by ALI ABOU JBARA

Behind the polished image of Qatar’s flagship media project lies a tightening grip on dissent, where speech – and even silence – is increasingly policed in line with shifting regional alignments.

The choice of a cubic structure for the building in Education City was not incidental, nor merely an architectural decision. The project, launched under the umbrella of Northwestern University in Qatar and promoted as a global symbol of free media, was framed as a new “Media Kaaba” – a center around which narratives revolve, and a supposed beacon of free expression in the Arab world.

Yet this polished image has steadily unraveled with each real political test. The US-Israeli war on Iran proved decisive, stripping away what remained of the facade and exposing the “Media Kaaba” as little more than a soft projection masking far firmer policies aimed at controlling public opinion.

At a sensitive regional moment, Qatar did not confine itself to articulating positions in international forums. It turned inward. The public sphere began to be reshaped with visible force. The issue is no longer limited to dissenting voices – it now extends to those who remain silent. The emerging equation leaves no room for neutrality: align fully with the official narrative, or fall under suspicion.

This shift is reflected in a wave of arrests targeting dozens, even hundreds, of residents from various nationalities under vague charges such as “inciting public opinion” and “spreading rumors” – charges broad enough to capture virtually any speech deemed undesirable.

Baraa Rayan: a tweet and forced exile

The case of Palestinian academic Baraa Nizar Rayan stands as one of the clearest examples. Rayan, who is the son of a Hamas leader and professor at Qatar University, posted a tweet stating: “They paid Trump trillions to protect them, but instead he set their house on fire. So Learn from this, O people of insight.”

The tweet posted after the 12-day June war last year fell squarely within the bounds of political critique, pointing to the contradiction of massive financial outlays to the US alongside the outbreak of war in the region. But even that narrow margin proved intolerable.

Within less than 24 hours, Rayan was summoned, arrested, and subjected to intensive interrogation and pressure, including demands to unlock his phone and surrender personal accounts. His refusal – rooted in protecting his family’s privacy – was met with further escalation. 

The episode concluded with his deportation alongside his family, a ban on his return, and the loss of his livelihood. He was charged with “inciting public opinion,” an offense carrying a potential three-year prison sentence.

What deepens the case is what sources tell The Cradle: Qatari authorities allegedly asked Hamas to intervene and pressure Rayan to delete the tweet and close his account. 

According to the sources, the movement complied, pointing to a notable overlap between security coordination, political pressure, and influence networks.

When silence is treated as defiance

If Rayan’s case illustrates the limits of speech, the arrest of political analyst Saeed Ziad reveals something more fundamental: the criminalization of silence itself.

The Cradle for more

Is the United States on the verge of another financial crisis? Some top Wall Street executives fear the bankruptcies in the $3 trillion private credit industry could spread, as firms prevent investors from withdrawing their capital, in what resembles a bank run. Then there are problems with the AI bubble and Big Tech stock market bloat. Ben Norton explains.

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by N. R. MOHANTY

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. It will prove to be the US’ Achilles heel, like Afghanistan and Vietnam did before.

The war in West Asia has entered its second month. It’s difficult to surmise how and when this raging war will come to an end. But one thing is certain: at the end of this war, the politics in West Asia would undergo a sea change. United States (US) President Donald Trump has promised the world that he will bomb Iran into the ‘Stone Age’, but it appears that even a flattened Iran is likely to reorder how the US and its client state Israel operate with impunity in West Asia.

A war between Israel and Iran would have made it a West Asian war; but the active involvement of America, the world’s mightiest economic and military power, on the side of Israel has lent it a global character. Iran is clearly vulnerable to complete decimation. It could have taken on Israel on its own, but to fight the combined might of Israel and the US makes it like the proverbial David vs Goliath battle.

Like Trump and Netanyahu, the rest of the world had expected Iran to cave in on the very first day of the surgical bombings that killed top Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But that Iran has not only survived them but has been able to retaliate, and retaliate fiercely, despite being subjected to carpet bombing over the last several weeks tells us a different story.

