TV News LIES

A new report says there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.

It cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.

Israel's foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as "distorted and false".

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

At least 64,964 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures are seen as reliable by the UN.

Most of the population has also been repeatedly displaced; more than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and UN-backed food security experts have declared a famine in Gaza City.

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Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly Transneft has warned producers they may have to cut output following Ukraine’s drone attacks on critical export ports and refineries, Reuters has reported, citing industry sources. Ukrainian drones have frequently hit Russia’s oil plants, cutting refining capacity by up to a fifth, and damaged ports including Ust-Luga and Primorsk, Ukrainian military officials and Russian industry sources have said. Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday it had struck the Saratov oil refinery in Russia during an overnight attack.

Transneft, which handles more than 80% of all the oil extracted in Russia, has in recent days restricted oil firms’ ability to store oil in its pipeline system, two industry sources close to Russian oil firms told Reuters. Transneft has also warned producers it may have to accept less oil if its infrastructure sustains further damage, the two sources said. Transneft dismissed Reuters’ reporting as “fake news”. The Russian government relies heavily on oil and gas revenue. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, has said attacks on Russian oil infrastructure are “the sanctions that work the fastest”.

The European Commission will propose speeding up the phase-out of Russian fossil fuel imports, the EU executive’s head, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Tuesday after a call with the US president, Donald Trump. “Russia’s war economy, sustained by revenues from fossil fuels, is financing the bloodshed in Ukraine,” she said. Von der Leyen announced the commission would soon present its 19th package of sanctions aimed at Russia’s war effort – targeting crypto, banks, and energy.

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Anna Corrigan thought she was an only child.

It wasn't until she was in her 50s, researching her family tree, that she discovered a family secret: Corrigan found documents showing her mother, Bridget Dolan, had given birth to two boys in 1946 and 1950, in a home for unwed mothers.

It was an era when the Roman Catholic Church dominated Irish life. There was no sex education. Birth control and abortion were illegal, and pregnancy outside marriage brought shame.

Dolan died in 2001 without ever speaking about her sons.

"I never knew what she was going through," says Corrigan, 69, paging through black-and-white photos of her First Communion. "See the grip my mother has holding me? What was going through her mind, after losing two children? [Were they] taken away, dead, adopted?"

Throughout the 20th century, the Irish government and Catholic Church ran facilities called mother and baby homes, where single women who got pregnant could go to give birth. Mothers typically stayed about a year, while breastfeeding, but were then forced out — without their babies. These were similar to Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, Catholic-run, all-female workhouses where women who were considered disgraced often lived indefinitely, doing unpaid or underpaid labor, usually as laundresses.

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More than nine months after Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports that concluded Israel was committing genocide – and more than a month since key Israeli human rights groups asserted the same – the American political establishment remains in rigid denial while horrors continue nonstop in Gaza. Virtually all Republicans and most Democrats in Congress still support massive US arms shipments to Israel, so they certainly can’t admit that the weaponry is making genocide possible.

Central to rationales for arming Israel is the claim that it is the nation of “the Jewish people”.

When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke via video to a conference in Jerusalem three months ago, he declared: “There can be no nuanced separation of hatred of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people.” Rubio added: “Those who call for the destruction of Israel are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.” Last month, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, reinforced the same message while visiting Israel, where he reportedly said that the West Bank was “the rightful property of the Jewish people”.

Such rhetoric – equating Israel with all Jews and Israel’s future with theirs – is an effort to sanctify Israel and shield it from criticism by brandishing the charge of antisemitism.

Fusing Israel with “the Jewish people” is a key propaganda technique. The fact that it’s so ubiquitous makes it no less ridiculous, or dangerous. A comment attributed to Voltaire applies: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”

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After the Israeli military announced that a multi-story residential tower in Gaza was about to be targeted in an airstrike, families in Gaza screamed as they hurled their belongings out of their windows on Sunday.

The Al-Mahna building in Tal Al-Hawa, a southern neighborhood in Gaza City, was sheltering dozens of Palestinian families who are remaining in the face of Israel’s scorched earth campaign to seize control of the city. The Israeli military, which began its ethnic cleansing of the one million estimate residents of Gaza City last month, has destroyed hundreds of towers and homes in Gaza City, reducing dozens of high rise buildings to rubble and re-displacing hundreds of families in nearby tent encampments.

Men, women, and children scrambled out of the Al-Mahna building in utter panic, carrying whatever belongings they could salvage—thin mattresses, suitcases, baskets, and plastic chairs. People began throwing mattresses and bags out of the windows of the 12-story building, where clothes could be seen still hanging to dry in the balconies. The belongings crashed to the ground, putting people exiting the structure in danger. A woman screamed, “What is happening?” as she ran into the street. One man collapsed in despair, crying, “I can’t, I swear I can’t,” before his friends picked him up off the ground.

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An emergency meeting of Arab and Islamic states is taking place in Qatar in response to Israel's air strike on Hamas leaders in Doha last week.

A draft resolution seen by the Reuters news agency condemns what it calls Israel's "hostile acts including genocide, ethnic cleansing, [and] starvation", which it says threatens "prospects of peace and coexistence". Israel has strongly denied such allegations.

It is not clear what practical decisions could be taken, as analysts say any kind of military response is out of the question.

Earlier, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani urged the international community to stop applying "double standards" and to punish Israel.

On Sunday, US President Donald Trump said that "Qatar has been a very great ally. Israel and everybody else, we have to be careful. When we attack people we have to be careful."

Departing for Israel on Saturday, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said Trump "didn't like the way [the Qatar attack] went down".

After holding talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem the next day, Rubio said Hamas "needs to cease to exist as an armed element that can threaten the peace and security" in the Middle East.

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