reporting from Israeli outlet Ynet last year confirmed that Israeli President Isaac Herzog assembled a dedicated lobbying team to pressure EBU member states directly, with the explicit goal of blocking the binding vote that Israeli officials anticipated they would lose.

The open letter praised the withdrawing countries for their stance, adding that organizers also commend “the many national selection finalists committing to refuse to go to Eurovision.” This wave of protest follows a high-profile individual act of resistance from 2024 Eurovision champion Nemo, the Swiss winner who returned their trophy earlier this year after the EBU confirmed Israel would be allowed to compete in the 2025 contest. As the 2026 event approaches, the boycott campaign continues to gain momentum among cultural workers, putting increasing pressure on the EBU to reverse its stance on Israeli participation.

On a Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, a deadly attack carried out by Israeli settlers at a local school left two Palestinians dead and at least four others wounded, according to regional medical and official sources. The Palestinian Ministry of Health released the identities of the fatal victims: 14-year-old student Aws Hamdi al-Nassan and 32-year-old Jihad Marzouq Abu Naiem. The assault unfolded at a school in al-Mughayyir, a village located northeast of the Palestinian administrative center of Ramallah.

Local human rights group Al-Baidar documented escalating tensions in the area just moments before the shooting. The organization confirmed that groups of settlers, wearing uniforms nearly identical to standard Israeli military attire, had launched an earlier attempt to forcibly expel local Palestinian farmers from their agricultural land south of al-Mughayyir. When the settlers entered the cultivated plots to block farmers from accessing and working their property, tensions rose rapidly, setting the stage for the subsequent violent attack. A post from Quds News Network on social platform X (formerly Twitter) further clarified that five students were hit by live fire during the incident, with one suffering a life-threatening gunshot wound to the head.

The deadly school attack is not an isolated incident: it comes amid a dramatic, well-documented spike in daily settler violence targeting Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank. On the same day as the al-Mughayyir shooting, separate incidents of Israeli settler disruption and infrastructure destruction were recorded across the region. In the northern Jordan Valley’s Khirbet Samra area, Israeli settlers backed by Israeli military forces intercepted and detained a passing commercial truck, blocking it from continuing its route and disrupting local transportation routes. Hours later, Israeli forces carried out the demolition of al-Maleh primary school, another blow to Palestinian civilian infrastructure in the area.

While settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is a longstanding issue, data confirms that the frequency and severity of these attacks have increased sharply since October 2023. In addition to growing use of live ammunition by settlers, the region has seen a systematic campaign of forced displacement targeting Palestinian nomadic communities. Official figures from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission underscore the scale of the escalation: the group recorded 497 separate attacks against Palestinians and their property across the occupied West Bank in March alone, a surge that left nine Palestinians dead in that single month.

This report was originally published by Middle East Eye, an outlet that provides independent, in-depth coverage of developments across the Middle East, North Africa, and surrounding regions.

A firestorm of global and regional criticism has erupted after Israel announced that a controversial rabbi closely associated with the mass demolition of Palestinian residential structures in Gaza will receive one of the country’s highest civilian honors: lighting a ceremonial torch at the national Independence Day event. The annual celebration, scheduled this year for April 21, marks the 1948 establishment of the Israeli state — a date Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” which saw the forced displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands.

