TV News LIES

In February 2024, just over three months into Israel’s war on Gaza, U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, and his deputy, Stephanie Hallett, blocked an internal cable intended for wider distribution among senior officials in the Biden administration that warned northern Gaza had turned into an “apocalyptic wasteland,” according to Reuters.

Lew and Hallett reportedly blocked the cable, which described the consequences of Israel’s assault in harrowing detail, because they believed it lacked balance.

The cable was drafted by U.S. Agency for International Development staffers and was based on a two-part humanitarian fact-finding mission by a small United Nations team that visited the area on January 31 and February 1, 2024.

I was part of that mission.

Northern Gaza had been under a total siege for over three months when we were eventually allowed to enter in January 2024. We moved through Gaza City, Beit Lahia, Jabaliya, and Beit Hanoun.

What we found was an endless horizon of destruction. People were living under plastic sheeting or in the rubble of buildings. Schools had been destroyed. In parts of Beit Hanoun, the entire area had been depopulated and decimated. There was a deadly shortage of clean drinking water, food and access to healthcare.

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U.S. District Judge Fred Biery on Jan. 31 ordered the release of Liam and his father, asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias, from the Dilley, Texas, immigration detention center. Biery previously ruled on Jan. 27 that the Minnesota preschooler or his father could not be deported.

The detention of Conejo and his son Liam garnered national attention, with many criticizing ICE after photos began circulating showing the blue bunny-hat-wearing 5-year-old being detained in the driveway of his home on Jan. 20.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children," Biery wrote in his order filed Jan. 31.

Biery's order continued: "Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned."

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Five-year-old Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos misses her cousins, classmates and kindergarten teachers in Austin, Texas. Despite being a US citizen, she was deported on 11 January alongside her mother, Karen Guadalupe Gutiérrez Castellanos, to Honduras, a country Génesis had never known.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were acting on an administrative deportation order against Gutiérrez, 26, issued in 2019, before Génesis was born.

“I kept telling them ‘the girl was born here’. They didn’t care, they picked up the child, just put a jumper on her and told me to get into the car with her,” Gutiérrez told the Guardian.

The two were held for almost a week in a hotel 80 miles from their home, without access to a lawyer or a hearing before a judge, before being deported to the Central American country.

Activists and analysts point to a string of procedural violations in the case and note similarities with other recent detentions of children, such as that of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minneapolis. They see it as a chilling indication of what may lie ahead as Donald Trump’s administration continues with mass deportations.

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Israeli forces have killed a Palestinian man and arrested at least 11 others during raids across the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Sunday it was informed by the General Authority of Civil Affairs that a Palestinian citizen was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Ayoun al-Haramiya area, north of the central city of Ramallah. The victim was later identified as Ammar Hijazi, 34, from the northern city of Nablus.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that another young man was critically wounded after Israeli forces opened fire on his vehicle near the same junction.

Israeli forces claimed in a statement that officers had identified a car travelling at high speed and ordered the driver to stop. They claimed the driver accelerated towards an officer, prompting police to open fire, after which the vehicle hit a concrete barrier.

Arrest operations were reported across several West Bank areas. Local sources said Israeli forces raided Al-Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron, arresting four Palestinian brothers.

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US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained a five-year-old Minnesota boy on Tuesday as he returned home from school and transported him and his father to a Texas detention center, according to school officials.

Liam Ramos, a preschooler, and his father were taken into custody while in their driveway, the superintendent of the school district in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, said at a press conference on Wednesday. Liam, who had recently turned five, is one of four children in the school district who have been detained by federal immigration agents during the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in the region over the last two weeks, the district said.

Liam and his father had just arrived home when they were detained, according to Zena Stenvik, the superintendent, who said she drove to the home when she learned of the detentions.

When she arrived, Stenvik said the father’s car was still running and the father and son had already been apprehended. An agent had taken Liam out of the car, led the boy to his front door and directed him to knock on the door asking to be let in, “in order to see if anyone else was home – essentially using a five-year-old as bait”, the superintendent said in a statement.

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Multiple Israeli strikes across Gaza kill up to 15 Palestinians. Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan says the killing of commander Mahmoud al-Holi is an attempt to derail the ceasefire amid other violations. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon kill two.

Contentious Palestinian Authority security figure Sami Nasman tapped for Gaza’s transitional technocratic committee, as Israel delays the committee’s chair at Allenby Crossing.

Iranian state TV claims extensive property damage during protests. U.S. imposes new Iran sanctions over protest crackdown and evasion. U.S. and Iran trade accusations at UN Security Council meeting.

A House bill boosts aid to Israel and blocks funding for UNRWA. Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado meets President Donald Trump, offers him her Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. military seizes sixth oil tanker headed to Venezuela. Rodríguez insists Venezuela can maintain broad international ties. The U.S. retains over one-third of Venezuelan oil sale proceeds, as Venezuela proposes domestic hydrocarbons reform.

ICE deploys tear gas and flash-bang munitions that send Minneapolis children to the hospital. Medical examiner says the death of ICE detainee may be ruled homicide. ICE agents ate at a Mexican restaurant, then later arrested its workers.

ACLU sues Trump administration over Minnesota ICE raids. A federal appeals court clears a path to re-detain Mahmoud Khalil

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