war
“Death to the IDF”: A Chant Becomes a Global Reckoning
Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : What began as a defiant chant by a single British artist at Glastonbury has erupted into a global phenomenon—a symbolic battle cry that has echoed across continents. “Death to the IDF,” shouted from the stage by Bobby Vylan of the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan, is no longer just a slogan. It is a collective cry of the oppressed, a reflection of unspeakable suffering, and a moral indictment of what is increasingly seen around the world as one of the most brutal and morally bankrupt military forces in modern history: the Israel Defense Forces.
The chant, delivered live on BBC’s broadcast from Glastonbury 2025, was not a slip or a shock tactic—it was a deliberate, explosive act of protest against the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the West Bank. The reaction was immediate and deeply divided. The Israeli embassy in London called it “grotesque incitement.” The BBC apologized. Glastonbury’s organizers condemned the act. UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting, while denouncing the chant as appalling, said what few Western officials dare to utter publicly: “Get your own house in order.” He referred directly to the unchecked settler violence in the West Bank and the increasing brutality of Israel’s military operations. In one stroke, the moral lens was inverted—not on the protestor but on the perpetrators of the suffering.
Within hours, the chant had gone viral. From the streets of London and Berlin to the campuses of UCLA and Columbia, it was repeated, amplified, reinterpreted. In Johannesburg, banners bearing the phrase were raised next to Mandela’s warning that freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians. In Malaysia and Indonesia, it became a mainstay of anti-apartheid rallies. In Istanbul, it was sung from balconies during blackout protests. No PR campaign, no government declaration, no diplomatic silence could now erase it. What was once taboo was now mainstream—a visceral condemnation of what Israel has done and continues to do in Gaza and the West Bank under the silent complicity of the so-called civilized world.
And the rage behind the chant is not rhetorical. It is rooted in numbers that defy imagination. Since October 7, 2023, more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Over 14,000 of them were children. Thousands more remain under rubble. UNICEF reports that 9 out of 10 children in Gaza are acutely malnourished. According to WHO, 74% of Gaza’s hospitals are either completely destroyed or inoperable. The Red Crescent reports that over 300 paramedics have been killed in targeted strikes. The few surviving doctors speak of makeshift surgeries without anesthesia, of children screaming in agony as their limbs are amputated on cold concrete. One UN physician stationed in Rafah wrote in her dispatch: “This is not war. This is organized, mechanical, bureaucratized death.”
A young nurse from Médecins Sans Frontières wrote, “I have treated babies with phosphorous burns so deep I can see their bones glowing. I’ve seen a child still clinging to the leg of their dead mother, surrounded by debris, unaware that the mother is gone. We do not treat patients. We grieve for them while we try to save them.” These words are not exaggerations. They are real, raw testaments of horror. “Death to the IDF” is not a celebration of violence. It is a lament, a howl of anguish, a demand for the world to open its eyes.
And yet, instead of listening, the West is choosing repression. Donald Trump, now in his second term, ordered the revocation of Bob Vylan’s U.S. visa, calling the slogan “terrorist rhetoric.” But censorship only gave the chant more fuel. Protests erupted in front of U.S. consulates from Paris to Sao Paulo. Demonstrators carried signs that read: “You banned the voice. Not the truth.” Even progressive Jewish voices began to echo the sentiment—not as anti-Semitism, but as anti-militarism. “We will not let our identity be weaponized to protect genocide,” read one statement from a New York synagogue.
Israeli officials continue to invoke their mythology—that the IDF is the “most moral army in the world.” But the evidence now overwhelms the narrative. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem have all documented war crimes. The use of white phosphorus in civilian zones. The targeting of journalists. The siege of entire hospital networks. The starvation of refugee populations. And while Netanyahu claims this is all in the name of security, millions of people now see it for what it is: apartheid enforced by cluster bombs, domination enforced by siege, religion used to sanctify slaughter.
Israeli commentator Yehoshua Pfeffer, writing in defense of Israel, called the current moment a sacred process. He compared Israel’s suffering and response to the flowering of Aharon’s staff, a symbol of divine blessing and continuity. But what is blossoming in Gaza is not fruit—it is charred flesh. What is flowering is not hope—it is funerals. To argue that this slaughter is part of a divine process is to desecrate every teaching of justice, mercy, and humanity. While Pfeffer invokes scripture, Palestinian families dig through rubble to find the limbs of their children.
