TV News LIES

Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, telling NBC News the visit was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously.”

The “main point” of the meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July, Pollard said, was to “thank” the ambassador for “his efforts on my behalf during my incarceration.”

Pollard, a former American intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison on espionage charges after being found to have passed critical security documents to Israeli intelligence in the 1980s. Israel made Pollard a citizen during his lengthy prison term, and he moved there in 2020, five years after his release on probation.

During Pollard’s detention, Huckabee was among several pro-Israeli politicians who advocated for his release, arguing that the sentence was too severe for someone who had been spying for an ally.

Pollard described his meeting as more of a social call and insisted the two didn’t discuss politics or Gaza. But the meeting comes amid a growing list of episodes in which the ambassador, a fierce champion of Israel, has appeared to deviate from official White House policy as the Trump administration deepens its involvement in Middle East diplomacy and peacekeeping.

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The Israeli military carried out one of the deadliest attacks on Gaza since the “ceasefire” took effect last month, killing over 30 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and wounding dozens more in a series of airstrikes late Wednesday and early Thursday. The dead and wounded arrived at hospitals in an endless stream, children were covered in dust and blood, men carried small bodies wrapped in shrouds, and wails of grief rose in the air

These horrific scenes, a daily feature of the past two years of Israel’s acute genocidal assault, had returned again. “The war has returned to the Gaza Strip,” Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the Civil Defense in Gaza, told Drop Site inside a hospital tent at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City as the casualties were being brought in. The wounded arrived every few minutes, brought in by ambulances, cars, motorized rickshas—or carried on foot. The dead were wrapped in blankets and sheets.

Most of the casualties came from multiple Israeli airstrikes targeting a tent encampment sheltering the displaced in Khan Younis that killed 17 people, including five children, and from a pair of airstrikes on a building belonging to the Awqaf (Religious Endowments) Ministry sheltering the displaced that killed 16, including seven children, according to hospital officials.

“What is happening in Gaza is something no mind could have imagined,” Bassal said later in the evening as he knelt in front of the bodies of three young children wrapped in one body bag. “It’s madness. These children are being killed—their only crime is that they are children…So to the world, to the nations, to the mediators, to those who oversaw the ceasefire, to those who contributed to stopping the war—now the occupation returns to kill our children—what are you going to do?” He added, “Who will cry for these children? The entire family is gone. The mother died, the children died, the father died—who will cry for them? The world must understand what is happening in Gaza and the gravity of what is taking place.”

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A fire forced an evacuation at the South American Brazilian venue for the COP30 climate summit, on Thursday, Nov. 20, but so far no one in attendance has been injured, according to multiple reports.

The blaze took place at the venue in Belém, Brazil, the BBC and Politico are reporting.

Brazil's tourism minister told reporters at the venue that the fire was under control and no injuries were reported, according to Reuters. It was not immeidately known whether delegates would return immediately or ontinue negotiations.

According to Politico, more than 50,000 are in attendance.

The summit "missed a self-imposed Wednesday deadline to secure agreement among hundreds of countries presenting issues including how to increase climate finance and shift away from fossil fuels," according to Reuters.

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At least 25 Palestinians were killed in four Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday, in a part of Gaza under Hamas control since a shaky ceasefire took effect in October, the local Health Ministry said.

Medics said 10 people were killed in the Gaza City suburb of Zeitoun, two in Shejaia suburb to the east and the rest in two separate attacks in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said its forces struck Hamas targets across Gaza after members of the Palestinian militant group fired on its troops in violation of the nearly six-week-old ceasefire. No Israeli forces were injured.

Hamas condemned the strikes as a dangerous escalation, and urged the U.S. to "honour its stated commitments and exert immediate pressure on Israel to enforce the ceasefire and halt its attacks."

But a U.S. official, who spoke anonymously, said Hamas was aiming to break the ceasefire and not fulfil its commitment to demilitarize.

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A large Russian drone and missile barrage on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil killed at least 25 people, including three children, authorities said Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Turkey in search of diplomatic support for his fight against Russia’s invasion.

The nighttime attack hit two nine-story apartment blocks in Ternopil, located around 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the Polish border, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. At least 73 people, including 15 children, were injured, emergency services said.

At least 19 among those killed were burned alive, including three children aged 5, 7 and 16, Klymenko said. Two dozen people are still unaccounted for, he said on national television, and rescuers expect to work at least two more days to complete the search of rubble.

Russia fired 476 strike and decoy drones, as well as 48 missiles of various types, at Ukrainian targets overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. The bombardment included 47 cruise missiles, with air defenses intercepting all but six of them, the air force said. Western-supplied F-16 and Mirage-2000 jets intercepted at least 10 cruise missiles, it said.

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Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow US citizen Saad Almadi to return home to Florida, five months ahead of the scheduled lifting of travel restrictions and a day after Saudi crown prince and prime minister Mohammed bin Salman met Donald Trump at the White House.

Almadi, 75, was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration in the kingdom in 2021 after he wrote 14 tweets critical of the Riyadh government. Two years later, the charges were reduced to so-called “cyber crimes” and he was sentenced to a 30-year ban on leaving Saudi Arabia.

The announcement that Almadi, a dual citizen and retired engineer who had lived in the US since the 1970s, would be free to leave the country came after the US president delivered a speech touting US-Saudi ties, including arms sales and investment deals, during a second day of public events in Washington.

“Our family is overjoyed that, after four long years, our father, Saad Almadi, is finally on his way home to the United States!” the Almadi family said in a statement.

“This day would not have been possible without President Donald Trump and the tireless efforts of his administration. We are deeply grateful to Dr Sebastian Gorka and the team at the national security council, as well as everyone at the state department,” it added.

The statement by Almadi’s son, Ibrahim Almadi, also thanked various non-profit organizations, including the James Foley Fund and Hostages America, and House speaker Mike Johnson for supporting the elder Almadi’s cause. He later posted on X that his father was on his way to the US.

TVNL Comment: Why has Trump ignored the pleas to release the 16 year old American boy accused of throwing a rock to protecct his home from settler attacks in the West Bank?

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