In the last 80 years, since the Second World War, the West led by the US set the template for the world order. The former Soviet Union was a challenger to that order for almost four decades. After its disintegration in the 1990s, the US emerged as a unipolar arbiter of the rules of the international order.

China has evolved as a countervailing world power in the 21st century, both economically and militarily, but it has not yet engaged in any direct military battles against the West or any of its puppet regimes to establish its supremacy on the world map. China remains engaged with the West for economic reasons.

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Many countries are highly critical of the Zionist state, but would not like to burn bridges with the US, of which Israel is the foster child. But there is no place for such hypocrisy in Islamic Iran’s foreign policy. It has called a spade a spade and it has paid a heavy price for it – it has faced severe sanctions ordained by the US, crippling its economy.

Countries like India, with a centuries-long relationship with Persian civilisation, have refrained from any trade with Iran in order to avoid the wrath of the US. Iran has survived largely thanks to China, which has defied the Western sanctions and continued its trade with Iran. China, in fact, accounts for more than 80% of Iran’s export of oil, which is a lifeline for Iran’s economy.

That leaves Iran in an unenviable position; it sups with the enemies of the West while all other countries of West Asia are not only client states of the US, they are also eager to break bread with Israel to remain in the good books of their common Master. In this West Asian power play, Iran stands out as a sore thumb.

Israel wants complete monopoly in the affairs of West Asia so that it can establish Greater Israel by killing or displacing all Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza and by partitioning Lebanon. Iran is the sole obstacle in this path. So long as it stands its ground, Israel cannot complete its colonial mission. Israel also knows that it could not militarily take on Iran alone. That’s why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been soliciting US support in the venture to obliterate Iran.

Successive US presidents had refused to take the bait as Iran never posed any direct military threat to Israel, and it could not be a military threat to the US, located continents away.

In fact, Iran’s military preparedness has always been of a defensive kind, to protect itself from an openly aggressive and expansionist Israel. It militarily collaborated with resistance groups in Palestine and Lebanon only to help them defend themselves from the Israeli military onslaught.

But this time Netanyahu succeeded in doing a Winston Churchill. During the Second World War, the British Prime Minister had managed to persuade the US to break with its policy of isolationism and join on the side of the allied forces ranged against the military axis led by Nazi Germany. And that proved decisive in the victory of allied powers. The Israeli Prime Minister succeeded in enticing President Trump for a swift Iranian adventure that would assure him the top billing in American history as a decisive president.

But the script went awry. Iran, despite carpet bombardment by both Israel and the US, didn’t crumble. It not only stood firm but also gave back an eye for an eye. Its unique ballistic missile arsenal, buried deep inside mountain trenches, was beyond the reach of powerful American bombs.

The Wire for more

by B. R. GOWANI

Mahsa Amini/Zhina Amini

 in 1979, Iran's secular US-supported tyrant was forced to leave
the replacement was a Muslim tyrant -- who was equally cruel
 Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was out and into the US lap fell
 Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was in, after a long exile

a month and quarter after his arrival, Khomeini issued hijab order:
"At Islamic ministries women should not appear naked.
Women can be present so long as they are with hijab.
They face no barrier to work as long as they observe Islamic hijab."

the same year in July, women everywhere had to wear hijab
another strict order was issued on August 9, 1983:
"Women who appear in public without religious hijab
will be sentenced to whipping up to 74 lashes."

religious rulers saw women/girls with uncovered hair as "naked"
blind rulers couldn't see how bloody naked they themselves were
naked rulers have always been around in almost every country
currently we're blessed with Trump, Netanyahu, Modi, Munir, etc.

