Fury as Malala teams up with pro-war Hillary Clinton for musical project

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai is facing a backlash after the premier of a Broadway musical she co-produced with former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has brazenly backed Israel's war on besieged Palestinians of Gaza that some experts say has already reached genocidal proportions.

The musical, titled "Suffs" and playing in New York since last week, depicts the American women's suffrage campaign for the right to vote in the 20th century.

However Yousafzai, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, has been condemned by various quarters for partnering with Clinton, an outspoken supporter of Israel's invasion of Gaza.

Pakistan has seen many fiercely emotional pro-Palestine protests since the war in Gaza began last October.

"Her theatre collaboration with Hillary Clinton — who stands for America's unequivocal support for genocide of Palestinians — is a huge blow to her credibility as a human rights activist," popular Pakistani columnist Mehr Tarar wrote on social media platform X.

"I consider it utterly tragic."

'Maddening and heartbreaking'

Whilst Clinton has backed a military onslaught in Gaza and rejected demands for a ceasefire, she has also explicitly called for protections for Palestinian civilians.

Yousafzai has publically condemned the civilian casualties and called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

But author and academic Nida Kirmani said on X that Yousafzai's decision to partner with Clinton was "maddening and heartbreaking at the same time. What an utter disappointment."

Israel's relentless bombing on Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, 70 percent of them babies, children and women, and wounded more than 77,000 others. Some 8,100 Palestinians are feared buried under debris of bombed homes and other buildings.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, starving. The Israeli war has pushed 85 percent of Gaza's 2.4 million population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to do more to prevent starvation crisis in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recently there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Pushing Western feminist agenda

On Wednesday, reacting to accusations of double standards and silence over the plight of Palestinian women in Gaza amid ongoing Israeli bombardment, while producing and promoting a musical with Clinton about the early 20th-century suffragette movement in the US, Malala put out a post on X saying she stands in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

Clinton served as America's top diplomat during former president Barack Obama's administration, which oversaw a campaign of drone strikes targeting Taliban fighters in Pakistan and Afghanistan's borderlands.

Yousafzai earned her Nobel Peace Prize after being shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban as she pushed for girl's education as a teenager in 2012.

However the drone war killed and maimed scores of civilians in Yousafzai's home region , spurring more online criticism of the youngest Nobel Laureate, who earned the prize at 17.

Yousafzai is often viewed with suspicion in Pakistan and other countries, where many feel she is pushing a Western feminist and liberal political agenda in the country.