There is also a striking historical hypocrisy that the global south and Muslim world can no longer ignore. When Serbia constructed ethnic concentration camps in Bosnia and slaughtered thousands of Muslims, it was the United States under Bill Clinton—alongside NATO—that intervened militarily to stop the genocide and dismantle Yugoslavia. But now, when Israel is doing the same, with U.S.-supplied weapons, the very same West remains silent. Their eyes are closed. Their ears are stopped. Their hearts have ceased to beat. There is no urgent summit, no red line, no NATO intervention. The same global community that once promised “Never Again” now provides the funding, logistics, and diplomatic immunity that enables genocide in real time.
Not a single world power—be it the United States, China, Russia, the European Union, or the OIC—has moved decisively to stop Israel. The Muslim world, shamefully fractured, remains content issuing hollow condemnations. Worse, some of its own governments have joined hands with Israel and the U.S. to target Iran instead of standing by the children of Gaza. In doing so, they are no different from the tyrants they once condemned. They have failed. Morally. Spiritually. Historically.
The United Nations, meanwhile, has turned into a factory of eloquent failure. Its general secretaries and humanitarian envoys deliver beautiful speeches, full of metaphors and moral anguish, but they remain utterly toothless. Every ceasefire call ends in more bombs. Every resolution ends in more rubble. The normalization of death is the new global policy. The normalization of slaughter is a new political strategy. If this continues, then ethnic cleansing, starvation, and concentration camps will not only be accepted—they will be imitated elsewhere.
The psychological toll of this horror is now global. People with even a fragment of humanity are losing sleep, losing sanity, feeling helpless, disoriented, convulsed by the cruelty they witness. But there is one man who can stop it all—Donald J. Trump. He has the leverage, the influence, and the geopolitical weight. With a single phone call, with a single declaration, he could force Israel into ceasefire. But he has not. And in his inaction, he has become morally complicit. The world will remember that he could have stopped the genocide—and did not. That he could have saved children—and chose silence. If this slaughter continues, history will not honor him as a peace-bringer. It will record him as a facilitator of bloodshed.
And the Muslim nations that continue to fund Israel indirectly, that remain passive while their own faith is defiled and their brothers and sisters massacred, will share in that legacy of shame—not only in this world, but in the hereafter. They will not escape the moral consequences of their silence.
It is the sound of the world’s moral compass spinning wildly in search of true north. It is the voice of the end of our conscience, echoing across Gaza’s broken streets. It is the stitching of bullet-ripped bones under candlelight in overcrowded clinics. It is the bleeding of infants in the arms of paramedics who haven’t slept for days. And it is also the dark shadow that now hangs over the leadership of the entire world—from the United States to Europe, from the United Nations to the Muslim world. Because they have all become complicit in this crime. Israel may be the one pulling the trigger, but all those who fund, defend, and shield it are part of the killing.
If justice cannot be delivered to the people of Palestine today, if those children buried under the rubble of Rafah cannot find justice in this era of humanity, then rest assured—justice will come. It may come not now, not next year, not even in this generation. But justice delayed is not justice denied. Be it in 50 years, or 500, the reckoning will come. Because blood has memory. Suffering writes history. And silence, too, leaves a legacy.
A man who escaped the last functioning hospital in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher before a reported massacre by paramilitary troops says he has lost all hope and happiness.
“I have lost my colleagues,” Abdu-Rabbu Ahmed, a laboratory technician at the Saudi Maternity Hospital, told the BBC.
“I have lost the people whose faces I used to see smiling… It feels as if you lost a big part of your body or your soul.”
He was speaking to us from a displaced persons camp in Tawila some 70km (43 miles) to the west of el-Fasher, the regional hub which was taken over by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the last week of October after an 18-month siege.
The RSF has been fighting the Sudanese army since April 2023, when a power struggle between their leaders erupted into a civil war.
The alleged killings of at least 460 patients and their companions at the Saudi Hospital were one of the most shocking among widespread accounts of atrocities – some of them filmed by RSF fighters and posted to social media.
In a statement of condemnation, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was “appalled and deeply shocked” by the reported shootings, and by the abductions of six health workers – four doctors, a nurse and a pharmacist.
The RSF has dismissed the accusations as disinformation, declaring that all of el-Fasher’s hospitals had been abandoned. It disputed the claims by filming a video inside the hospital grounds showing female volunteers tending to patients.