Mahsa means "like the moon" or "moon-like"
Jina or Zhina in Kurdish language means "life"
Zhina belonged to persecuted minority Kurdish community
Jina Amini or Mahsa Amini wanted to become a doctor

with her brother she was visiting the capital Tehran
Iran’s “morality” police (gasht-e ershad) stopped her
the reason being her hair were not properly covered
she was pushed into a van and was beaten

her brother was assaulted too when he protested
they were told that Mahsa will attend "educational" class
education was about how a woman should dress
the education institute was the Vozara detention centre

in the van, Zhina was tortured and suffered head injury
Jina went into coma and was transferred to Kasra hospital

arrested on September 13, Mahsa died on September 6, 2022 at age 22
within three days, the young moon full of life lost its light, as it
couldn't withstand the religious sun's oppressive and scorching heat

Hypocrisy

The young Kurdish-Iranian girl’s murder by Iranian police on September 16, 2022, for not wearing a hijab properly, was a great tragedy. It showed how men in most societies still control women for one reason or another and can go to any extent if their decree faces defiance.

In the US, the National Partnership for Women and Families have listed 55 ways in which Donald Trump presidency has harmed women and families, in the first year of his second term.

Zhina/Mahsa Amini’s murder became political for Western leaders — as usual. These countries have a lot of rot in their own countries and a past full of land grabs, genocides, and violence in the name of superiority, democracy, human rights, and so on. And the present is not any better, either, but full of overt/covert wars and exploitation.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Justin Trudeau, and so many others, criticized Iran’s leaders for Mahsa’s murder. (See more names here.) Former queen of Iran Farah Pahlavi also joined the chorus.

(Biden who stood with the “brave women of Iran” when Mahsa was killed, didn’t say anything about Zainab al-Khazali, who was killed in US bombing around the same time!)

Did any of the above leaders voice concern after US bombing of a school in Iran? NO.

On February 28, 2026, Israel incited the US under Trump; both attacked Iran, for no reason at all. On the very first day, the US bombed a school killing 156 people, revised figure. There were 120 students (73 boys and 47 girls), 26 teachers (all women), 7 parents of students (4 men and 3 women), a school bus driver, a pharmacy technician from a nearby clinic, and a six month old fetus.

Opposition to the War

Of course, there are always opposers to the war, and there are. Even from those who oppose, some are genuine who always oppose illegal and unjust wars, whereas others criticize because the opposition party is waging the war.

Priyanka Chopra

Priyanka Chopra, a Bollywood and Hollywood actress and a former UNICEF
Goodwill Ambassador, is a celebrity who selectively knows when and who to citicize based on the preservation of her career. After Zhina’s untimely death, Chopra came out in support for the women of Iran.

Chopra on her Instagram:

“Women in Iran and around the world are standing up and raising their voices, publicly cutting their hair and many other forms of protest for Mahsa Amini, whose young life was taken away so brutally by the Iranian Morality Police for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’. The voices that speak after ages of forced silence, will rightfully burst like a volcano! And they will not and MUST not be stemmed.  

“I am in awe of your courage and your purpose. It is not easy to risk your life, literally, to challenge the patriarchal establishment and fight for your rights. But, you are courageous women doing this every day regardless of the cost to yourselves. 

“To ensure that this movement will have a lasting effect, we must hear their call, understand the issues and then join in with our collective voices. We must also get everyone who can influence others to join as well. Numbers matter.

“Add your voice to this critical movement. Stay informed and be vocal, so these voices can no longer be forced to stay silent.

“I stand with you. Jin, jiyan , azaadi… Women, life, freedom.”

One cannot not appreciate Priyanka Chopra’s concern for Iranian women. But:

how come she has no sympathy for the girls and women (children, elders, and men) bombed to death by US and Israel? This was not surprising since she has been selectively silent on past atrocities, too.

In 2002, during the Gujarat state enabled pogrom under Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now Prime Minister), a Muslim woman Bilkis Bano, a five-month pregnant mother of five, was gang-raped by eleven men after seven of her family members (including her husband and their three year old daughter), were brutally killed by a mob of more than 20 men. She survived to tell the story.

Did Priyanka ever come out to console or voice concern about Bilkis Bano or other Muslim, Christian, and Dalit victims, by criticizing Modi or his goons? No, never.

