TV News LIES

The UK's new sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements include those in the occupied Golan Heights as well as in occupied Palestinian territory, Middle East Eye understands.

On Tuesday, the British government declared the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and announced comprehensive sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements.

However, the announced measures did not clarify whether Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights in Syria would be affected by the sanctions, leading campaigners to call for the ban to be extended.

Government sources confirmed to MEE on Thursday night that Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights and in East Jerusalem will be covered by the UK's new measures, as well as those in the occupied West Bank.

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An Israeli reservist has said that army officers treat Gaza’s entire population of two million Palestinians as targets, describing widespread killings and a collapse of rules of engagement during the genocide.

The drone operator, who spoke to Haaretz on condition of anonymity in an article published on Thursday, described a range of alleged crimes against Palestinian civilians.

He said he joined the army in 2008 and has killed at least 54 Palestinians up until October 2023, including unarmed civilians.

During the genocide in Gaza, he served in a drone attack cell until leaving the army in July.

“In the first days, there were no rules,” he said, describing an army with no clear rules of engagement when it came to Palestinians.

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Federal prosecutors have reached a tentative plea agreement with a former CIA officer accused of stealing hundreds of gold bars worth more than $40m from the US spy agency and hiding them in his basement, court records show.

David Rush and federal justice department prosecutors have a “plea agreement in principle”, the parties said in a Friday court filing. The parties also asked a judge to extend the 17 September deadline for three weeks through 8 October to allow them time to “resolve the matter prior to an indictment”.

“The parties need additional time to prepare the paperwork, including an agreed upon statement of facts,” assistant US attorney Raizza Ty and Rush’s attorney, Jessica Carmichael, wrote in the joint filing. “A pre-indictment resolution promotes the public interest by conserving government and judicial resources.”

There were no further details in the court filing about the working plea agreement.

Rush, a former executive service-level employee for the CIA, was fired after allegedly taking 303 bullion bars, each weighing 2.2lb (1kg) – and more than $2m in foreign currency – from his government office, according to an FBI affidavit. The search of his home in Virginia also turned up 35 luxury watches, many of them Rolex.

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The CIA on Friday released 71 intelligence reports from the months and years leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, providing a new look at what the spy agency told two presidents about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden before the deadly strikes.

The trove of documents includes assessments prepared by analysts for the President's Daily Brief, which is distributed to the president and senior administration officials. The release, which coincided with ceremonies marking 25 years since the attacks, includes 70 documents from before the 2001 attacks and one report from the day after. Two of the documents had previously been made public during the course of the investigation by the 9/11 Commission, the body established by Congress to examine the attacks.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the disclosure was "the single largest release of CIA analysis related to 9/11 ever."

"25 years ago, the 9/11 attacks struck a blow to our Nation, but they did not break us. Generations of CIA officers have since dedicated their careers to securing justice for our fallen Americans and ensuring al-Qa'ida would never again harm our country," Ratcliffe said in a statement.

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) shook hands during the 9/11 commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero, a show of unity after Giuliani called on Mamdani not to attend the memorial.

Giuliani, who was mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told Newsmax earlier this week, “Having lost friends there, and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.”

“Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that Sept. 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America,” Giuliani said in the Sunday interview.

Giuliani’s criticism was heavily tinged with anti-Muslim sentiment and false claims about Mamdani’s beliefs.

“They have every desire to take us over. This is not, they want to be just another religion, they want to dominate us,” Giuliani said of Muslims. “Mamdani is a clear supporter of that.”

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Twenty-five years after 9/11, Greg Semendinger's aerial photos still transport him back to that fateful day.

Semendinger, a detective and helicopter pilot for the New York City police, had been dispatched to the World Trade Center right after the first plane attack that morning in 2001. As his chopper approached, he could see the giant gash where an airliner had sliced through seven floors near the top of the north tower, and black smoke was billowing out.

Semendinger wasn't an official photographer for the NYPD, but he always carried a camera to document his squad's rescues and had one in the chopper that morning as an unthinkable horror unfolded before him.

He grabbed it and started snapping away.

The images he captured over the next 90 minutes were astonishing, among the only aerial photos of the Twin Towers as they burned and then collapsed, one after the other. With his copilot at the controls and hovering above, Semendinger trained his lens as the second tower vaporized in a plunging cascade of debris, and an immense grey cloud mushroomed across Lower Manhattan.

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Shortly before taking office, Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, apologised for our party’s initial response to Israel's war on Gaza, saying we got it wrong. 

He was right to apologise, but in the face of overwhelming evidence of Israel’s genocide and war crimes, and the UK’s long complicity, it is far from enough.

Today, the foreign secretary has announced a sanctions regime banning trade with Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, a step that I and more than 140 Labour MPs have called for.

This is welcome and long overdue, not just because it puts pressure on the Israeli government, nor simply because it is what is required of us under international law, but also because it is only fair given the UK’s role in creating a situation where Palestinians are systematically denied their fundamental rights and subjected to the most violent repression by Israel.

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A documentary examining the Israeli military systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza received a record-breaking standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, drew a record-breaking 24-and-a-half-minute standing ovation at its world premiere, the longest at Venice, according to Variety.

The reception surpassed the 22-minute ovation given last year to Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, which tells the story of the six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in January 2024.

Members of the Venice audience held Palestinian flags during the applause, while Abraham and Szor, who were visibly emotional, were embraced by the film’s executive producer, The Zone of Interest director, Jonathan Glazer.

Online, the documentary received heavy praise from festival-goers and many activists.

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