TV News LIES

Israel said it launched an airstrike on a Hamas militant in southern Gaza late Wednesday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day that wounded five Israeli soldiers.

The strike was the latest test for a fragile ceasefire that has mostly held up since early October, despite claims of violations by both Israel and Hamas. Hamas put out a statement condemning the Israeli strike in Khan Younis.

Earlier Wednesday, Israel received remains of what could be one of the last hostages in Gaza and said it would begin allowing Palestinians to leave the territory through a border crossing with Egypt.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas violated the ceasefire Wednesday when, according to the army, militants emerged from a tunnel and attacked Israeli soldiers in an area under their control.

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Alexander Prokhanov — the aging ultranationalist novelist, editor, and chief ideologue of Russian imperial mysticism — has seen his latest book, Lemner, abruptly vanish from store shelves. It was printed, advertised, distributed across Russia, and then suddenly recalled. Bookstores received quiet instructions to return all copies. State television, which once glorified him, now pretends he doesn’t exist.

The reason is both banal and profound: Prokhanov’s fictionalized portrayal of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Kremlin elite revealed power as grotesque, delusional, and decaying. Even without naming names, everyone recognized the shadows behind the characters — and in one of them, the unmistakable reflection of dictator Vladimir Putin himself.

The self-drawn illustrations in Lemner are no less disturbing than the text itself. Cartoonish soldiers with haunted eyes, flaming skies, and surreal machinery create an apocalyptic parody of the very ideology Prokhanov once glorified.

The loyal mythmaker had spoken too clearly. And in doing so, he exposed something larger than a literary scandal: the beginning of the end of Russia’s ideological universe.

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The fear is palpable in this Palestinian village. It’s clear in how farmers gather their harvests quickly, how they scan the valley for movement, how they dare not stray past certain roads. At any time, they say, armed Israeli settlers could descend.

“In a matter of minutes, they get on their phones. They gather themselves, and they surprise you,” said Yasser Alkam, a Palestinian-American lawyer and farmer from the village of Turmus Ayya. “They hide between the trees. They ambush people and beat them up severely.”

In recent months, Alkam says Turmus Ayya has weathered near-daily attacks by settlers, especially after they set up an outpost that the anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now says is on his village’s land.

Alkam says he can’t reach hMore...is own fields for fear of being assaulted. In a particularly gruesome attack, he watched a settler beat a Palestinian woman unconscious with a spiky club.

The fear is shared throughout the West Bank. During October’s olive harvest, settlers across the territory launched an average of eight attacks daily, according to the United Nations humanitarian office, the most since it began collecting data in 2006. The attacks continued in November, with the U.N. recording at least 136 more by Nov. 24.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday called for a complete end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – not just a pause in the fighting that has raged since February 2022 – ahead of US-Russia talks in Moscow centering on a peace plan aimed at ending Europe’s deadliest war since World War II.

Zelensk is seeking support from European allies, who fear the US plan – which is rumored to have been drafted in Mosclw – reads like a wishlist for Putin.

“Our common task is to end the war, not just to achieve a pause in hostilities. A dignified peace is needed. For this to truly happen, everyone must be on the side of peace,” he said at a joint press conference with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin during his official visit to Ireland.

Earlier on Tuesday, following his arrival in Ireland, Zelensky received a detailed briefing on recent US-Ukraine negotiations in Miami, Florida, where Ukraine’s negotiators reported “significant progress” in revising the initial plan, but noted that challenging issues remain.

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The killing of two unarmed Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Jenin has provoked international outrage after video footage of the incident went viral on Friday.

Credited to the local Palestine TV station, the footage shows two young Palestinian men surrendering to Israeli soldiers and lying on the ground in front of a garage under soldiers’ instructions. They then appear to be directed by the soldiers to go back inside the garage, where one of the troops is seen aiming and shooting at him as he lies on the ground.

Their hands were raised, they posed no threat, and Israeli soldiers murdered them anyway.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the victims as Muntaser Billah Abdallah, 26, and Yousef Asaasah, 37. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing in a statement, calling it “a war crime” and a case of “extrajudicial killing.”

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The Israeli army on Monday again targeted several locations in southern Gaza that fell under the military-controlled yellow zone, according to local witnesses.

Residents told Anadolu that Israeli artillery heavily bombarded eastern parts of Rafah, with columns of smoke rising from the struck areas.

They also reported Israeli helicopters unleashing intense gunfire on eastern Khan Younis.

There was no immediate report of casualties.

According to the Gaza Government Media Office, the Israeli army has carried out more than 590 violations of the ceasefire, killing at least 357 Palestinians and wounding 903 others.

The ceasefire deal, mediated by Türkiye, Egypt, and Qatar, and backed by the US, came into force on October 10 to halt two years of Israeli attacks that have killed more than 70,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 170,000 others since October 2023.

Phase one of the ceasefire deal includes the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.

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