Chopra and others have faced criticism:

Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra and other Indian media personalities who are showing support for women in Iran have been called “hypocrites” for “staying silent” on the treatment of minorities in India pic.twitter.com/VXlcRHtOjE— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 11, 2022

When Muslim women in India are denied their right to wear hijab, does Chopra take up their cause? No.

Poet and activist Nabiya Khan called Chopra a “false feminist”:

“@priyankachopra your activism of convenience is pukeworthy. This means nothing when you choose to look away from the plight of hijabi women in India who are denied education for wearing a piece of cloth over their head, harassed by hindutva goons and state. You are a Hypocrite!”

“@priyankachopra never spoke up when police barged into universities. You were silent when women of shaheen bagh were spending their nights out in chilly winters protesting for their dignity.  You are a coward. You are no role model.  You are a false feminist. You should shut up.”

Indian journalist/author Rana Ayyub asked Chopra:

“Indian celebrities speaking about Iran will look the other way through this fascism and apartheid in their home country. This is a lawmaker in the Indian government asking for economic boycott of Muslims. Will the likes of @priyankachopra speak up for Muslims in India?”

In May 2020, a black person George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman by asphyxiation while live videos by people were viral all over. Chopra wrote on her Instagram:

“Please, I can’t breathe.” George Floyd

Wealthy clever people know where to utter and where to go silent.

Chopra, so vocal about Mahsa, has never uttered a word about tens of thousands of children killed by Israeli monsters. Even when Spanish actor Javier Bardem said: “Free Palestine. No war,” Chopra didn’t join him. Well, even for maintaining silence, you need courage.

Bhawna Jaimini writes:

“I decided to go through Priyanka Chopra’s Instagram feed to find traces of solidarity to those protesting in India – in case I had missed something. During the period her home country burned, Chopra was busy gracing red carpets at Grammy and Golden Globe Awards – while celebrating the amassing of 50 million followers – and there were some quotes about shattering the glass ceiling. She even visited India during this period to play Holi with the Ambanis.”

Mukesh Ambani is India’s richest person and is a good friend of Modi, a fellow Gujarati. Chopra invited Modi at her wedding reception in Delhi, and she is very careful to stay loyal to him.

Modi should have thanked Chopra for providing him with an opportunity to have yet another laughing photo go viral. Most Indians may be crying with their myriad of problems, but their premier, at least, presents a laughing face to the world.

Instead it was Chopra who thanked Modi sycophantically:

“A heartfelt thank you to our honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji for gracing us with your presence. Touched by your kind words and blessings.”

Chopra held three wedding receptions. The first was held at Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur. The second was in Delhi, and included Modi. The third wedding reception was held in Mumbai

Three receptions for one wedding. A concerned UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador would have held one small reception and would have donated the considerable savings of money to UNICEF projects.

Elnaaz Norouzi

Iranian born Elnaaz Norouzi, a model, began her film career with the 2018 Pakistani film Maan Jao Naa. Same year she also did a Punjabi movie Khido Khundi in India, and settled down in Mumbai to work in the Hindi/Urdu film industry.

She champions women’s rights and believes that fighting for their rights, are inherent in Iranian women’s blood.

In the wake of Jina’s loss of life, Norouzi protested with a strip show. Fully clothed with hijab, she took her clothes off one by one until she was left with only white panties. She kept her naked breasts covered with her hands. This was her way of protesting Jina’s death.

Many actresses in Bollywood films and on social media are seen in bikinis — some in tiny ones — and their bras cover, in many instances, even less than 50% of the breasts, so the video of her stripping was not a big deal.

The Egyptian activist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy protested against US supported military’s tyrannical rule by posting her naked photo on October 3, 2011.

Now this was an example of real bravery. Aliaa got death threats and was also kidnapped. After her release, she got asylum in Sweden.

Rana Ayyub commented on celebrities who oppose foreign rules:

“These [Bollywood] ‘celebrities’ have stayed silent through [Indian] state sanctioned violence against Muslims. Their activism is obscene.”

