Will Burnham deliver when Starmer failed? The same lobby groups funded both | Joe Gill | MEE Opinion

Joe Gill, editor at Middle East Eye, says that Andy Burnham came into office promising hope and an end to 40 years of neoliberalism, but his early record is already raising questions about how far he is willing to break from Keir Starmer.

Gill points to Burnham’s retreat on policies including caps on large political donations, rent controls and the nationalisation of Thames Water. On foreign policy, he says Burnham has so far followed much of Starmer’s approach, including support for Ukraine, reluctance to call Gaza a genocide and limited action against Israel.

#BREAKING: The President of the United Arab Emirates has pardoned Egyptian poet and high-profile activist Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who was facing a ten-year prison sentence, Emirati media reported.

According to the reports, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued the pardon on Friday after Qaradawi was convicted by the Cybercrime Circuit of the Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal on 27 August, who handed him a 10-year custodial sentence and a fine of Dh200,000.

🔗 Read more: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uae-president-pardons-egyptian-poet-abdul-rahman-yusuf-al-qaradawi

Thousands of Lebanese students still displaced by war as school year nears

Thousands of children remain displaced from their hometowns in Lebanon's south six months after a new war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah. 

Many still live in schools-turned-shelters, and as schools gear up for a new academic year beginning on September 15, families are wondering where they will go — and how their children can pick up schooling amid so much uncertainty.

'Why aren't you crying?': Former US diplomat on watching Gaza from inside the State Department

"Why aren't you crying?"

Former US diplomat Hala Rharrit describes the toll of watching Gaza's genocide unfold from inside the US State Department, breaking down in her office while colleagues stayed silent around her. She joined Mohamed Hashem on Real Talk.

Watch it now: https://youtu.be/UEJdz49l2WE

Iranian green card-holding family detained without cause, due to familial relations

“They’ve done everything ‘quote-unquote’ right to become lawful residents of the United States, tax-paying members of our communities, and they’re still being targeted.”

In the aftermath of the 12-day war in 2025, and amid the ongoing hot-and-cold conflict between the United States and Iran, Iranian nationals who are lawful residents of the US have been targeted by ICE and detained without cause on an unprecedented scale.

Middle East Eye spoke with Maria Kari, a human rights attorney on the legal team representing a green card-holding family affected by this ongoing campaign against Iranians – and attack on civil liberties within the United States itself – to learn how these individuals are being subjected to detention without evidence of a threat, and why this should concern more than just immigrant communities.

Mass burial for 100 Palestinians in Gaza

Gazans held a mass funerary ceremony for the burial of around 100 Palestinians, including 62 children, whose bodies where recovered from under the rubble years after Israeli airstrikes targeted the buildings.

AfD co-chair believes Friedrich Merz will be replaced 'before Christmas'

Speaking after a historic win for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in a key state election, co-chairwoman Alice Weidal says she expects early federal elections and for current chancellor Friedrich Merz to be 'replaced before Christmas'.

The AfD party won more than 44 per cent of the vote, becoming the largest partt in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, representing the first far-right win in the country since World War II.

The AfD leadership has sought to present the party as an unflinching supporter of Israel despite repeated antisemitic and Holocaust-revisionist statements from figures within its ranks.

During a conversation with Elon Musk in January 2025, Weidel described her party as “the only protector of the Jewish people” in Germany.

Petition launched urging drop of Macklemore from Ed Sheeran tour after pro-Palestien set

The Israeli-American Council has launched a petition urging Ed Sheeran and his management to drop Macklemore from the remaining dates of his tour, after the rapper used his opening set at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium to call for a “Free Palestine”.

Macklemore performed “Hind’s Hall”, his track supporting pro-Palestinian protests on US college campuses and criticising Israel’s actions in Gaza. The song is named for Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza in 2024.

He said, “A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine.”

‘Terror’: Freed Palestinian journalist recounts two years in Israeli prison

In an interview with Middle East Eye, freed Palestinian journalist Ramez Awad recounts in harrowing detail the  conditions that prisoners live under in Israeli prisons, where he was held for two years. 

“Injustice, fear, terror, hunger, oppression, death. It was a graveyard for the living. There are no other words to describe it,” he says.

US envoy Kushner says Gaza was ‘built by NGOs and terrorists’

Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday, US special envoy and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said Gaza was “basically built by NGOs and terrorists” and has been a "dystopian place” for a while. 

