TV News LIES

Palestinian Oscar-winning director Basel Adra said that Israeli soldiers conducted a raid at his West Bank home on Saturday, searching for him and going through his wife’s phone.

Israeli settlers attacked his village, injuring two of his brothers and one cousin, Adra told The Associated Press. He accompanied them to the hospital. While there, he said that he heard from family in the village that nine Israeli soldiers had stormed his home.

The soldiers asked his wife, Suha, for his whereabouts and went through her phone, he said, while his 9-month-old daughter was home. They also briefly detained one of his uncles, he said.

As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family, because soldiers were blocking the entrance to the village and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Adra has spent his career as a journalist and filmmaker chronicling settler violence in Masafer Yatta, the southern reaches of West Bank where he was born. After settlers attacked his co-director, Hamdan Ballal, in March, he told the AP that he felt they were being targeted more intensely since winning the Oscar.

As of Saturday night, Adra said he had no way of returning home to check on his family, because soldiers were blocking the entrance to the village and he was scared of being detained.

Israel’s military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The Israeli army issued evacuation orders and targeted high-rise buildings in Gaza City on Saturday, urging Palestinians to flee south ahead of an escalating offensive to seize the city of nearly 1 million.

Aid groups warn that a large-scale evacuation would exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza City, which the world’s leading hunger watchdog announced last month was officially suffering from famine as a result of Israeli restrictions on food aid.

Most Palestinian families have been repeatedly displaced in the nearly two-year-long war and say they have nowhere left to go. The Israeli military has previously bombed tent encampments designated as humanitarian zones.

“There is no safe tent, no safe house, no safe place, no safety at all,” said Nadia Marouf, who fled Israel’s offensive in the north with her children and resettled in Gaza City — only to see her tent destroyed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike that wiped out a 15-story building and surrounding encampment.

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The anguished final pleas of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car under Israeli fire are retold in “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a searing new film that received a rapturous premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.

“Hind’s story carries the weight of an entire people,” one of the actors, Saja Kilani, told reporters in a statement she read out on behalf of the whole cast and crew ahead of the screening.

The true-life drama focuses on telephone operators from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society who tried for hours to reassure the trapped Hind Rajab as she begged to be rescued from the car, where her aunt, uncle and three cousins already lay dead.

I’m so scared, please come,” the little girl says, with the original recordings of her increasingly desperate calls to the dispatchers used to powerful effect throughout the film.

The real question is, how have we let a child beg for life? No one can live in peace while even one child is forced to plead for survival. ... Let Hind Rajab’s voice echo around the world,” Kilani said.

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IDF reservists were answering the latest call-up to invade Gaza City, but likely in smaller numbers and slower than in the past recruitments, an IDF briefing appeared to clarify on Wednesday.

In fact, military sources have declined to provide statistics during the briefing. Instead, they said that they will give an update on these numbers at the end of the week, indicating both that the call-up is gradual, but also that the initial numbers were not so impressive that the military would want to focus on the issue until it can give the maximum number of those who were showing up.

Often during call-ups, the military rushes out the early numbers and percentages to express its pride in the early responders.

Most of the reservists being called up are in their fifth or sixth round of service since the Israel-Hamas War broke out.Most of the reservists being called up are in their fifth or sixth round of service since the Israel-Hamas War broke out.

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Israeli forces carried out a rare daytime raid on Tuesday in the heart of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded, according to local medics, as people throwing stones scattered after gunfire and tear gas.

Israel said it targeted money exchanges linked to Hamas. But the raid was likely to further undermine the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority as it seeks to capitalize on the recent decision by some major Western countries to recognize Palestinian statehood.

The Palestinian Authority, which is led by rivals of Hamas, did not immediately comment on the raid. It cooperates with Israel on security matters and exercises limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank. Many Palestinians view it as a corrupt and autocratic entity.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 58 people were wounded in the raid, eight of them by live fire and 14 by rubber-coated bullets. A few dozen people hurled rocks at a line of Israeli armored vehicles as they rolled into the city center. The military said it detained five people “suspected of terrorist activity.”

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The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on Monday condemned Woody Allen for speaking virtually at a Russian film festival over the weekend, calling his participation in the event “a disgrace and an insult” to the victims of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to Russian media, Allen spoke Sunday at the Moscow International Film Week via video conference. The appearance put him at odds with the Hollywood establishment, which has embraced the Ukraine cause during Russia’s 3 1/2-year war, with prominent actors signing on to the United24 crowdfunding initiative and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy making virtual appearances at past Golden Globes and Grammys ceremonies.

Footage aired by Russian state TV showed the filmmaker addressing a tightly packed movie theater from a massive screen, with pro-Kremlin film director Fyodor Bondarchuk moderating the session. Russian media reports quoted Allen as saying that he has always liked Russian cinema, recounting his past trips to Russia and the Soviet Union, and talking about what he would do if he were to receive a proposal to direct a movie in the country.

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