Now, Norouzi is supporting Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whom Pakistan’s Defense Minister called an “imperial whore.” And many believe, he is. He lives in the US, has very friendly relations with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and is waiting for an opportunity to settle his former royal ass on the Peacock Throne.

Yes, Iran’s theocratic regime is brutal, but Pahlavi is not better for the Iranians (his father Shah’s regime was very brutal), especially if he is brought to power through US and Israel bombing, killing of scientists, and colossal destruction of infrastructure.

This is the problem with people like Norouzi — they hate Iran’s regime and call for its removal, but they don’t mind brutal murders of fellow citizens, and getting help from the world’s two most violent states, the US and Israel. Israel, a nuclear power, wants a weakened Iran with no nuclear weapons. The US wants oil which belongs to the Iranian people. In 1951, the Iranian government ousted Shah and nationalized oil companies. The US overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstalled Shah whose US supported atrocious rule brought Khomeini to power in 1979.

If Norouzi seriously wants a change, she should go for someone who is secular, progressive, and people oriented, rather than support the dictator Pahlavi dynasty.

Whatever the current Iranian regime’s many faults, one has to admire their courage and self-respect in not bowing to the US — unlike Pahlavi who is willing to collaborate with the transgressors, and who lives a luxurious life in the US.

This “imperial whore” has shown no self-respect, how can he make Iran a respectable nation which could be self-sufficient enough to stand on its own, and not rely on US alms and mercy?

The celebrities who selectively criticize some atrocities have never criticized the atrocities of Gaza genocide.

All violence, murders, and unjust wars should be condemned, irrespective of where they occur. Greed and expansionism acts should be exposed and opposed.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by TABISH KHAIR

Mohammed Hanif’s hilarious page-turner is a witch’s cauldron of bubbling satire in which no one is spared.

I would call it “westsplaining”, if Putin supporters had not already appropriated that term, but then how else can you describe the tendency among Western critics to bundle Mohammed Hanif together with Salman Rushdie? True, there is this nebulous Pakistani-British connection, and both the novelists tend to be caustic about state power and established religion. But Rushdie belongs in the ranks of magic realism, whether or not he accepts the designation, and Hanif is a satirist whose novels can more accurately be placed within the long lineage that is epitomised by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

Essentially, such novels do not present an admixture of the fantastic and the realistic, as magic realism does, but something different: an exaggerated, slightly warped version of realistic characters and historical situations. This enables them to say things about “the world out there” that would be difficult otherwise, and to do so at a brisk and captivating pace of narration. Hanif’s new novel Rebel English Academy is an excellent example of this novelistic tradition. Maybe one should call it warp realism?

The novel starts with the hanging of Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an intelligence officer, Captain Gul, sent to organise photos of the dead man’s private parts in order to prove that he was not circumcised. Gul’s failure to produce any such evidence gets him banished to OK Town, a provincial outback where the dashing and ambitious officer doesn’t easily get the whiskey and the women he is used to.

In OK Town, we meet the owner of the Rebel English Academy, known as Sir Baghi, a reluctant queer whose old socialist aspirations have transformed—after a brutal encounter with the Bhutto regime—into the infusion of English literature, with its hopefully subversive potential, into local boys and girls competing solely for petty government jobs.

One of his students who has actually made it is the local police officer, A.D. Malang, whose dramatised respect for his ex-tutor would warm the cockles of the hearts of all adherents of the powerful guru-sishya brigade in India as well. Sir Baghi’s “academy”, which is also his living quarters, is situated in a commercial complex built around the local mosque, which is run by his cousin, known to him as Molly. Molly is a devout Muslim; he is also a man who believes that God tempts those he really loves.