A freelancer based in Tawila gathered interviews for the BBC.
Mr Ahmed told him he had carried on working at Saudi Hospital since the beginning of the war, despite regular shelling by artillery, tanks and drones – which destroyed parts of the buildings and injured doctors and nurses as well as patients.
Medical staff used to share what little food was available as the RSF blockade tightened, he said, sometimes working without breakfast or lunch.
Most of them fled when the paramilitary fighters launched their final assault.
“The shelling started around six in the morning,” Mr Ahmed said.
“All civilians and soldiers headed out towards the southern side. There was a state of terror, and as we walked, drones were bombing us. And heavy artillery too – I saw many people die on the spot, there was no-one who could save them.”
Mr Ahmed said some of the fleeing medical workers arrived with him in Tawila, but many were detained in locations north-west of the city, naming the Garni area, the villages of Turra and Hilla al-Sheikh and the town of Korma.
Some were transferred to Nyala, he said, the RSF’s de facto capital in South Darfur.
“This is the information I received from colleagues we know,” he told the BBC, saying that he later heard medical staff who remained at the hospital were executed.
Mr Ahmed also lost much of his family: a sister and two brothers were killed that day, and his parents are missing.
“I am very worried about the fate of the people inside el-Fasher,” he added.
“They may be killed. And they may be used as human shields against the [Sudanese air force] airstrikes.”
Like many other men suspected of being soldiers, Mr Abdu-Teia was stopped at the Garni checkpoint and interrogated, he says. The two men with him were taken, but the RSF let him go.
“They didn’t beat me, but they questioned me a lot, because of my injury, I think. They said: ‘We know you are a soldier, but you’re finished – you will die on the road. So just go.”
Mr Abdu-Teia says the RSF brought some medicine to Garni but “the injuries were too many – two or three people died every hour.
“The same day we arrived, vehicles came and took people to unknown places. Any young man who looked physically OK was taken.”
He managed to get a lift to Tawila from “people who had cars”. They charged passengers 500,000 Sudanese pounds ($830, £630) and turned on wi-fi hotspots so they could call their families to transfer money, he said. “We left with them – we had nothing, not even plans.”
Many children arrived at the Tawila camps without parents. Fifteen-year-old Eman was one of them.
Her father was killed in a drone strike in el-Fasher, she told the BBC, and her mother and brother were detained by the RSF as they fled.
“Whoever did not die, [the RSF] ran them over with vehicles,” she said. “They took our belongings and told us all of you are soldiers. They beat my brother and choked him with a chain.
“They wanted to beat my mother. She told us: ‘Go, I will come to you.’ We got into a vehicle and left. They did not allow my brother to get into the vehicle. We left them behind.”
Eman escaped but saw other girls and women who did not.
“They took some women. They took them in their vehicles and stabbed some of them with knives. Some were taken while their mothers couldn’t do anything.”
Female survivors have told horrific stories of gang rapes and the abduction of young girls.
Another teenager on her own, 14-year-old Samar, said she had lost her mother in the chaos at the Garni checkpoint, and her father was arrested.
She was told he was taken to the Children’s Hospital in el-Fasher.
That building had reportedly been serving as an RSF detention centre, and it is where the Yale researchers also said satellite images showed evidence of killings: apparent clusters of bodies as well as earth excavations that could have been a mass grave.
The RSF has issued videos to counter these allegations, declaring that the Children’s Hospital in el-Fasher is ready to receive patients.
One shows a man dressed in a blazer standing outside its gate with a group of what appear to be doctors in hospital scrubs.
“These medical personnel and cadres, they are not hostages,” the man in the blazer says. “We are not taking them as war hostages. They are free. They are free to practise medicine.”
Another man in the video, who introduces himself as Dr Ishaq Abdul Mahmoud, associate professor of paediatrics and child health at el-Fasher University, says: “We are here to help any person in need of medical service.
“We are out of politics. Whether soldiers or [civilians] we are ready to help them.”
Dr Elsheikh of the Sudan Doctors Network dismisses the RSF videos as propaganda.
And Mr Ahmed, the Saudi Hospital laboratory technician in Tawila, knows what he has seen, and he has seen too much.
“I do not have any hope of returning to el-Fasher,” he says.
“After everything that happened and everything I saw. Even if there was a small hope, I remember what happened in front of me.”
