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Arab News
2 days ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Palestinian contributor to Oscar-winning ‘No Other Land' killed in West Bank settler raid
LONDON: Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian teacher, activist and journalist who contributed to the Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land,' was shot and killed on Monday during a raid by Israeli settlers in the South Hebron Hills, according to local media reports. The 31-year-old was fatally wounded during clashes in the village of Umm Al-Khair, where a group of Palestinians had reportedly been confronting settlers. Israeli media identified one of the settlers as Yinon Levi, a far-right extremist who had previously been sanctioned by the Biden administration — measures later lifted under US President Donald Trump — though he remains blacklisted by Canada, the UK, and the EU. Witnesses and reports say Levi allegedly opened fire toward a group of Palestinians near the Carmel settlement, hitting Hathaleen in the upper body. He was rushed to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where he died hours later. Two other Palestinians were reportedly injured. Emergency responders from the Palestinian Red Crescent and Israel's Magen David Adom were dispatched to the scene. Israeli police said an Israeli citizen involved in the shooting had been arrested and the incident was under investigation. However, some reports suggested Levi was questioned but not charged. Four Palestinians and two foreign tourists were also detained by Israeli forces, according to a police statement. Odeh just died. Murdered. — Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) July 28, 2025 Footage circulating online appears to show Levi brandishing a handgun and firing into the air, with a bulldozer in the background. Another video shows Palestinians attempting to block the bulldozer, disputing early claims that Levi was engaged in authorized construction. Activists say the machinery had crossed into privately owned Palestinian land. Hathaleen was a frequent contributor to the Israeli magazine +972 and was known for his activism against settler violence and land seizures. He had recently been invited to the US for an interfaith speaking tour organized by the Kehilla Community Synagogue, but was detained and deported along with his cousin Eid upon arrival at San Francisco International Airport, despite holding valid visas. 'Just last month, I joined my Bay Area colleagues in demanding answers after Awdah and his cousin, both holding valid visas, were unjustly detained and deported from SFO,' said US Congresswoman Lateefah Simon in a statement. 'The settler who killed Awdah must be held accountable. We cannot and will not support violence. No one should live under the threat of demolition, displacement or death.' Israeli settlers have murdered our beloved hero, Awdah Hathaleen, from the Um Al-Khair community in Masafer Yatta. Awdah stood with dignity and courage against oppression. His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice. May he rest in peace. We will never… — Issa Amro عيسى عمرو (@Issaamro) July 28, 2025 Tributes poured in following news of his death. 'Awdah stood with dignity and courage against oppression,' said Hebron-based activist Issa Amro. 'His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice.' 'No Other Land' co-director, lawyer and journalist Basel Adra, said he 'could hardly believe' the news. 'My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening. This is how Israel erases us — one life at a time.' The film 'No Other Land,' which documents Palestinian displacement in the occupied West Bank, won the Best Documentary award at this year's Berlinale and later received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. About three million Palestinians live in the West Bank alongside nearly half a million Israelis living in settlements, which are considered illegal under international law. At least 962 Palestinians, including many fighters but also many civilians, have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. At least 36 Israelis, including civilians and soldiers, have been killed there in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli data.
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump approved Iran attack plans on Tuesday but then decided to hold off, report says
President Donald Trump approved plans to join Israel in attacking Iran on Tuesday but delayed putting them into action to see if Tehran would pledge to abandon its nuclear ambitions, according to a report. The president delivered his private instructions in the White House Situation Room, The Wall Street Journal reports, but has so far delayed giving the final order. 'I have ideas on what to do but I haven't made a final – I like to make the final decision one second before it's due,' Trump told reporters on Wednesday. A White House aide told the Journal that Trump is continuing to monitor developments and will act accordingly, adding that multiple options remain on the table. So far, U.S. involvement has been carefully restricted to helping Israel block Iranian missiles and drones, according to officials. At present, Iran shows little sign of backing down and continued its missile assault on southern Israel overnight, causing 'extensive damage' to a major hospital, the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheba. Explosions were also heard in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv while Iran's Arak heavy water reactor was hit in retaliatory strikes. Israel began its Operation Rising Lion offensive six days ago, killing several top military leaders and subsequently striking some 1,100 targets, provoking an aggressive backlash from Tehran. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio originally stressed that the U.S. was not involved and that the president had made efforts to dissuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from resorting to military action to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. But Trump's messaging has since been much more mixed, and the president has reportedly fallen out with his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, over her opposition to intervention by 'warmongers' playing at brinkmanship. Talks with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine continued on Wednesday after the two men had appeared before the Senate Armed Forces Committee and after Trump had publicly repeated his calls on Tehran to surrender, allowing the threat of reprisals, should the country fail to comply, hanging in the air. 'I may do it, I may not do it,' he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. 'The next week is going to be very big, maybe less than a week.' Iran reacted angrily to his words, with its United Nations Mission saying in a statement: 'Iran does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance.' The personal insult is unlikely to endear Trump to their cause, and Iran's Fordow uranium-enrichment facility is considered a probable target if the president does give the go-ahead to attack. Earlier this week, the U.S. military began relocating tanker planes and fighter jets to air bases in Europe and ships into the Mediterranean so as to 'provide options to President Donald Trump as Middle East tensions erupt into conflict between Iran and Israel,' according to administration officials cited by Reuters. During his appearance before Congress yesterday, Hegseth said any decision would be made 'at the presidential level,' adding that the Pentagon is working 'to ensure everything at our disposal is available to ensure maximum force protection against any contingency.'
