TV News LIES

Israel is working to gain as much independence as possible in its weapons production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday, in a development he said was the result of the lessons learned during the past two years of war on multiple fronts.

“I approved, along with the defense minister and finance minister, a sum of NIS 350 billion [$108 billion] over the next decade to build an independent Israeli munitions industry,” Netanyahu said in an address at a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots.

The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to “reduce our dependence on all players, including friends,” after allies including the US, UK, and Germany all imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Still, he noted, many countries around the world, including Germany, “want to buy from us more and more systems.”

The premier has long been calling for Israel to develop its own self-reliant military industry, and in January 2024 announced that the government would invest in a “multi-year plan to free Israel from dependence on external purchases.”

TVNL Comment:  Why has the US given billions of dollars to Israel every single year?  It's a rhetorical question. It's also insane.

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At a recent military technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli weapons companies made some of their most explicit remarks yet connecting the value of their products to the real-world testing of that firepower on Palestinians in Gaza.

A recording of the conference remarks was obtained by Drop Site News and includes comments from the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries as well as executives at Elbit Systems, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, and others. The conference was called DefenseTech Week and was held in early December. Drop Site shared the audio with independent news outlets in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere; those outlets will be producing their own investigations.

The Israeli weapons industry has previously come in for criticism for its willingness to boast that its products are “lab tested” on human beings under occupation, most prominently by Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein. His book, The Palestine Laboratory, was adapted into a Drop Site podcast last year.

The newly uncovered remarks suggest that, rather than having been chastened by global condemnation for the genocide in Gaza, the nation’s weapons industry is emboldened by it. “The war that we faced in the last two years enables most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” boasted Boaz Levy, head of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), on day one of the conference. “Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

The proposal offered another potential compromise on control of the Donbas region, which has been a major sticking point in peace negotiations.

Zelenskyy said the U.S. proposed the creation of a “free economic zone," which he said should be demilitarized. But it was unclear what that idea would mean for governance or development of the region.

A similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, Zelenskyy said. He said any peace plan would need to be put to a referendum.

Zelenskyy spoke to reporters Tuesday to describe an overarching 20-point plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. hammered out in Florida in recent days, though he said many details are still being discussed.

Russia offers no hint it will agree to withdrawal

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Eileen Schoch traveled to her mother's funeral in Asheville, N.C. and found the hotel room — the one she'd called about in advance — wasn't accessible as promised.

Schoch, who uses a wheelchair after two strokes, couldn't use the room's toilet without assistance from her husband or daughter. The grab bars were in the wrong place. She couldn't get into the shower because it had a door too narrow for her wheelchair. She got sponge baths for three days.

Nor could she reach the tall bed from her wheelchair. The hotel gave her an uncomfortable cot, instead.

"You feel that you're treated as a second-class citizen. And you don't count," says Schoch, a retired educator from Schenectady, N.Y.. "And it's not a nice feeling."

Schoch said she considered switching hotels, but she wanted to be close to other family members. After all, they'd picked that hotel because she'd chosen it first. The family brought business to the hotel, booking four rooms for three days.

Schoch asks: "After that experience, who would want to travel?"

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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce federal homeland security funding, including for disasters, for states that do not comply with immigration enforcement policies.

US district judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, a 2018 Trump appointee, ruled on Monday that the latest case was “another example” of the Trump administration tying state and local government assistance to its immigration crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cut more than $230m in federal grants for Connecticut, Delaware, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and the District of Columbia. The grants were a part of $1b in annual funds given to states and local governments for counter-terrorism efforts.

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Donald Trump has said the US carried out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria on Thursday, after spending weeks decrying the group for targeting Christians.

The president said in a post on his Truth Social platform: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!

“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”

The US military’s Africa Command said the strike was conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities and killed multiple militants. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said he was “grateful for Nigerian government support + cooperation”.

Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the strikes were carried out as part of ongoing security cooperation with the US, involving intelligence sharing and strategic coordination to target militant groups. “This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said in a post on X.

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The EU could “respond swiftly and decisively” against the “unjustified” US visa bans on five Europeans involved in combating online hate and disinformation, a European Commission spokesperson has said.

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron accused Washington of “coercion and intimidation”, after the visa ban on the figures who have been at the heart of campaigns to introduce laws regulating American tech companies.

Justifying the visa bans, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, wrote on X: “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organised efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.

European leaders condemn US visa bans as row over ‘censorship’ escalates.

Germany, Spain, the UK and a chorus of EU officials joined the French president in condemning the move.

The visa bans were imposed on Tuesday on Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner and one of the architects of the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, including two in Germany and two in the UK.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on Wednesday shot a migrant who drove a van toward them while fleeing an immigration enforcement operation, resulting in a crash that injured his passenger, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The DHS said in a statement that ICE officers were conducting a targeted operation in the Baltimore suburb of Glen Burnie, Md., when they approached a van and asked the driver, whom they identified as Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, to turn off the engine.

“The driver refused and attempted to flee, then weaponized his vehicle and began ramming his van into several ICE vehicles. He then drove his van directly at ICE officers, attempting to run them over,” the agency added in the statement.

“Fearing for their lives and public safety, the ICE officers defensively fired their service weapons, striking the driver. Sousa-Martins then wrecked his van between two buildings, injuring the passenger,” the statement continued.

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