Mohamed Zakaria is a freelance journalist from Darfur based in Kampala
Additional reporting by BBC Verify’s Peter Mwai
At least six people have died after Russia launched hundreds of missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure and residential targets in Ukraine overnight.
A strike on an apartment building in the city of Dnipro killed two people and wounded 12, while three died in Zaporizhzhia.
In all, 25 locations across Ukraine, including the capital city Kyiv, were hit, leaving many areas without electricity and heating. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Telegram that major energy facilities were damaged in the Poltava, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions, and work was under way to restore power.
In Russia, the defence ministry said its forces had shot down 79 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched more than 450 exploding bomber drones and 45 missiles. Nine missiles and 406 drones were reportedly shot down.
The Ukrainian Energy Ministry said there were power cuts in the Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhya, Odesa and Kirovohrad regions, but restoration work was ongoing.
Svyrydenko said critical infrastructure facilities have already been reconnected, and water supply is being maintained using generators.
Russia argues its attacks on energy targets are aimed at the Ukrainian military.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter are now a familiar part of this war. But ministers in Kyiv are acutely concerned that Moscow is not just trying to damage the morale of Ukraine’s people but also bring its economy to a standstill by collapsing its energy network.
Analysts say this fourth winter of Russia’s full scale invasion will prove a significant test of Ukraine’s defensive resilience.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks showed there must be “no exceptions” to Western sanctions on Russian energy as a way of putting pressure on Moscow.
The missile strikes came only hours after the US gave Hungary a one-year exemption from restrictions on buying oil and gas from Russia.
In October, the US effectively blacklisted two of Russia’s largest oil companies, threatening sanctions on those who buy from them.
But on Friday, during a visit to Washington by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – a close personal and political ally of Donald Trump – the US president announced the exemption for Budapest.
In a message on Telegram, Zelensky said the overnight attacks showed that “pressure must be intensified” on Russia.
He said “for every Moscow strike on energy infrastructure – aimed at harming ordinary people before winter – there must be a sanctions response targeting all Russian energy, with no exceptions”.
He said Ukraine expected “relevant decisions from the US, Europe and the G7”.
Debates about sanctions can sometimes seem technical or diplomatic. But for people in Ukraine, they are very real.
If Russia can sell its oil to Hungary, it can use the money earned to build more drones and missiles, like those it launched against Ukraine on Friday night.
war
Israeli military’s ex-top lawyer arrested over leak of video allegedly showing Palestinian detainee abuse
The former top lawyer in the Israeli military has been arrested, as a political showdown deepens over the leaking of a video that allegedly shows severe abuse of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers.
Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned as the Military Advocate General of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) last week, saying that she took full responsibility for the leak.
On Sunday, the story took a darker turn when she was reported as missing, with police mounting an hours-long search for her on a beach north of Tel Aviv.
She was subsequently found alive and well, police said, but was then taken into custody.
The fallout from the leaked video is intensifying by the day.
Broadcast in August 2024 on an Israeli news channel, the footage shows reserve soldiers at the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel taking aside a detainee, then surrounding him with riot shields to block visibility while he was allegedly beaten and stabbed in the rectum with a sharp object.
The detainee was treated for severe injuries.
Five reservists were charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm to the detainee. They have denied the charges and have not been named.
On Sunday, four of the reservists wore black balaclavas to hide their faces as they appeared at a news conference outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem along with their lawyers, who demanded the dismissal of their trial.
Adi Keidar, a lawyer from the right-wing legal aid organisation Honenu, claimed his clients were subject to “to a faulty, biased and completely cooked-up legal process”.
On Monday, it emerged the detainee at the centre of the case was released to Gaza in October as part of an exchange with Hamas of convicted prisoners and detainees held without charge by Israel for hostages held by Hamas since 7 October 2023.
Last week, a criminal investigation was launched into the leaking of the video.
Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi was put on leave while the inquiry took place.
On Friday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said she would not be allowed to return to her post.
Shortly after that, Gen Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned.
In her resignation letter, she said she took full responsibility for any material that was released to the media from the unit.
“I approved the release of material to the media in an attempt to counter false propaganda against the army’s law enforcement authorities,” she said.
That is a reference to efforts by some right-wing political figures in Israel to claim that the allegations of severe abuse of the Palestinian detainee had been fabricated.
She added: “It is our duty to investigate whenever there is reasonable suspicion of acts of violence against a detainee.”
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