Molly’s temptation is Sabiha Banu, the athletic daughter of a trade unionist whose locally renowned photograph with Bhutto has, in these post-Bhutto times, resulted in his incarceration and disappearance. When Sabiha is brought by Molly for refuge in Sir Baghi’s academy, the cauldron is set boiling. Add to it Captain Gul’s affair with his commanding officer’s imperious daughter, who claims pregnancy without having sex with him, and his infatuation with the doughty Sabiha, and a few other believable but often larger-than-life characters, such as the beedi-smoking lawyer-palmist Noor Nabi, throw in the mystery of rumours that Bhutto is alive and coming any day to OK Town, and we have a witch’s cauldron of bubbling, captivating, hilarious satire in which no one, not even Sir Baghi, is finally spared.

The characters of OK Town

Hanif has an eye for situations and characters, and he warps them just a bit to bring out those aspects that defenders of “real life” often want us to overlook: the hypocrisy, the contradictions, the cant, and the injustice of it all. All of it is given to us with a combination of dark humour and occasional slapstick, and in a language that contains various registers but never loses its essentially satiric bite.

Here is one of Captain Gul’s women finally giving him the true report on his much-vaunted prowess as a lover: “What was I supposed to say? You gave me statistics about the Bengal famine to divert attention from the fact that you couldn’t get it up. You called my vagina the Bermuda Triangle and then spent all our time together lecturing me about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. When you did finally get an erection in the morning, you couldn’t find the Bermuda Triangle.” The novel maintains this brisk and slightly risqué pace throughout its 315 pages.

Frontline for more

by TAAPSEE PANNU

Taapsee Pannu reveals that OTT platforms only want to pick up films that are box office success

Actor Taapsee Pannu believes women-led and unconventional films are on the verge of becoming “extinct” as there is a lack of support from audiences for such stories.

Pannu, who has seamlessly balanced both mainstream and offbeat cinema, has built a reputation as a dependable performer and featured in a series of hard-hitting dramas such as “Thappad”, “Mulk” and “Pink”.

According to the actor, the battle to bring unconventional stories to the big screen has become harder.

“We are on the verge of becoming an extinct species, we mean films like ‘Assi’. There is a certain template that our so-called commercial cinema abides by and we don’t conventionally fall in that template of sorts,” Pannu told PTI in an interview.

“Assi” is Pannu’s new movie with acclaimed filmmaker Anubhav Sinha and marks their third collaboration after 2018’s “Mulk” and “Thappad” in 2020.

The actor debunked the notion that such films will always find a home on digital platforms, saying that the streamers have shifted their focus to luring “massy” audiences.

“The reality is people think that these kinds of films will keep coming on OTT and we will keep watching it. But no, OTT’s don’t want these kinds of films either. They have clear mandates, that only the films that are working in theatres are the films that they want to pick.

“They want to take that theatre audience to their platform. They are like, ‘We already have this kind of audience, we want those massy pot boilers audiences of our country to subscribe to the platform’, That’s why I say we are on the verge of becoming extinct unless people realise that we need to watch it. Sometimes it’s good to watch reality as well,” Pannu added.

Comparing cinema to a range of cuisines, the 38-year-old actor said that while “Mughlai”, which is the commercial cinema, has its appeal, the industry also needs its “dal chawal”: stories rooted in everyday reality.

She also believes that the habit of waiting for a digital release of a film is “suicidal” for the future of meaningful cinema.

“We should subscribe to all kinds of cinema. Only the audience can help us by going to theatres and watching (all kinds of) films. I hope they realise this before we lose this. Then we won’t have the right to crib that our cinema cannot compete with world cinema, we only make a particular kind of film.

“We have a lot of people saying we don’t make good and rooted stories. But when did you support rooted stories? By sitting at home and watching it on OTT is not how you support good cinema. If you like the film, spread the word, let more people come into theatres.” Reflecting on her journey, Pannu said leading a film to release today feels like a “daily pain” and a constant “battle”.

She believes the scenario changed post COVID-19 pandemic.

Tribune for more

by MICHAEL FOX

Donald Trump has his sights set on Mexico. But his actions harken back to a much older era of the U.S. empire.

