On Sunday, February 23rd, Beirut’s Sports City Stadium was filled with thousands of people from over sixty-five countries to witness the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, the former leaders of Hezbollah. Both Nasrallah and Safieddine were killed during the Israeli-Hezbollah war, and during the funeral, Israel bombed several areas in Lebanon and sent four warplanes to fly over the stadium.
Saudi Arabia has asked Hans Zimmer, known for the Lion King, Dune, and the Dark Knight trilogy, to work on a new version of the national anthem. The General Entertainment Authority chair, Turki Alalshikh, also reported Zimmer discussed working on a Saudi-inspired musical called Arabia and the soundtrack for “The Battle of Yarmuk,” an upcoming. According to the Guardian, “Activists have said the Saudi authorities’ push to upgrade their image is an attempt to gloss over unchanged hardline policies, including limited rights for women, restraints on free speech and some of the world’s highest execution figures.” To me, it just sounds like Khedive Ismail Pasha (r. 1863-1879) all over again, except this time maybe a city, NEOM, instead of a canal will break the bank.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/6/us-officials-walk-back-elements-of-trumps-gaza-takeover-plan
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump stated that the United States would own the Gaza territory once Palestinians have been relocated to other countries in the region. Given the backlash from the international community, including from the United Nations, members of President Trump’s administration claimed that Palestinian relocation would only be temporary, despite contrary statements made by the U.S. president.
https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blogs/blog/2020/05/20/photo-what-happened-to-the-sphinxs-nose and https://news.artnet.com/art-world/the-hunt-great-sphinx-nose-2458981
Historians and archeaologists are uncertain what happened to the nose but physical evidence seems to suggest it was removed deliberately with a chisel. Still, here are the two most popular theories:
Napoleon One popular story was that one of Napoleon’s soldiers fired a cannonball that hit the nose and caused it to fall off. However, Dane Frederic Louis Norden sketched the Spynxh without a nose before Napoleon’s arrival and has thus been sufficiently debunked.
al-Maqrizi In the 15th century Egyptian-Arab historian (as described in the article) al-Maqrizi wrote the nose was destroyed by the Sufi Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr. Apparently, villagers were worhshipping the Sphynx for better harvests. Muhammad, outraged by this show of devotion, destroyed the nose and was later executed for vandalism. Apparently, “removing an idol’s nose was an accepted method to suffocate spirits inside,” explaining why many Egyptian statues are left unable to play nose goes. But its not definitively known if this is true.
After 460 days of fighting in Gaza the Israeli Government and Hamas have finally agreed to a ceasefire last week. With more than 46,000 Palestinians estimated to have been killed by the IDF this deal shows a glimmer of hope to at least a pause in the conflict over Gaza. The first effect of this ceasefire agreement was a prisoner swap which happened on the 19th. Three Israeli prisoner of Hamas, three women, were exchanged for approximately 90 Palestinian civilians. Israel will also be pulling its troops back from Gaza and allowing civilians to return to their homes, or whats left of them. Civilians on both sides are holding out hope that this ceasefire holds and neither side moves to resume the conflict. This ceasefire however is worrying some that it may give the Israeli Government the bandwidth to be able to once again focus their attention on to the illegally occupied west bank and support the ever increasing tensions between illegal settlers and the local Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority. We must though take all the hope we can get and I for one am feeling hopeful for this ceasefire.
Sources: https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/19/g-s1-43590/photos-familiesisrael-hamas-ceasefire-takes-effect. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy5klgv5zv0o https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/15/what-do-we-know-about-the-israel-gaza-ceasefire-deal
The newly elected President of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, appointed ICJ President Nawaf Salam as Lebanon’s prime minister. After more than two years of Lebanon being run by a caretaker government, Salam’s appointment is seen as a possibility for political and economic reform.
On Thursday, 5 October, an American F-16 shot down a Turkish TAI Anka-S unmanned aircraft over northern Syria, according to reports from the U.S. Department of Defense. The Turkish government has not admitted to losing the UAS but has confirmed that the military and National Intelligence Agency have been conducting airstrikes against Kurdish militias in Hasakah, near the Turkish border. Reportedly, the UAS was not targeting U.S. assets, but the decision was made to shoot it down after it flew within 500m of U.S. ground forces.
What makes this event important is that Turkey and the United States are ostensibly allies due to their common membership in NATO. The U.S. has shared military bases in Turkey since the 1950s and reportedly still maintains part of its nuclear stockpile there. In Syria, however, Turkish and American interests are often at odds. In its ongoing fight against Kurdish separatist militias, Turkey has made artillery and air strikes across the border into Syria; the Syrian government is unwilling to attempt to stop this because the YPG is an enemy of theirs too. The United States has no interest in this dispute but has been conducting combat operations in Syria for several years, ostensibly as part of its fight against Daesh.
Because of the complex politics of the Syrian Civil War, anti-Assad rebel groups fight each other as often as they fight the central government. This is the first time an American aircraft has shot down a Turkish one, but U.S. troops have taken Turkish artillery fire before. There have also been instances of American-backed militant groups fighting each other.
U.S. officials report that they are in talks with their Turkish counterparts to prevent something like this from happening again, so it will most likely not significantly strain relations between the two countries. This incident does, however, highlight the very real dangers of the State Department’s nasty habit of embroiling the United States in unnecessary proxy wars.
Sources/further reading:
https://apnews.com/article/syria-turkey-shot-down-06b5b407e91ffb3d41096bbfe5f1ef75
On Saturday at 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan, leaving around 800 dead and some villages completely destroyed. The earthquake radius stretched along Afghanistan’s border with Iran.
As of 12:00am October 7th, 100 Israelis and 198 Palestinians have been reported as dead. Hamas has captured ~30 Israeli Soldiers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/world/middleeast/bahrain-prison-hunger-strike.html
About 800 prisoners have refused meals since August 7th. In a country of 1.6 million people, this protest includes a large amount of the prison population. This protest is especially of note because it is finding solidarity from the public in a country that shut down Arab Spring protests quickly. Bahrain dispersed over 100,000 protesters with live rounds and mass arrest, which may be the reason we see this protest starting in the jails. While they are not making the same demands as the current Syrian protests, I think it is not a coincidence these are occurring at the same time.
