Call to end Gaza war is ‘wrong and dangerous'
The statement – signed by more than a dozen EU nations, along with Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, and others – warned that Gaza's humanitarian crisis had reached intolerable levels. The foreign ministers condemned the 'drip feeding of aid' and the 'inhumane killing of civilians, including children' seeking food and water. Citing UN and Gaza Health Ministry figures showing over 800 Palestinians killed while seeking aid, the statement called the situation 'horrifying' and urged Israel to meet its obligations under international humanitarian law.
Netanyahu's adviser Dmitry Gendelman said the appeal sent Hamas a 'wrong and dangerous message,' calling it a 'delusion' that ignored the 'obvious truth' that Hamas alone was blocking a ceasefire. He accused the militant group of launching the war, holding hostages, and rejecting 'clear and fair' truce proposals accepted by Israel.
Israel's Foreign Ministry also dismissed the statement as 'disconnected from reality,' accusing Hamas of prolonging the war by refusing a US-backed ceasefire and hostage deal.
Ceasefire talks resumed in Doha on July 6 under US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediation. The current proposal, reportedly endorsed by Israel, involves a 60‑day truce, phased hostage releases, partial Israeli troop withdrawals, and expanded humanitarian aid. Hamas, however, is demanding a full and permanent ceasefire, complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and international guarantees on reconstruction.
Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in 2023 after a deadly Hamas incursion. Since then, over 59,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
Gaza's 2 million residents face a dire humanitarian crisis, with 90% displaced and dependent on limited aid. The 21-month war has pushed the territory to the brink of famine and sparked global protests.
Israel's actions during the conflict have triggered genocide accusations and led to an ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu. The EU, UK, Canada, and France have warned of possible sanctions if conditions do not improve.
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Western media outlets warn Israel of starving Gaza journalists
Four major Western news organizations have warned that their journalists in Gaza are facing starvation due to Israel's blockade of the enclave. In a rare joint statement issued on Thursday, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and British state broadcaster the BBC said their staff were struggling to access basic supplies and called on Israeli authorities to allow free movement of journalists and humanitarian aid. 'We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families,' the statement said. 'It is essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there.' The outlets also urged Israel to lift restrictions preventing reporters from entering or leaving Gaza. Foreign media have largely been barred from accessing the territory since the start of Israel's military operation against Hamas in October. The Israeli government has denied that it is responsible for the hunger in Gaza, instead accusing Hamas of hoarding aid and deliberately creating a crisis. West Jerusalem has cited security risks and the need to prevent the leaking of sensitive operational information as reasons for banning foreign journalists from the enclave. In some cases, Israel has accused reporters of being 'terror operatives.' One such accusation followed an Israeli strike that killed a Gaza-based Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer last year. The Qatari news network, which is banned in Israel, denied the accusations, accusing the Israeli military of deliberately targeting its staff because of the channel's coverage. Since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2023, the four outlets have been accused of favoring Israeli narratives in their coverage and of relying heavily on Israeli military announcements. Last November, more than 100 BBC staff members accused the corporation of Israeli bias and of lacking 'consistently fair and accurate evidence-based journalism.' The British state broadcaster denied the claims. According to various estimates, around 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza over the past 21 months. The conflict started after a Hamas incursion into southern Israel left 1,200 people dead. Since then, over 59,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Russia Today
2 days ago
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The snowflakes of information war: How the New York Times sinned by honesty
It's a platitude that war kills not only people but truth. And as all platitudes, the statement is true, boring, and misleading. Because it omits the real murderers: 'War' does not, actually, kill truth; people kill truth. War just tempts them to do so as few other things – such as job applications or marriage – can. The flipside of that fact is that it is perfectly possible to stick to the truth – or at least make an honest effort to do so – in war, too. That effort is different from 'getting it right.' Think of, for example, George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia', his unabashedly personal account of the Spanish Civil War. It was not even meant to be neutral because he sided with – indeed fought for – the underdog Trotskyists; historians, as always, feel they know better about the context and details; and – notwithstanding the sad mainstream sanctification Orwell has suffered posthumously at the hands of conformist mediocrities – 'Homage to Catalonia' is, of course, flawed. Saint Orwell was fallible. Duh. But 'Homage to Catalonia' was an honest effort to find out and tell true things about a war and, importantly, from a war. How do we know that? Most of all by reading it, of course. But apart from that, there is another test: the manner in which it was received when it came out, namely badly. Making no concessions to what his audience might want to read, Orwell had trouble getting 'Homage to Catalonia' published and rightly suspected that was due to its politics, which antagonized everyone: Orwell's own tribe, the Left, no less than the Right. In the end – with the work, in Orwell's words, 'boycotted by the British press' – barely over a third of its modest first edition of 1,500 copies were sold. Homage to Catalonia is a modern classic now. But when it hit the shelves in 1938 and until Orwell died in 1950, it was a dud. That's, in essence, because it was too honest. Without stretching the comparison too far, it is fair to say that recently we have witnessed the same principle at work, when the New York Times published an article by photographer and reporter Nanna Heitmann. Under the title 'A Landscape of Death: What's Left Where Ukraine Invaded Russia', Heitmann's sophisticated account is based on her own six-day visit to the Russian town of Sudzha and its surroundings. Sudzha is located in Kursk Region, which borders Ukraine and where Kiev's forces staged a large-scale incursion that brought great destruction, fierce fighting, and ended in a – predictable – fiasco for Ukraine. As its title indicates, Heitmann's article gives much room to the devastation and suffering wrought by the fighting. She also describes a surprise advance by Russia's military through an empty gas pipeline. Throughout she lets individuals with different experiences and points of view speak, civilians and soldiers, and is careful to record official statements from both sides, Ukraine and Russia. It is obvious to any fair reader that no favors are extended to Russia. Heitmann, for instance, dwells on local criticism of Russian evacuation efforts and the adverse health effects suffered by some of the ethnically Chechen fighters who carried out the pipeline operation. She ends her story by reporting both a local man's hope for reconstruction and the skepticism of a woman who cannot see a future for herself in the region, whether reconstructed or not. The reactions by high-ranking Ukrainian officials and media outlets in Ukraine to Heitmann's article have been hostile. Georgy Tikhy, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, tagged the New York Times in an X post accusing Heitmann of reproducing 'Russian propaganda' and engaging in 'Duranty-level manipulation.' Walter Duranty was an American journalist who is now infamous for spreading Stalinist deceptions. Heitmann has done nothing remotely comparable. Tikhy's wildly unfair comparison reveals his malicious intent, namely to smear Heitmann as badly as he can before the public in general and her employer in particular. Ironically though not surprisingly, it is not Heitmann but the Ukrainian government official who is conducting information war here, and in an especially dirty, personal way. That Heitmann is being targeted by a systematic campaign is obvious from the involvement, as if on cue, of additional attackers: The so-called Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD) under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has joined in, also charging Heitmann with manipulation. In particular, the CCD is angry about the fact that Heitmann didn't spend precious words on reiterating the Ukrainian and Western narrative about wicked Russia invading Ukraine. Notwithstanding that every New York Times reader is certain to have had that story hammered into their consciousness for years already not only by that newspaper but every other Western mainstream news outlet, Heitmann, actually writing about a case in which Ukraine – proudly – invaded Russia, is faulted for not ritualistically restating that part of the Western narrative. In the same spirit – and in an especially perverse but also revealing turn – the CCD even went as far as to explicitly impugn Heitmann's 'neutrality.' Being unbiased, so the message from the Ukrainian information warriors, is wrong in and of itself. The Kiev regime, in other words, has a right to expect bias in its favor: mere honesty will not do. This is nothing less than an astonishingly aggressive and open demand for the Western media to be as submissive and streamlined as Ukraine's is. It is testimony to the sense of entitlement that the West has long fostered among its political and media proxies in Kiev. A 'colleague' also hurried to put the boot in, denouncing Heitmann for 'moral equivalency' – translation: honesty we do not like – and gaining access to Sudzha through soldiers from Russia's Chechen Akhmat unit. That, in and of itself, is, we are to understand, an unforgivable sin. Curiously enough, the same logic doesn't seem to apply when Western journalists 'embed' – a telling term – with Western forces conducting wars of aggression, regime change operations, and 'counter-insurgency,' that is, dirty war campaigns of torture and assassination. It also seems to make no difference to Heitmann's denouncer from within the profession – how very Stalinist, really – that her article shows no favor to Akhmat. Regarding its soldiers, too, it is simply factual and calm. Clearly, though, hysterical condemnation is the least Kiev and its Western propagandists feel they have a right to expect. In reality, Heitmann's article is informative, well-written, and free of bias. What is really intriguing about the backlash against her work is not the work – which is simply good, conscientious reporting – but the backlash itself. The high-level and widespread hostile reaction to Heitmann's piece reveals only one thing, and it is not anything about Heitmann and her work: Western and Ukrainian authorities and information warriors have had it far too easy for far too long. Pampered by years of easily feeding their bias to Western publics, while any dissent was repressed and marginalized, they react with allergic fury to even modest signs of unbiased, clear-eyed reporting breaking through into a mainstream outlet. How fragile they must feel.
Russia Today
2 days ago
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Gaza reporters starving to death – journalists' association
The last remaining Palestinian collaborators for Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Gaza are starving, unable to continue working or survive under current conditions, the agency's internal journalists' association has warned. AFP has been relying on ten local freelancers since its staff withdrew from the enclave in early 2024, the Society of Journalists (SDJ) said in a statement on Monday. 'They are young, but their strength is fading. Most no longer have the physical capacity to move through the enclave to do their job,' the association wrote on X. The freelancers get paid but there's nothing to buy, the statement explained. They live in 'utter destitution,' with some suffering from untreated illnesses and severe malnutrition. With no fuel or vehicles available, the journalists travel on foot or by donkey cart to cover the conflict. Since its foundation in 1944, AFP has 'never faced the horror of watching one of our collaborators starve to death,' the association concluded. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot responded to the statement on Monday, saying the government hopes to evacuate some of the agency's collaborators in the coming weeks. He also demanded that international press be allowed to enter Gaza 'to show what is happening there and to bear witness.' Israel has banned foreign journalists from the enclave, citing security risks and the need to prevent the leaking of sensitive operational information. Only tightly escorted visits with the Israeli military have been allowed. Last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) described the ban as 'unprecedented' and called for it to be lifted. In May, after nearly three months of total blockade, Israel announced it would permit only a minimal flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Officials described the policy as necessary to prevent mass starvation while continuing to pressure Hamas. International organizations and human right groups have long issued warnings of 'catastrophic hunger' and rising fatalities from malnutrition in Gaza. The current conflict began in October 2023 after a deadly Hamas incursion into southern Israel left 1200 people dead. Since then, over 59,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