Increasingly, Trump has his sights set on Mexico—promising to send in US troops in the name of fighting cartels and advancing a so-called drug war policy. But Trump’s actions harken back to an era of US empire much, much older.

See, Mexico has withstood a long history of foreign intervention by the Spanish, French, and multiple times by the United States. 

In 1848, Mexico lost more than half its territory to the United States. The US states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more used to be part of Mexico. 

Today, host Michael Fox visits Mexico’s National Museum of Interventions in Mexico City, and we look back at the devastating history of foreign intervention in Mexico amid Trump’s threats against Mexico and elsewhere in the region today.

This is Episode 9 of Under the Shadow, Season 2.

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by SADAF SHABBIR

Within the logic of settler-colonial warfare, the womb is a site of resistance and persistence.

In the landscape of modern warfare, the traditional image of the front line is a trench or a barricaded street. In Gaza, however, the front line has been moved into the delivery room and the neonatal ward.

Over the last two years, the Israeli military has executed a systematic campaign against the biological capacity of the Palestinian people. This is not a byproduct of urban combat or the unfortunate result of “collateral damage.” It is a calculated, gendered strategy of erasure.

By targeting maternal health infrastructure, destroying cryopreserved embryos, and inducing a state of permanent physical trauma in pregnant women, Israel is practicing what scholars now define as reproductive genocide.

The infrastructure of death in Gaza

The most chilling evidence of this campaign lies in the rubble of the Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City. In December 2023, an Israeli shell struck the facility, shattering five liquid nitrogen tanks. Inside those tanks were 4,000 embryos, alongside 1,000 specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs. For the thousands of Palestinians, these were not just biological samples; they were the last remaining hope for a future generation in a land where the present is being systematically destroyed.

The destruction of Al-Basma was not an isolated incident. By early 2025, nine out of ten fertility clinics in the Gaza Strip had been levelled. There is no military logic that justifies the shelling of a cryogenic lab located deep within a residential block, far from any alleged command centres. As the UN Commission of Inquiry noted in its 2025 report, these attacks were carried out with full knowledge of the facilities’ functions. This is the mechanics of the genocidal campaign: the cold, calculated destruction of the seeds of future life.

Beyond the labs, the physical infrastructure of birth has been dismantled. At the height of the bombardment, Israeli forces targeted the maternity wards of Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser hospitals. Oxygen supplies to incubators were cut, leading to the decomposed remains of premature babies being discovered weeks later in abandoned NICUs.

When the infrastructure of care is replaced by the infrastructure of death, the act of giving birth becomes a death sentence.

Demography as doctrine — The colonial fear of birth

To understand why Israel is doing this, one must look at the demographic anxieties that have defined Zionist colonial logic since 1948. In the eyes of a settler-colonial state, the Palestinian womb is viewed as a demographic threat. If the goal is the total control of land, then the biological reproduction of the indigenous population must be curtailed.

Scholars such as Nahla Abdo and Suad Joseph have long situated women at the centre of colonial and nationalist struggles, not merely as victims but as critical bearers of social and political continuity.

Abdo’s work on Palestinian resistance reveals how colonial violence penetrates the intimate sphere; regulating, disciplining, and punishing women’s bodies as part of a broader strategy of control. Similarly, Joseph’s analysis of gender and citizenship in the Middle East demonstrates how women’s roles within kinship and family structures are foundational to the reproduction of the nation itself.

Together, their scholarship reveals a central dynamic. In settler-colonial contexts, violence against women is not incidental but strategic, aimed at disrupting the social and biological conditions that sustain communities across generations. In this way, women’s bodies become key sites through which power seeks to fracture continuity and undermine collective survival.

By ensuring that 50,000 pregnant women at any given time are denied anesthesia, clean water, and basic nutrition, the state is not just killing individuals; it is attempting to break the biological chain of the Palestinian people.

A global history of sterilisation as strategy

This pattern is nothing new. Settler-colonial powers have long turned to forced sterilisation as a quiet, surgical strike against the wombs of the colonised.

