Category World News

The current backlash against Alaa Abdelfattah in Britain is so intense that it exposes how selectively outrage is used, not because it highlights a renewed concern for justice.

After the uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, Alaa, an Egyptian-British writer and activist, spent more than a decade in and out of Egyptian prisons. His detention was marked by protracted hunger strikes, discrimination against fundamental rights, and treatment that human rights organizations described as cruel and degrading. Following a year-long campaign by his mother, sister, and close friends, he was finally free on September 23. He was only permitted to travel in the UK on December 26 and his family was only allowed to travel there this month.

Alaaa fled Cairo after ten years of oppression only to be met with public outbursts, a petition for his removal from the British citizenship, and his deportation. Alaa said he considered “killing any colonialists… heroic,” including Zionists, in a 2010 social media post that caused public hostility.

The tweet has received a lot of negative feedback from politicians calling for tough measures, as well as being subject to scrutiny from the counterterrorism police.

The UK’s response is moving at a much faster pace and intensity than the silence surrounding much more significant statements and actions that it actively encourages.

Selective outrage can be seen in this manner.

The UK continues to host and work with senior Israeli officials who have been accused of participating in and inciting genocide, even though Alaa’s words are dissected and framed as a moral emergency.

For instance, Israel’s air force chief Tomer Bar, who has overseen the carpet bombing of Gaza, the destruction of hospitals, schools, and homes, and the extermination of entire families, was granted special legal immunity to travel to the UK in July. He was protected from arrest for war crimes while he was on British soil, according to reports from Declassified UK.

No comparable outcry has been expressed about this.

In September, Israeli President Isaac Herzog was able to visit the UK and hold high-level meetings. This is the same man who, at the start of the genocide, suggested that “the entire Palestinian] nation” is to blame and that “this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved – it’s not true.” Herzog’s statements and those of others have been gathered in a sizable database that currently supports the International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel.

However, Israeli President Keir Starmer welcomed the Israeli prime minister after being accused of inciting genocide and was unharmed when he entered the country. No outrage over the visit of a potential war criminal was displayed by those concerned about Alaa’s tweet.

British nationals who have traveled to Israel have been omitted from the Israeli military, including during Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Tens of thousands of civilian deaths have been caused by these operations, which have been documented by the UN, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, as well as the destruction of hospitals and universities.

There hasn’t been a comprehensive investigation into whether British citizens have been involved in international law violations despite the extensive documentation of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the ICJ’s warning of the serious risk of genocide.

Again, there isn’t much outrage.

The UK continues to cooperate politically, militarily, and politically with Israel while granting arms export licenses to Israel. Even as international organizations have issued warnings about serious human rights violations and potential violations of international law, these policies continue. All of this occurs relatively unaffected politically.

The UK’s political panic is caused by a decade-old tweet, not a mass massacre, not a siege, not a massive destruction of civilian life, not an incite to genocide.

This contrast is not coincidental. It reveals a hierarchy of outrage where opposing voices are systematically silenced and punished while state violence is not, and where public hostility is directed at the wrongful people rather than the rightward ones. In Alaa’s case, it is apparent how moral language is used sparingly to control discomfort rather than restrain impunity.

The UK claims that the principles it defends are untrue because of this asymmetry. When limited protection of human rights is used, they become convenience tools rather than universal standards. When anger is loud but persistent, it becomes performance-driven. And impunity becomes a policy when powerful allies are denied accountability.

People who support this tactic frequently make use of “quiet diplomacy,” arguing that restraint is more successful than confrontation. There is little evidence that Alaa or other civilians in Gaza have been held accountable by silence, which is lacking. In both cases, discretion served more as a means of achieving goals than as a means of achieving them.

The UK has the resources to take a different course of action: halting arms exports, conducting internal investigations into suspected crimes committed by its citizens, imposing sanctions on cooperation and limiting visits by officials convicted of serious crimes. It is also revealing that these tools are still largely in use.

Without that change, outrage will remain constrained, subject to impunity, and remain limited, widening the gap between the values the UK professes and the violence it continues to support.

Khaleda Zia, the former prime minister of Bangladesh, passed away at the age of 79 after battling a long illness. She served as Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and was a key figure in the party’s decades-long leadership of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Following Israel’s official recognition of the breakaway region of Somalia, protests have erupted across the country, with demonstrators taking to the streets in various cities, including Mogadishu, the country’s capital.

Large crowds gathered on Tuesday morning at locations like the main football stadium in Mogadishu and the city’s airport, where protesters chanted slogans and waved Somali flags.

Following a stop in neighboring Djibouti, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud travelled to Istanbul to meet with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The demonstrations also took place in Baidoa, Dhusamareb, Las Anod, Hobyo, and the northeastern regions of Somalia.

Somalia and Turkiye have close political and security ties, with Ankara recently emerging as a regional rival to Israel.

Borama, a city in western Somaliland, where the population appears to be more ambivalent about ending its relationship with Somalia, also hosted small gatherings to express their opposition.

Despite retaining its own currency, passport, and army, Somaliland unilaterally declared independence in 1991 following a civil war.

The state, according to Somaliland’s leaders, is the country’s replacement for the former British protectorate, which voluntarily merged with Italian Somaliland and has since reclaimed its independence. Somalia does not recognize its independence, but it continues to claim Somaliland as part of its territory.

Last Friday, Israel became the first and only nation to formally recognize it as a sovereign state, citing the historic Abraham Accords, which established a framework for a more stable relationship between Israel and various Arab countries.

Mohamed Hassan, the director-general of Somaliland’s foreign ministry, stated to Israeli outlet i24 that more nations should follow suit, though he did not specify which ones.

Over the weekend, Somaliland’s leaders were urged by President Mohamud to reverse the decision, warning that its territory, which overlooks the strategic Red Sea gateway, must not be used as a staging area for attacks on other countries.

Any Israeli presence in Somaliland, according to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, would be seen as a “military target for our armed forces.”

President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi said the decision “is not a threat, not an act of hostility” toward any state shortly after Somaliland made its announcement to join Israel on Friday, and warned that Somalia’s insistence on unified institutions could lead to “prolonging divisions rather than healing” them.

Leaders from all political parties have publicly condemned Israel’s decision, which is a rare example of political unity in Somalia.

The recognition was rejected as an “illegal step” that threatens regional security stretching from the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden on Monday by the National Consultative Council, which is led by Mohamud and includes the prime minister, federal state presidents, regional governors, and prime ministers.

Over the weekend, four federal member states released coordinated statements denouncing the action. Puntland and Jubbaland have both remained silent, with the exception of the constitutional and electoral disputes that recently led to their withdrawal from Somalia’s federal system.

In response to the decision, which several nations claimed may have serious implications for Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of UNSC members criticized Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland at a meeting held on Monday.

The 15-member body’s original members, including the United States, said their position on Somaliland had not changed, despite the fact that they were the only ones to not object to Israel’s formal recognition at the meeting in New York on Monday.

Abu Bakr Dahir Osman, the UN ambassador to Somalia, expressed concern that the recognition “aims to promote the fragmentation of Somalia” and that it may lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to northwestern Somalia. This concern is shared by several other countries.

He declared, “This total disregard for the rule of law and morality must end right away.”

Israel “has the same right to establish diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state,” according to US deputy representative Tammy Bruce, who added that Washington had not made any announcements regarding its own recognition of Somaliland.

Jonathan Miller, Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, argued that the decision was “not a hostile step toward Somalia” and that other nations should follow suit.