TV News LIES

Germany on Wednesday criticized Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over remarks that he would push for the eviction of the West Bank community of Khan al-Ahmar following reports of an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant request.

“We have, of course, taken note of these statements with the utmost concern, and we firmly reject them. We have also spoken out on this issue on several occasions in the past. There must be no expulsions. We call on the Israeli government to abandon these plans,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Josef Hinterseher told journalists in Berlin.

He stressed that the German government’s position was “clear and unchanged,” adding: “Unilateral measures -- as part of a broader intensification of settlement policy, into which the entire situation in the West Bank is embedded -- violate international law, pose a risk of further instability in the region and in the West Bank itself, and significantly stand in the way of a two-state solution.”

British news outlet Middle East Eye reported Monday that a request had been submitted to the ICC seeking secret arrest warrants against Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

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Two activists seized by Israeli forces in international waters while en route to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza have been threatened with death or lengthy imprisonment, their lawyers said on Monday.

The legal centre Adalah, which represents Thiago Avila and Saif Abu Keshek, said the pair have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement since their capture last week.

On Tuesday, a court in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon extended their detention until Sunday.

Abu Keshek, a Spanish-Swedish national of Palestinian origin, and Avila, a Brazilian national, were detained late on Wednesday when Israeli naval forces raided a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in international waters off Greece.

They were taken to Israel and accused of assisting the enemy during wartime, contact with a foreign agent, membership of and providing services to a terrorist organisation, and transferring funds to such a group. Both deny the charges.

Since their detention, the men have been held in cells under constant bright light, a practice intended to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation, according to Adalah. They are also blindfolded whenever taken out of their cells, including during medical examinations, which it described as a serious breach of medical ethics.

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Mahmoud Khilla waited for nearly two and half years for the remains of his family to be retrieved from under the rubble of their home before he decided to take matters into his own hands. The Israeli military bombed the five story building in Jabaliya, north of Gaza City, on December 21, 2023, demolishing it with two missiles and killing all 39 people inside. Mahmoud had gone out just 10 minutes earlier to get some food for dinner. He returned to find a massacre.

“There was no warning strike, no call, no prior warning,” Khilla told Drop Site News. “There were 24 children in the house under the age of 17. They killed them all.” Eighteen of the bodies were pulled out in the immediate aftermath, but 21 remained buried, including his wife, children, father, brother, sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, and other relatives.

“For nearly 30 months, we repeatedly called on Civil Defense, the municipality, and local institutions to come and clear the rubble so we could retrieve the bodies. There was no response,” Khilla, 40, told Drop Site. “We appealed to everyone but there is no equipment, no tools. They couldn’t clear the rubble.”

Khilla spoke sitting in a chair on top of the wreckage of where his family home once stood—a small mountain of broken concrete with tentacles of twisted rebar protruding outward at awkward angles.

“I had a son who was just 40 days old. My brother Ahmed had a daughter who was 8 months old. His eldest daughter was 7 years old. My brother Mohammed’s son was in second grade, and the older one was in tenth grade,” he said. “There is no peace of mind. You always think—in winter you think, in summer you think—what has happened to them? You keep thinking about it 24 hours a day, it becomes an obsession. One eventually reaches his limit.”

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More than seven months have passed since a US-mediated ceasefire was announced with the stated aim of ending Israel's two-year genocide in Gaza.

Yet Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes and violations of the agreement, albeit at a lower intensity than before the truce.

The humanitarian crisis caused by the war has also persisted, with Israel maintaining a tight siege on the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli military has justified some of its violations by accusing Palestinian factions of breaching the ceasefire.

However, many of those killed, displaced or arbitrarily detained over the past seven months have been civilians, including children.

With the first phase of the agreement still not fully implemented by Israel, the US has so far failed to advance talks towards the next stage, which was meant to include the disarmament of Palestinian armed groups, the deployment of international stabilisation forces, reconstruction in the strip and a full Israeli withdrawal.

The lack of progress has raised fresh doubts over the future of the fragile ceasefire, as Israel continues to mass forces near Gaza and threatens a renewed assault on the strip.

Middle East Eye breaks down the main Israeli breaches of the ceasefire so far.

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Israel’s top commander in the occupied West Bank has said the army is killing Palestinians at levels “not seen since 1967”, according to Haaretz.

Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, made the remarks in a closed forum, where he also defended looser rules of engagement allowing troops to fire at unarmed Palestinians.

He acknowledged a discriminatory approach whereby Jewish Israeli stone-throwers are not targeted while Palestinians carrying out similar acts are fired at. 

"In three years, we have killed 1,500 terrorists," he said, referring to Palestinians. 

"So how is there no intifada? Why aren’t they taking to the streets? Why is the Palestinian public indifferent? Why are there no disturbances?" Bluth, a settler who has been the Israeli army commander in the West Bank since 2024, added.

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