TV News LIES

A Maronite parish priest, Father Pierre Al-Rai, was killed and at least five people were injured this afternoon by an Israeli strike on the Christian-majority village of Qlayaa in southern Lebanon. Fr Pierre al-Rahi, had stayed in the village, defying an Israeli order to leave, in order to protect his parishioners.

Three days ago, Father Pierre welcomed the Lebanese government's declaration that any military or security activity outside the authority of the state was illegal - referring to the government's move to ban Hezbollah's armed activity.

In a speech delivered on Friday in front of a church, Fr Pierre said the people of his community defend their land peacefully by remaining on their land. "None of us carries weapons," he said. "The only weapons we carry are peace, love, and prayer."

Today a house in the village was hit by Israeli tank, injuring the husband and wife who lived there. When several neighbours, the Red Cross and Fr Pierre rushed to help them, the house was hit a second time, injuring Fr Pierre and four others. AFP report that the priest died soon afterwards.

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Israeli settlers shot and killed three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank over the weekend, amid a surge in attacks since the start of the war on Iran.

A fourth Palestinian died after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli forces during one of the settler assaults.

The first incident took place on Saturday in the Wadi al-Rakhim area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, when settlers opened fire at two brothers from close range.

Amir Mohammad Shanaran was killed in the attack, while his brother was critically wounded, according to Palestinian media.

The two men were reportedly shot near their home by settlers from the nearby settlement of Susiya, which is built on Palestinian land.

On Sunday morning, settlers attacked Palestinians in the town of Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, assaulting residents and opening fire.

Two men identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Thaer Farouq Hmayel, 24, and Farea Jawdat Hamayel, 57, were killed by gunfire.

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Corpses lie in the streets of Mariupol. Hungry people break into stores in search of food and melt snow for water. Thousands huddle in basements, trembling at the sound of Russian shells pounding this strategic port city.

“Why shouldn’t I cry?” Goma Janna demanded as she wept by the light of an oil lamp below ground, surrounded by women and children. “I want my home, I want my job. I’m so sad about people and about the city, the children.”

A humanitarian crisis is unfolding in this encircled city of 430,000, and Tuesday brought no relief: An attempt to evacuate civilians and deliver badly needed food, water and medicine through a designated safe corridor failed, with Ukrainian officials saying Russian forces had fired on the convoy before it reached the city.fired on the convoy before it reached the city.

Nearly two weeks into the invasion, the Russians have advanced deep along Ukraine’s coastline in what could establish a land bridge to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mariupol, which sits on the Azov Sea, has been surrounded by Russian soldiers for days.

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Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, will replace his father as Iran's next supreme leader, members of the country's clerical body said in a statement published in state media.

A member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video on Sunday that a candidate had been selected based on Khamenei's guidance that Iran's top leader should be "hated by the enemy."

"Even the Great Satan (U.S.) has mentioned his name," Heidari Alekasir said of the chosen successor, days after President Donald Trump said Mojtaba was an "unacceptable" choice for him.

The decision, also reported by Reuters and the New York Times on Sunday, comes as the U.S. military announced that another American service member died, bringing the number of U.S. troops killed in action so far in the war with Iran to seven.

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More than 50,000 protesters have marched on the US embassy in London demanding an end to US-Israeli strikes on Iran. 

The march was organised by a coalition of groups, including Hands off Iran, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Palestinian Forum in Britain and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Organisers said more than 50,000 demonstrators marched from Millbank to the US embassy in Vauxhall on Saturday afternoon.

It comes on the eighth day of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, shortly after President Donald Trump said the US would hit Iran "very hard" in the coming days.

Protesters were heard chanting "stop the bombing now, now, now" and "Keir Starmer be afraid, we will see you in The Hague".

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Within hours of the launch of the US-Israeli assault on Iran last weekend, both the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem were shut down. Israeli occupation forces expelled worshippers and justified the closures under the pretext of wartime “preventive measures”.

There are no bomb shelters in Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, nor are there public shelters. Among Palestinians in 1948 territories, around half of the population has no place to seek refuge from air attacks, according to figures from Israel’s own state comptroller. 

Preventing worshippers from reaching the mosques, and instead confining them to their homes, markets, streets or workplaces, does not make them any safer. Amid the genocidal war in Gaza, the idea that Israeli authorities are concerned for the safety of any Palestinian is not merely laughable; it is stomach-turning.

The targeting of mosques through such measures stems, rather, from a vision of religious replacement espoused by Israel’s Zionist government and the Zionist right more broadly. Religious Zionists, who have become the dominant current in Israeli society, call the Al-Aqsa complex Temple Mount.

Adherents performs a mental act of erasure upon hearing this term. The same applies to the Ibrahimi Mosque, which the Zionist right regards as the Cave of the Patriarchs.

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