TV News LIES

Ofer Bronchtein was brought to tears as French President Emmanuel Macron delivered his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, recognizing a Palestinian state for the first time.

"Honestly, I cried," he told NPR in an interview in his Paris apartment after his return from New York. "I see it happening in front of me and I see the full room of the General Assembly and everyone is applauding."

Bronchtein says his only regret is that the Israeli delegation walked out of the General Assembly. The Israeli and U.S. governments opposed the move. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said world leaders who recognized Palestinian statehood were granting a "tremendous reward" to the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.

Bronchtein refutes this, arguing it is no reward for a group that never sought a peaceful coexistence alongside Israel.

"I strongly believe that if there had been a Palestinian state before the 7th of October, if the Palestinians had been sovereign to run their lives as they wanted, the 7th of October [attack in Israel] would not have happened," he says.

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Israel’s military on Saturday launched airstrikes against Hamas militants in Gaza in the latest test of the ceasefire that began on Oct. 10, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said five senior Hamas members were killed. Health officials in Gaza reported at least 24 people killed and another 54 wounded, including children.

The strikes, which Israel said were in response to gunfire at its troops, came after international momentum on Gaza, with the U.N. Security Council on Monday approving the U.S. blueprint to secure and govern the territory. It authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security, approves a transitional authority to be overseen by President Donald Trump and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

Israel has previously carried out similar waves of strikes after reported attacks on its forces during the ceasefire. At least 33 Palestinians were killed over a 12-hour period Wednesday and Thursday, mostly women and children, health officials said.

One of Saturday’s strikes targeted a vehicle, killing 11 and wounding over 20 Palestinians in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood, said Rami Mhanna, managing director of Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken. The majority of the wounded were children, director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.

Associated Press video showed children and others inspecting the blackened vehicle, whose top was blown off.

A strike targeting a house near Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza killed at least three people and wounded 11 others, according to the hospital. It said a strike on a house in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people including a child and wounded 16 others.

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European leaders on Saturday praised President Trump’s reported 28-point plan to end the war between Ukraine and Russia for including “important elements,” but added that the plan needs “additional work” for peace to last.

The proposal would reportedly require Ukraine to relinquish the eastern territory of the Donbas region to Russia and cut its armed forces by half. In a joint statement released by the Council of the European Union, leaders signaled the plan is a good start — but merely a draft.

“We believe therefore that the draft is a basis which will require additional work,” they added. “We are ready to engage in order to ensure that a future peace is sustainable. We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force.”

They added, “We are also concerned by the proposed limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack.”

The coalition expressed their continued support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that they “will continue to coordinate closely with Ukraine and the U.S. over the coming days.”

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At least 67 Palestinian children have been killed in the Gaza Strip since a United States-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect last month, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says.

Speaking during a news conference in Geneva on Friday, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Pires said the death toll includes a baby girl who was killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday.

It also includes seven other children killed a day earlier, as Israel carried out a wave of attacks across the enclave.

“This is during an agreed ceasefire. The pattern is staggering,” Pires told reporters of the death toll since October 11, the first full day of the truce between Israel and Hamas.

“As we have repeated many times, these are not statistics: Each was a child with a family, a dream, a life – suddenly cut short by continued violence.”

Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, with UNICEF estimating last month that 64,000 children have been killed and injured in Israeli attacks since the war began in October 2023.

Save the Children reported this week that, in 2024, an average of 475 Palestinian children “suffered lifelong disabilities” each month as a result of the war, including traumatic brain injuries and burns.

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Several high-ranking Army officials, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, are in Ukraine to help with peace talks, U.S. officials said Wednesday, as Trump administration efforts to halt Russia’s war in Ukraine have stalled.

Driscoll had been planning a trip to Ukraine for some time to discuss the country’s drone warfare innovations and tactics, but last week President Donald Trump decided to identify him as a kind of “special representative” to kick-start peace negotiations and conduct a fact-finding mission, one of the officials said.

That official confirmed Driscoll is scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week as well as top Ukrainian government, military and defense industry officials.

Driscoll is accompanied by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service’s most senior officer; Gen. Chris Donahue, U.S. Army Europe and Africa commanding general; and Sgt. Maj. Michael Weimer, the Army’s top enlisted official, an Army official said.

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Convicted Israeli spy Jonathan J. Pollard downplayed the controversy around his private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, telling NBC News the visit was “personal” and “wasn’t done surreptitiously.”

The “main point” of the meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in July, Pollard said, was to “thank” the ambassador for “his efforts on my behalf during my incarceration.”

Pollard, a former American intelligence analyst, spent 30 years in prison on espionage charges after being found to have passed critical security documents to Israeli intelligence in the 1980s. Israel made Pollard a citizen during his lengthy prison term, and he moved there in 2020, five years after his release on probation.

During Pollard’s detention, Huckabee was among several pro-Israeli politicians who advocated for his release, arguing that the sentence was too severe for someone who had been spying for an ally.

Pollard described his meeting as more of a social call and insisted the two didn’t discuss politics or Gaza. But the meeting comes amid a growing list of episodes in which the ambassador, a fierce champion of Israel, has appeared to deviate from official White House policy as the Trump administration deepens its involvement in Middle East diplomacy and peacekeeping.

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