Kushner then added that Gaza’s so-called Board of Peace, of which he is a member, was working on a plan forward to demilitarise the strip but that it was facing “political issues in Israel” where, he said, a “crazy election” has made leaders “a little irrational”.

#BREAKING: The British government has recognised the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declared the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and announced both a ban on goods from Israeli settlements and on all arms licences and other exports that "materially contribute to the occupation."

🔗 Read more: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-announce-trade-sanctions-israeli-settlements

UK foreign secretary officially announces sanctions on Israeli settlements

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced on Tuesday that the British government will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"The British government has rightly said settlements are illegal, but we have remained silent on the question of the legality of the occupation as a whole" stated Miliband. He added: "The government believes the unlawfulness of the occupation should be reflected in the economic relationships we choose to have with the occupied territories."

The announcement comes after weeks of deliberations, and has been received with backlash from the Israeli and American administrations.

#BREAKING: Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has lashed out at the UK following Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s announcement on Tuesday of sanctions and said Israel would close the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem.

Saar called the British boycott of Israeli goods from the occupied territories in the occupied West Bank “despicable”.

He also said that British representatives at the International Gaza Support Centre in Kiryat Gat, Israel, would be expelled.

🔗 Click for the latest updates from this developing story:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-lashes-out-uk-sanctions-and-announces-consulate-closure

Reform UK's Zia Yusuf pulls up the ladder on Britain's immigrants | Soumaya Ghannoushi | MEE Opinion

Soumaya Ghannoushi, a writer and expert in Middle East politics, says that Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of anti-immigrant politics. Yusuf attacked Sagal Abdi-Wali, a Somali-born council leader who has lived in Britain for around 35 years, by presenting her birthplace as something sinister, despite being the son of Sri Lankan Muslim immigrants himself.

Ghannoushi says that this is the politics of “pulling up the ladder after you have climbed it”, where politicians from immigrant backgrounds help portray other migrants and Muslims as threats to Britain. She points to Reform figures such as Laila Cunningham, who she says has similarly turned Muslim identity and dress into evidence of cultural danger.

She says the tactic is not unique to Britain.

'It's not indifference. I think there's joy in it.'

Leading British-Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, founder of Forensic Architecture, describes how he believes Israeli society has responded to the Gaza genocide.

Watch in full: https://youtu.be/q1bhlCO39Rc

Gaza's class of 2026

It is back-to-school season for many, but for children in Gaza, this marks a fourth consecutive year of educational collapse, according to a new report from the Gaza Centre for Human Rights.
It's not about missing lessons," says Head of Humanitarian at War Child Kieran King, "it's about the entire generation in Gaza having the education, the wellbeing and opportunity to rebuild its own society".
Israel's war on the enclave has devastated Gaza's education system, leaving around 700,000 children without a single day of formal education since October 2023.

Abu Ghraib: The images that shamed America

On 28 April 2004, CBS's 60 Minutes II broadcast photographs from a US-run prison to millions of Americans for the first time.

The images of tortured and humiliated Iraqi prisoners inside Abu Ghraib shocked the world and became some of the defining images of the Iraq War.

The US government insisted the abuse was the work of a few rogue soldiers. But were they just “a few bad apples”, or were the photographs evidence of a much wider, systemic problem?

Why are the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia?

The Houthis conducted air strikes on four cities in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, setting the kingdom's oil facilities ablaze and injuring 73 people.

The attacks follow a week of intense fighting between the Houthis and government forces in Yemen.

So, why are the Houthis attacking Saudi Arabia? And what does it mean for the balance of power inside Yemen?

Burnham defends the UK trade ban with Israeli settlements

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham defended his government’s ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank after Israel responded by ordering the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem.

“Where people are being bullied out of their homes, intimidated, we will always stand with the underdog and take what action we can to support them,” Burnham told parliament.

On Tuesday, 12 countries, including Britain, Canada and France, announced sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank following a surge in settler attacks against Palestinians.

How Israel armed Argentina to kill British soldiers during Falklands War

Tensions between Britain and Israel are escalating after the UK imposed sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements and banned settlement goods.

Israeli ministers have responded by attacking Britain over the Falkland Islands, with Ben Gvir calling for sanctions and other Israeli figures backing Argentina’s claim.

The dispute revives a largely forgotten episode from the 1982 Falklands War, when Israel secretly armed Argentina with jets, missiles and other weapons used against British forces.

Israel saw the war as an opportunity to expand arms sales and pressure Britain over its arms embargo following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Now, with Britain again imposing restrictions on Israel, the growing dispute could reshape UK-Israel and UK-US relations.