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Iran says UAE 'directly involved' in war
Iran's foreign minister accused the United Arab Emirates of direct involvement in military operations against his country during a Brics meeting in New Delhi on Thursday, the Iranian semi-official Mehr news agency reported.
"I didn't name the UAE in my statement for the sake of unity. But the truth is that the UAE was directly involved in the aggression against my country. When the attacks started, they didn't even issue a condemnation," Araqchi said, according to Mehr news, in response to comments made by the Emirati representative.
Record complaints filed over UK press smear of anti-genocide artist Misan Harriman
Submitted by
Fleur Hargreaves
on
Wed, 05/13/2026 - 17:41
Media outlets face backlash after misrepresenting remarks made by Southbank Centre chair over Golders Green attack
Misan Harriman attends the 96th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood on 10 March 2024 (Mike Coppola/Getty Images/AFP)
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The highest recorded volume of complaints has been made to a UK media watchdog against right-wing news outlets accused of a coordinated smear of Misan Harriman, an Oscar-nominated photographer and Southbank Centre chair.
The complaint tool, set up by media accountability platform NewsCord, surpassed 50,000 submissions after just 48 hours of being posted, and has now registered over 80,000 complaints.
This more than triples the previous record of around 25,000 complaints made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) over Jeremy Clarkson’s 2022 column on Meghan Markle in The Sun.
Harriman came under attack by the British press after sharing a post questioning why the police and media ignored a Muslim victim targeted prior to the Golders Green attack on two Jewish men.
He also shared a video focused on community building in light of Reform's local election wins, which used a quote from Jewish-American writer Susan Sontag about human behaviour.
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He was accused of spreading a “Golders Green ‘conspiracy’”, despite the question he raised being based in fact – the papers repeatedly referred to “two men stabbed”, when it was in fact three – and even though the press used an out-of-context clip from the video to falsely allege he was comparing Reform voters to the Nazis.
In response, more than 250 celebrities have signed an open letter backing Harriman – including Gary Lineker, Louis Theroux, Annie Lennox, Greta Thunberg and Mark Ruffalo.
The letter, published by non-profit organisation Good Law Project, says that “the purpose of the smear campaign, which… is entirely without foundation in fact, is to traduce and marginalise Misan” as well as “to send a message to others that if they speak out, they will be subject to harassment and threats”.
“We believe that safeguarding freedom of expression is essential to a healthy democracy. And that trying to silence critics of Israel by smearing them as antisemitic does not protect Britain’s Jewish community," the letter continued.
Harriman is a long-time activist for social justice: as an ambassador for Save the Children, a nominee for Amnesty UK’s People’s Human Rights Champion and an advocate against genocide in Sudan, Congo and Gaza.
Harriman regularly photographs London's pro-Palestine marches, including a 2024 image of a Muslim man and a Jewish man holding a sign together calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which was auctioned to raise money for Palestine.
'[This is] seemingly aimed at whipping up a furore to engineer an ever-growing environment of cancel culture'
– MPs' letter to culture secretary Lisa Nandy
“We stand with Misan Harriman,” concluded the letter, which has so far attracted over 15,000 signatories.
On Tuesday, a separate letter was also sent by a cross-party group of 20 parliamentarians to culture secretary Lisa Nandy, denouncing the campaign against Harriman, saying the media coverage has sought to "mischaracterise him".
"The smear campaign against Mr Harriman has attempted to portray his words in a selective manner, seemingly aimed at whipping up a furore to engineer an ever-growing environment of cancel culture," they wrote.
The parliamentarians said the campaign has been deployed by "certain right wing media outlets and backed by right wing politicians" and that its goal is "closing the space for free speech, fair critique or to justify media attacks which further marginalise minority communities".
The signatories include Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Labour MPs John McDonnell and Naz Shah, and Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer of the Greens.
Their letter raised concern over a “rising tendency to pressure institutions and public bodies to distance themselves from individuals who engage in legitimate public discourse”, which risked “deepening division rather than fostering social cohesion”.
'Coordinated smear campaign’
Within the space of a week, four right-wing media outlets ran almost identical pieces slandering Harriman, who is openly pro-Palestine and chair of the Southbank Centre, a major, publicly-funded arts institution.
The first was published in The Telegraph by arts correspondent Craig Simpson on 6 May, accusing Harriman of sharing a “Golders Green ‘conspiracy’” after he questioned on social media why the press and Metropolitan Police had not reported on the third victim – a Muslim – who was stabbed prior to the attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green.
Greens compare Reform UK's detention centre pledge to racist 1960s Tory campaign slogan
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Essa Suleiman was arrested on 29 April for three charges of attempted murder committed against Ishmail Hussain, a Muslim man known to Suleiman for around 20 years, and then two Jewish men later that same day.
Although Harriman’s post was framed as a “conspiracy”, and the article claimed the third victim received “widespread coverage”, the Met Police’s official post on X only referred to “two men stabbed”, while multiple outlets, including SkyNews, Channel 5 and the BBC, omitted Hussain from their headlines.
The same correspondent wrote another article for The Telegraph four days later, claiming that Harriman “compare[d] Reform victory to the Holocaust”.
The smear was based on a 57-second clip taken from a longer video reflecting on Reform’s local election success, in which Harriman said in reference to a quote from Susan Sontag: “She said when thinking about the Holocaust, 10 percent of people in any population are cruel no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful no matter what, and the other – this is important – the other remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.
“It’s such a profound way to look at us. In the context of yesterday’s election result it is something which I think is really topical.”
