Stolen Eid

March 23, 2026

Newspaper, Opinions, Editorials

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The images emerging from Jerusalem and Lebanon this Eid are not merely distressing; they are indictments. Reports detail worshippers in Jerusalem denied access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Lebanese families marking Eid under bombardment, and children whose lives have been irreversibly shaped by war. The convergence of these accounts sketches a grim reality: festivity displaced by fear, faith obstructed by force, and childhood hollowed out by violence.

What is unfolding bears the unmistakable imprint of a sustained US-Israel military nexus that has not only escalated regional instability. Especially with the attacks on Iran.

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In such a landscape, the oft-invoked frameworks of international law and human rights appear less like safeguards and more like relics, ceremonial at best, selectively applied at worst. Their erosion is not accidental; it is engineered through consistent disregard, allowing violations to be normalised under the guise of strategic necessity. One might even admire the audacity, were the cost not so grotesquely disproportionate.

It is difficult to ignore the economic undercurrents that sustain such conflicts. War, after all, has its beneficiaries, and they are seldom those buried beneath its rubble. The deliberate nature of destruction - of homes, of heritage, of ecological balance - points to a calculus that privileges profit and dominance over dignity and coexistence.

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History, when it renders its verdict, is unlikely to be charitable. Those who orchestrate, enable, or excuse such devastation will find themselves catalogued not as reluctant actors in a complex conflict, but as willing participants in the unravelling of both humanity and the environment. The tragedy is not only in what is being destroyed, but in the clarity with which it is being allowed to happen.

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