TV News LIES

Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets every week to protest the ongoing war in Gaza and the government's failure to bring home Israeli hostages.

But on Tuesday, a different kind of demonstration took place: hundreds of retired Israeli Air Force pilots rallied against the war outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

It was the first time the group, which calls itself "555," had gathered in person to oppose the Israeli cabinet's latest decision — to launch an operation to capture Gaza City and expand the nearly two-year war. The crowd, most over 60 years of age, stood under a banner reading "Don't kill hostages and soldiers" — a message that echoed throughout the speeches.

Many also stressed that their call to end the war wasn't only about Israeli lives, but about the deaths of Palestinian civilians as well.

Among them was Dan Halutz, a former chief of staff of the Israeli military and ex-Air Force commander. Challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that Hamas still poses a significant threat, Halutz told the crowd, "Who among the senior commanders in the IDF believes Hamas is a strategic threat we can't defend against? I don't believe there's such a person."

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U.S. President Donald Trump said he believes his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is ready to end his war in Ukraine, speaking on the eve of Friday's summit between the men, but that peace would likely require at least a second meeting involving Ukraine's leader.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his European allies have intensified their efforts this week to prevent any deal between the U.S. and Russia emerging from Friday's summit in Alaska that leaves Ukraine vulnerable to future attack.

"I think President Putin will make peace, I think President Zelenskiy will make peace," Trump told reporters at the White House. "We'll see if they get along."

Trump has downplayed talk of a ceasefire emerging from the summit and speculated about a possible second meeting to come, involving more leaders.

"I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelenskiy, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along. Maybe not. I don't know that."

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Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.

The Norwegian outlet Dagens Næringsliv, citing unnamed sources, reported: “Out of the blue, while finance minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called … He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs.”

The outlet added that it was not the first time that Trump had raised the question of a Nobel peace prize nomination to Stoltenberg.

n a statement to Reuters, Stoltenberg, the former Nato secretary-general, said the call focused on tariffs and economic cooperation ahead of Trump’s call with Jonas Støre, the Norwegian prime minister.

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President Donald Trump said he'd like Vladimir Putin to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "almost immediately" after his upcoming Alaskan summit with the Russian leader.

Trump, speaking to reporters on Aug.13 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., also said there would be “very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree to end the Ukraine war when they meet on Aug. 15. He has previously threatened to hit Russia with sanctions and tariffs if Putin does not end the fighting.

Trump said the summit with the Russian president would be "setting the table" for a possible Putin-Zelenskyy meeting that he might attend as well.

The president joined a call earlier on Aug. 13 with Zelenskyy and European leaders, two days before Trump's one-on-one summit with Putin in Alaska. Trump is trying to push Moscow into a peace deal that Kyiv and its allies fear will include the loss of significant territory seized by Russia in its three-year war on Ukraine.

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Since the war began in Gaza, 184 Palestinian journalists have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. They include men and women, freelancers and staffers, veterans with years in the field and young reporters on some of their first assignments. Some werekilled with their families at home, others were in vehicles marked “PRESS,” or in tents near hospitals, or out covering the violence. Many endured the same conditions as those they covered — hunger, displacement, and grief.

Israel has killed at least 184 Palestinian journalists since the war began
The war in Gaza has been the most dangerous conflict for journalists and media workers in recent history, observers say.

Among them:

—Ayat Khadoura, 27. The Al Quds University graduate shed light on the hardships families faced in the first weeks of the war. She became known for reporting on bombs striking her northern Gaza neighborhood, including one video in which she said Israeli forces had ordered residents to evacuate moments before a strike hit her home and killed her in November 2023.

— Hamza Dahdouh, 27. The son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza City bureau chief, he was killed in a January 2024 drone strike after leaving a reporting assignment at the site of an earlier strike in southern Gaza. He was the fifth member of his family to be killed.

TVNL Comment: Thank you, Associated Press editors, for paying tribute to some of the journalists killed in Gaza.  Wonder why no foreign jounalists are allowed to enter the region.  Also wonder why there is no outcry from other journalists throughout the world.

Read about more journalist killed by Israel here...

Small bands of Russian soldiers thrust deeper into eastern Ukraine on Tuesday ahead of a summit this week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, which European Union states fear could end in peace terms imposed on an unlawfully shrunken Ukraine.

In one of the most extensive incursions so far this year, Russian troops advanced near the coal-mining town of Dobropillia, part of Putin's campaign to take full control of Ukraine's Donetsk region. Ukraine's military dispatched reserve troops, saying they were in difficult combat against small groups of advancing Russian soldiers.

Trump has said any peace deal would involve "some swapping of territories to the betterment of both" Russia and Ukraine, which has up to now depended on the U.S. as its main arms supplier.

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