The story was then picked up by the Daily Mail, GB News and the Daily Express, who ran the same misrepresentation of Harriman's remarks alongside commentary from Reform MP Robert Jenrick, who called for him to be removed from his position in the Southbank.
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Nima Akram, the founder of NewsCord, told Middle East Eye that the outlets “coordinate because they share a political project”: one devoted to “weakening publicly-funded culture, attacking pro-Palestine voices, and using cultural figures as proxies for pressuring Labour into right-wing policy”.
'We have reached the point where truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it'
– Misan Harriman
“Ipso has a duty to act,” Akram said, claiming that “if it cannot enforce its own accuracy code against a misinformation campaign of this scale, press regulation in this country is a fiction”.
This “cannot become the norm”, Akram explained, adding that if the media is able to get away with this level of defamation against a Black, pro-Palestine political activist for quoting Sontag and asking a factually correct question, then it sets a “precedent” and creates a “playbook” for outlets to silence dissenting voices.
“We have reached the point where truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it,” Harriman told Middle East Eye.
“I will never whisper about the oppressed. I stand with truth, I stand by my right to use my voice to help others,” he added.
NewsCord has called for a formal investigation by Ipso into all four outlets, as well as an acknowledgement and public correction of the misleading headlines.
Israel's genocide in Gaza
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Eurovision: The song contest that broke the continent
Submitted by
Pablo O'Hana
on
Wed, 05/13/2026 - 21:05
Organisers have yet to provide a credible answer as to why Israel is still included, while Russia remains banned
Activists hold a banner to protest against the participation of Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest, in Vienna, Austria, on 12 May 2026 (Radek Mica/AFP)
On
I have watched Eurovision every year for nearly 20 years. This year was supposed to be my 15th anniversary of hosting a party.
I genuinely, unironically loved it. I loved it for the songs and the voices, but I also deeply subscribed to its founding values: the idea that a continent still scarred by two world wars could come together through a shared appreciation for music.
This year, instead of hosting my party, I have been unable to ignore the story that now dominates the contest.
Eurovision was born in 1956 from a specific wound: Europe had just finished destroying itself. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) created the contest as an act of almost naive faith: the belief that culture could do what politics had failed to do, by building something that felt genuinely continental and shared.
For nearly seven decades, that faith held. It survived the Cold War, the Balkan crisis and Brexit. The contest bent, but it never broke.
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Until now.
In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the EBU moved with admirable speed. Within hours, Russia was out. There was no lengthy deliberation, no consultation process, no months of hand-wringing about the separation of music and politics.
Then came Gaza.
Nonsensical position
Since October 2023, Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. The International Court of Justice has found it plausible that genocide is being committed, and UN agencies have described the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war.
Several European governments - including those whose broadcasters fund and run Eurovision - have described Israel’s conduct as a violation of international law.
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Meanwhile, a national poll in the UK found that 82 percent of Britons think Israel should not be allowed to compete in Eurovision. Polls in Norway, the Netherlands, France and Sweden all returned similar results.
Eurovision 2026: Over 1000 artists call for boycott for ‘normalising’ Israel’s genocide
Read More »
As for the EBU? We’ve had statements about “core values”, but even as fans protest and politicians debate - with Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland ultimately boycotting the contest - it has done nothing but insist that Israel’s participation is a matter of broadcasting rules, not ethics.
This is a nonsensical position from the same institution that rightly found the political will to exclude Russia. It has spent the past two years constructing increasingly elaborate and incoherent arguments for why it cannot apply the same logic to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel.
The only consistency here is inconsistency - and people can clearly see this. It is selective storytelling, and unfortunately, the selection speaks volumes.
What it tells you is not primarily about Eurovision. The contest is merely a reflection of a continent that is running out of principles for which it is willing to pay a price.
The Russia exclusion was, from a European perspective, relatively costless. Russia has become a pariah; the political winds were clear, the cultural consensus near-total.
Excluding Netanyahu’s Israel would be different. It would require confronting the foreign policy architecture of the postwar order, relations with the US, and the internal divisions within European governing coalitions. It would require European institutions to say, plainly, that rules are rules and they apply to everyone.
That has apparently been too much to ask of our political institutions. It’s no wonder that our cultural institutions are following suit.
Shared humanity
All week in Vienna, I have watched EBU officials sidestep questions in the media centre with the practiced fluency of people who have decided that stonewalling is a communications strategy.
I have watched delegations from countries whose own broadcasters have withdrawn - forced out by their moral clarity - being told how much they’re missed and how their opinions are respected. But there is no serious debate here.
The EBU has demonstrated that its principles are negotiable when the politics are inconvenient
What I keep coming back to is this: the people who built Eurovision after the Second World War understood something that the people running it now seem to have forgotten. The artists and voices are often jaw-dropping, but the contest was always about much more than the music.
It was about the wager that shared humanity - a word repeatedly used in Vienna to shuffle away from talking politics - could be made tangible. If enough people watch the same thing and feel something together, you could gradually create the conditions for peace.
That wager required good faith, and it required the institution at the centre to be trustworthy. I suppose 69 years is a decent run, but the EBU is no longer trustworthy. It has demonstrated that its principles are negotiable when the politics are inconvenient. An institution whose principles are negotiable is not a cultural project; it’s just propaganda.
I want to go back to loving the songs. I want to go back to feeling something when the lights go down and 26 countries hold their breath together. And I really want to host my parties again. Hopefully, when the show finds its way back, so will I.
Until then, the world is witnessing a human catastrophe and looking away. When millions of people tune in on Saturday, Eurovision will just be the most visible manifestation of this.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Culture
Eurovision abandoned its values over Gaza, and lost me as a lifelong fan
Opinion
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