|
Israel's military on Wednesday admitted that its soldiers opened fire in January 2024 on a car trying to flee Gaza City following Israel's evacuation orders. The car was carrying 5-year-old Palestinian Hind Rajab and six of her relatives. They were all killed, as were Palestine Red Crescent Society medics dispatched to rescue them. The Israeli military said it would also investigate the killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics whose bodies and crushed emergency vehicles were recovered from a mass grave in Rafah in March 2025. It made no mention of thousands of other incidents where Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces.
"This seems to be nothing more than political theater," says Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and North Africa editor at Drop Site News. He was a correspondent on the Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary The Night Won't End that investigated the killings of civilians in Gaza by the Israeli military, including Hind Rajab.
"Israel's internal investigations into the criminal conduct of its own soldiers … can't be regarded as credible mechanisms for accountability," says Abdel Kouddous. "They instead function primarily to shield Israel from international tribunals or prosecution abroad."
|
|
(First column, 10th story, link)
Related stories:
USA warned of 'October surprise' from Iran...
ICE quietly worked with Tehran on deporting Iranians to Iran...
Drudge Report Feed needs your support! Become a Patron
|
|
(First column, 13th story, link)
|
|
Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American man who lives in Ohio, traveled to the occupied West Bank on Monday to help relatives defend their family home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. Israeli settlers have surrounded the home, which Ridi owns, for more than a week. Settlers have besieged several Palestinian houses in the village, trapping people inside and cutting off water and electricity in some cases.
"I'm not getting no protection here. I still fear for my life. I still fear for my family's life here," says Ridi, who joins Democracy Now! from the occupied West Bank. Ridi has raised an American flag on his home and reached out to the U.S. Embassy for help. "The IDF is not even making it better here. They're not allowing us to leave the house. They're not allowing anyone to come to my house freely," says Ridi, explaining that getting food to the house takes "hours, if not days."
The settlers "can act like this because of the active support from the Israeli government that gives them weapons, gives them ATVs," says Israeli reporter Oren Ziv, who has traveled to Qusra twice in recent days. Ziv says the Israeli government also supports "the establishment of more and more [settler] outposts that are kind of front bases for these terror attacks."
|
|
Median Strategies, a fake polling firm, claimed it was a "social experiment." The fraudulent poll received some attention but was shunned by mainstream poll aggregators and exposed by a reporter.
|
|
We look at major media news with Jessica González, co-CEO of the advocacy organization Free Press. She discusses the landmark lawsuit against Meta for making its social media platforms addictive for young people, efforts to halt the Paramount-Warner Bros. megamerger, and Disney's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission over what it calls the Trump administration's "retaliatory campaign" against the ABC television network.
González says President Donald Trump's "authoritarian takeover attempt of our media system" must be opposed.
|
|