Dawn for more

by SANTOSH MEHROTRA

Strategic autonomy and ‘India first’ – both principles that should be driving India’s foreign policy – require India to pivot to BRICS to safeguard our economic interests.

If we are to understand the salience of the aggression on Iran (as well as Venezuela) that the US-Israel combine has wreaked upon the global economy, India’s economic foreign policy makers need to understand the context of the emergence of the Petrodollar System that started functioning in the early 1970s. 

This understanding is essential to India’s ability to respond appropriately today, and protect the interests of India and the global south, of which we claim to be a leader. In fact, if we still take our chairmanship of BRICS in 2026 seriously, this becomes even more important.

The petrodollar system emerges

The dollar emerged after the Second World War as a dominant currency, as it was the only major economy that was left unscathed by war. But by the early 1960s, both Europe and Japan had restored their industrial power, and the US’s old industry could not stand up to their newer factory competition. 

American industrial decline was accompanied by rising trade deficits, and the US began to print more dollars to pay for them. But the Bretton Woods system – created by the Allied Powers after their victory – had also ensured that dollar reserves were convertible into gold (held by the US Federal Reserve). 

However, the US’s industrial decline, combined with imperial military overreach (e.g. Vietnam war), led to further deepening of the trade deficits. By 1971, the convertibility to gold was abandoned by the  US President Richard Nixon. The availability of the US dollar had made it an international currency by then.  

The collapse of the dollar’s convertibility to gold could have threatened its dominance. However, a clever diplomatic  ploy by the US with Saudi Arabia, and later OPEC, only revealed recently, ensured that the Saudis would only accept the payment for oil sales in dollars. The US would offer security protection in return; thus bringing US bases to the Gulf (as in East Asia/Europe). That has sustained global demand for the US dollar as almost all countries import oil, and hence need the American currency. This also enabled the US to maintain huge budget deficits, low domestic savings and massive import surplus – supported by global demand for dollars (which the US could print) as well for US Treasuries – thus, financing US budget and current account deficits.

Economic sanctions: misuse of the petrodollar

Trump opposes de-dollarisation, as this exorbitant privilege enjoyed by the US enables it to maintain imperial power, and impose economic sanctions and freezing of assets on countries across the globe ever since then. 

The US has imposed economic sanctions since the Cold War for a variety of reasons: ideological grounds (Cuba, Vietnam, Libya); counter-terrorism and security concerns post-2001 (Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan); great power competition post-2014 (Russia, China); and increasingly through the 2010s–2020s as a tool of financial warfare (Venezuela, Iran via banking isolation, and Russia under the largest sanctions regime ever imposed). By 2025 the most heavily sanctioned countries were Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela. 

Even India could not escape this as ‘secondary sanctions on third parties’ prevented India from buying Iranian oil from 2019-2026 and forced India to backtrack from its investment in Chabahar port and route to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia. The recent additional 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil in 2025 is in the same category, however short-lived and narrow in scope.

Damaging Effects of sanctions

A study in Lancet (2025) estimated a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. The study used a panel dataset of age-specific mortality rates and sanctions episodes for 152 countries between 1971 and 2021.They found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic and US sanctions, (but no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions). 

It estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict over that 50 year period. 

That means around 28 million excess deaths, mostly of children and elderly, over that period only on account of US economic sanctions. That alone should be treated as a war crime. This has nothing to do with wars of aggression or regime changes that the US (and West) has together engineered over the years.

India and the BRICS: What should be our priorities?

India is risking global and BRICS isolation by siding with US/Israel (not just on aggression on Iran). India’s economic diplomacy is at the crossroads, because of the foreign policy decisions we are taking without  regard to India’s development imperative and our commitment to strategic autonomy principle, which is the essential plank of our foreign policy. The principle of “India First” requires that we pivot towards the BRICS. We have shown some foresight by reviving the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa) idea in the last BRICS summit. 

Why India must reassert its strategic autonomy:

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