Yusuf/Cat Stevens laments the thousands of innocent lives lost in the Israel-Gaza war so far. Photo: Yusuf/Cat Stevens Archive
Yusuf/Cat Stevens laments the thousands of innocent lives lost in the Israel-Gaza war so far. Photo: Yusuf/Cat Stevens Archive
Yusuf/Cat Stevens laments the thousands of innocent lives lost in the Israel-Gaza war so far. Photo: Yusuf/Cat Stevens Archive
Yusuf/Cat Stevens laments the thousands of innocent lives lost in the Israel-Gaza war so far. Photo: Yusuf/Cat Stevens Archive

Yusuf Cat Stevens urges more celebrities to stand up for Gaza


Saeed Saeed
  • English
  • Arabic

Yusuf/Cat Stevens has urged more celebrities to use their public profile in calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

Live updates: Follow the latest news on Israel-Gaza

Speaking exclusively to The National, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, known for the hits Peace Train and Moonshadow, lamented the thousands of innocent lives lost in the conflict that's now lasted a month.

“What is better and more important than to utilise your fame for a good cause?," he asks.

“I found it hard to hold myself back, especially when seeing the blood-stained faces and clothes of innocent children – that is, the ones who are fortunate enough to escape the bombs and still survive.

“Hopefully the massive groundswell of public opinion will continue to build, and more stars will realise that it’s time to stand up for what is just and right.”

In a bid to raise further awareness, Yusuf posted an unreleased version of 1997 song The Little Ones, written in the tragic wake of the 1995 Bosnian genocide that killed thousands of children.

“Oh, they’ve killed all the little ones, while their faces still smiled,” the song begins.

“With their guns and their fury, they erased their young lives. No longer to laugh, no longer to be a child.”

The tragedy had such an impact on Yusuf that he was compelled to pick up the guitar again.

“It was one of the first songs I wrote after leaving the music business in 1981,” he says. “Because of the emotional impact on me and my family, watching the ongoing slaughter of children in the war, I had to express my sadness by writing that song,”

In a six-decade career, the plight of children has been a key motif throughout Yusuf’s songs.

In 1970's Where do the Children Play, he laments the destructive role industrialisation plays on the environment.

While Father and Son, released the same year, is a social commentary on the widening generational divide and a plea for understanding.

“The child in me hasn’t disappeared, and it is always present in my outlook to life and work,” he says.

“Becoming a Muslim in 1977 was the fulfilment of my journey and desire to change the world and that I had to first begin with myself.

“The Quran woke me up to the unfiltered truth. If more people in the world could maintain the clarity of youth and its piercing insight to truth, justice, and signs of hypocrisy, the world would be a much nicer place to inhabit.”

Yusuf ends the conversation with a timely reference to one his most powerful songs, 1970’s Wild World: “Faith and hope are needed to survive this wild world, and kids have an exceptionally large reserve of those two vitally important human qualities," he says.

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Our legal consultant

Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais

Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

While you're here
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When Umm Kulthum performed in Abu Dhabi

  

 

 

 

Known as The Lady of Arabic Song, Umm Kulthum performed in Abu Dhabi on November 28, 1971, as part of celebrations for the fifth anniversary of the accession of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan as Ruler of Abu Dhabi. A concert hall was constructed for the event on land that is now Al Nahyan Stadium, behind Al Wahda Mall. The audience were treated to many of Kulthum's most well-known songs as part of the sold-out show, including Aghadan Alqak and Enta Omri.

 
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Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm

Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year

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Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners

TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013 

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Brief scoreline:

Manchester United 1

Mata 11'

Chelsea 1

Alonso 43'

Biography

Favourite book: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Holiday choice: Anything Disney-related

Proudest achievement: Receiving a presidential award for foreign services.

Family: Wife and three children.

Like motto: You always get what you ask for, the universe listens.

 

Company: Instabug

Founded: 2013

Based: Egypt, Cairo

Sector: IT

Employees: 100

Stage: Series A

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Updated: November 04, 2023, 10:31 AM`