The selection of Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, 54, for the honor came from populist right-wing Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev, who named him as one of 12 torch-lighters chosen to represent citizens deemed to have made exceptional contributions to Israeli society. The high-profile ceremony is routinely attended by top Israeli government officials and senior military leadership.
Beyond his work in Gaza, Zarbiv’s own background is rooted in contested occupied territory. He currently serves as a rabbinical court judge in Ariel, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank that is illegal under international law. He resides in Beit El, another illegal West Bank settlement, where his personal residence was constructed illegally on privately owned Palestinian land. Just last week, an Israeli judicial oversight body received a formal complaint alleging that Zarbiv’s home violates Israeli domestic law as well, since it was built outside the officially marked boundaries of the settlement.
Zarbiv gained nationwide notoriety in Israel during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, where he spent more than a year working as an operator of a D9 bulldozer tasked with demolishing Palestinian civilian homes. He openly documented his work on camera, often filming himself while flattening residential structures while reciting passages from the Torah and blowing a traditional shofar. His incendiary public comments have drawn widespread condemnation: in one widely circulated video, with the rubble of destroyed Palestinian homes visible in the background, he declared, “You will have nothing left” and “We will flatten you and destroy you.” In another recording, he claimed Palestinian homes held “profound impurity” that required total destruction, arguing that “not a single tree is untouched by it.”
In a January 2025 interview, Zarbiv claimed he demolished “50 homes on average per week” during his time in Gaza, describing the practice of bulldozing civilian structures as “an art form we’ve acquired.” He made further inflammatory remarks about displaced Palestinians, stating, “They have nothing to return to in Rafah and Jabalia… tens of thousands of families have no papers, childhood photos, ID cards, no homes – they have nothing.” He also claimed that “thousands of Palestinians were killed and left uncollected, to the point that they were reportedly eaten by cats and dogs because no one came to retrieve the bodies.”
His notoriety has grown to the point that his name has entered colloquial Israeli usage as a verb: “to Zarbiv” now means to flatten a structure, in reference to his work in Gaza. A viral sticker depicting Zarbiv atop a D9 bulldozer has circulated widely across Israeli social media. Most recently, new footage has emerged showing Zarbiv participating in home demolitions in southern Lebanon, expanding his documented record of property destruction outside Gaza.
Zarbiv has long faced legal pushback for his actions. In 2024, the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a formal complaint against him with the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling for his immediate arrest. The legal organization submitted substantial evidence drawn from Zarbiv’s own public interviews and social media posts, accusing him of violating the Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute through alleged attacks on civilian populations, the deliberate destruction of civilian property not justified by military necessity, and the intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure. Middle East Eye reached out to the Israeli Embassy in London to request comment on the controversy, but has not yet received a response.
Leading Israeli media have also decried the decision to honor Zarbiv. In a recent front-page editorial, leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz argued that the choice of Zarbiv sends a clear message to the international community about current Israeli state values. “A country that chooses to honour and esteem someone who has become a symbol of the flattening of Gaza is telling the world that it sees him and his values as deserving respect and as representing the state,” the editorial read. It added, “Zarbiv indeed deserves to light an Independence Day torch: not because he is worthy of the honour, but because Israel has lost its way, its moral compass and its conscience. Using the Hebrew conjugation, it has ‘Zarbived’, if you will, Gaza and is proud of it. What Israel has done in Gaza is an indelible stain. Zarbiv represents the image of the state today.”
This reporting comes from Middle East Eye, an independent outlet specializing in unrivaled on-the-ground coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

A fatal collision early Tuesday morning near the city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has claimed the life of a 16-year-old Palestinian teenager, sparking new scrutiny of ongoing Israeli settlement activity in the territory that is widely deemed illegal under international law.

The victim has been identified by local authorities as Mohammad Majdi al-Jaabir, a resident of Hebron who was en route to school on his bicycle when the incident occurred just after 6 a.m. local time, according to Palestinian official news agency Wafa. The crash unfolded at the Beit Einun junction on Route 60, the main highway connecting to the controversial Kiryat Arba Israeli settlement, where al-Jaabir was rushed to a local hospital with critical injuries that ultimately proved fatal.

The vehicle that struck the teen is operated by Magen, a private Israeli security firm contracted to provide protection for senior Israeli government officials. Initial regional reports differed on which minister the convoy was assigned to: one initial account linked the convoy to Orit Strock, Israel’s current settlement affairs minister, who resides in an illegal Hebron-area settlement. Other early reports associated the convoy with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who also maintains a residence in an illegal Hebron settlement.

Ben Gvir’s office has since issued an official statement distancing the minister from the incident. The office claimed the vehicle “was not the minister’s and the minister was not at the scene,” and added that al-Jaabir had run a red light, a fault that the statement blames for causing the collision. The statement also confirmed that the vehicle’s driver had been taken to a local hospital for evaluation, with local media reporting the driver only sustained minor injuries. Israeli law enforcement authorities have confirmed they have launched a formal investigation into the circumstances of the crash, though no preliminary findings have been released to the public as of yet.

The Kiryat Arba settlement, at whose access route the collision occurred, carries a particularly fraught history in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Founded in 1968, shortly after Israel seized the West Bank in the Six-Day War, it has long been a center of religious Zionist ideology and a stronghold for extremist pro-settlement factions. It is the burial site of Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler who carried out the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, including multiple children. The settlement also hosts Kahane Park, named for Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish supremacist movement Kach, which has been formally designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israeli governments.

Today, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers—including multiple top officials in Israel’s current far-right government—reside in over 300 formal settlements and unauthorized outposts across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The global community has consistently held that all Israeli settlement construction in occupied Palestinian territories violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and international law, a position the Israeli government has rejected in recent years.