Washington Post
20-06-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Israel's air defense against Iran, explained
Over the past week, Israel has pummeled Iran with airstrikes and Iran has sent barrages of ballistic missiles and drones toward Israel. At least 24 people in Israel and 224 people in Iran have been killed in attacks since June 13, their governments have reported. Israel's sophisticated air defense system has in the past fended off attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran. Still, Iranian missiles have tested the multilayered network, and some projectiles have made impact. A strike on Thursday wounded about 80 people at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, the largest hospital in southern Israel, and caused extensive damage.
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Missiles hit hospitals, homes and families: Inside Israel's terrifying Iranian bombardment
CENTRAL ISRAEL - At least six people were seriously wounded Thursday morning when an Iranian ballistic missile struck Be'er Sheva's Soroka Medical Center, part of a broader barrage that also scored direct hits on Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, and Holon. "We are hitting nuclear targets and missile targets precisely, and they are hitting the pediatric ward of the hospital. That says it all," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while surveying the damage at the hospital. The attacks on Israel have left many homeless and lucky to be alive. Ariel Levin-Waldman is one such person. He was at his in-laws' home in Rishon LeZion, where he and his family had been staying for several months during renovations to their own house—when an Iranian missile struck the residential neighborhood. The attack killed two people and injured dozens; a third victim died during an earlier wave of Iranian strikes. Iran Strikes Major Israeli Hospital After Claiming Israel Hit Its Arak Heavy Water Reactor "At around 5 a.m., I got the same missile alert everyone in the country gets," Levin-Waldman told Fox News Digital. "I grabbed my phone, ran downstairs with my wife and kids, and we made it to the shelter. My mother-in-law joined us." Then the missile hit the building. Read On The Fox News App "There was a flash of light, and everything went dark. We were choking, struggling to breathe," Levin-Waldman said. Realizing help might not arrive in time, he continued, "I couldn't wait to be rescued. We were suffocating, and I was afraid we'd be buried alive." Levin-Waldman tried to survey the damage inside the shelter, but the thick cloud of dust made it nearly impossible to see. All he could make out was that his arms and legs were still intact. The floor had become uneven, and the walls were damaged from the force of the blast. It was at that moment he realized the explosion had propelled a book cabinet across the shelter, hitting his mother-in-law in the head. "She was bleeding heavily, and I realized she had been calling out 'save us' in Hebrew, but her voice was faint," he recalled. "I managed to lift the cabinet off my mother-in-law, and when I did, I saw a potential escape route. I cleared the way so my wife, Tali, and our two-and-a-half-year-old, Renana, could get through. I had Ayala, my seven-week-old baby, on my shoulders as I made the opening. It was just enough to get them out." As they emerged, firefighters guided them to safety onto the street. In front of Levin-Waldman stood a wall of rubble where his car had once been, and his feet were cut by glass from the explosion. Everything You Need To Know About Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader Of Iran Unable to climb over the debris with his younger child on his shoulders, he handed her to a paramedic. Once he climbed over himself, he looked around—only to realize Ayala was no longer in sight. "Here I was, covered in dust and blood, almost naked, wandering the street screaming, 'Where is my child?" he recalled. Some people thought the worst. It took about 30 minutes to find her." Only 20 hours after Levin-Waldman survived the attack, another Iranian missile struck a building across from the hotel where he was staying in Rehovot. "The blast shattered the windows, and the entire building shook. We had a whole floor of people from our neighborhood traumatized, reliving the experience," he told Fox News Digital. "The hardest part is confronting how fragile we are and how close we came to disaster," he said. Since the conflict began on June 13, Iranian missile attacks have killed 24 Israelis and wounded over 800. The missiles do not discriminate—neither between men and women, children and the elderly, nor between Jew and Arab. That reality was tragically underscored over the weekend when four women were killed by a ballistic missile that scored a direct hit on their home in the predominantly Arab town of Tamra, just north of Haifa. These terror missiles also make no distinction between the political left and right. Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid dodged a tragedy on Monday when his son's house in Tel Aviv suffered damage from the aftershock of a direct missile impact that left many residents of the central metropolis homeless. "My one-year-old granddaughter's bed was covered in glass from an explosion caused by an Iranian missile. It is horrific to think what would have happened if she had been in bed," Lapid told Fox News Digital. "This is the enemy we are facing—a regime dedicated to our destruction and aiming to kill as many innocent children as possible. We have to remove the nuclear threat and the missile threat—for the safety of Israel and the world," he added. Coalition lawmaker Hanoch Mildwisky, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud Party, lives across the street from a building in Petah Tikva–located 6.5 miles east of Tel Aviv–which sustained damage in an Iranian attack that killed four people. "There were dislodged windows and cracks in the walls," Mildwisky told Fox News Digital. "In the building that was hit, there were unfortunately casualties. It was a very large missile, carrying nearly a ton of explosives, so the blast was massive and caused significant damage even hundreds of meters away from the impact site." Tugboats, Cruise Ships And Flights: Israel Begins Emergency Evacuation Of Citizens Amid Iran War Mildwisky emphasized that Iran must not be allowed to possess atomic bombs or the capability to develop them—particularly given the regime's repeated declarations of intent to destroy the Jewish state. As long as the threat remains, he said, Israel will be forced to continue its military operations. Jamal Waraki, a Muslim volunteer with the ZAKA emergency service, had just completed a rescue mission—pulling an 80-year-old man from the rubble—when he returned home at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday to find his own house destroyed. "That night, there was a missile impact in Rehovot. We tended to the building that had sustained a direct hit. Once we finished, I went home and discovered that my place too had been struck," Jamal told Fox News Digital. Thankfully, no one was home at the time. Jamal's family had been staying with his mother-in-law in Eilat, where they still are. While awaiting the finalization of new housing arrangements, Jamal has been sleeping in his car. Lihi Griner is well known in Israel due to her appearance in the local spinoff of the Big Brother reality TV show. She was in her safe room with her husband and three children when the Iranian missile struck Petah Tikva, in the same neighborhood as lawmaker Mildwisky. Griner resides in a complex with four residential buildings, one of which was directly hit. "There was a huge boom," she told Fox News Digital. "The kids were shocked, they started to cry, and we kept telling ourselves that there was an impact, but we're alive. It was surreal. I couldn't believe it happened to me." After receiving the all-clear to leave the safe room, she opened the door and found everything was completely destroyed. "Our windows were blown out of the walls, the doors were broken in half, the walls were damaged with big cracks, and all the balconies in the front of the building were demolished," said Griner. Initially, residents were sent to a school across the street, where authorities offered hotel options at no cost. Soldiers later escorted Griner's family back to their apartment so they could retrieve their belongings. While the residence is now safe, they can't sleep there due to the lack of windows. "I live day by day. I'm just happy we're alive. It gives us time to figure out what comes next," Griner said. For Levin-Waldman, what came next was an unexpected phone call from the Rishon Lezion municipality on Wednesday. To his relief, another member of the family had been found alive and unharmed four days after the attack: their dog, article source: Missiles hit hospitals, homes and families: Inside Israel's terrifying Iranian bombardment
Time of India
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Fire erupts near Microsoft office in southern Israel as Iran continues offensive: Reports
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Israel's southern city of Beer Sheva witnessed several fires on a street close to a tech park that includes a Microsoft office, Reuters reported, citing to CNN, emergency services are responding to the fires Israel's military said it intercepted an Iranian southern district saw several parts targeted by munitions said Israel Police, adding that there was property damage but no reports of a major hospital in Beer Sheva, the Soroka Medical Center, was damaged in an Iranian Sheva is in the Negev desert, where Israel's Nevatim airbase is Thursday, a direct hit on a hospital in the southern part was reported, Israel Defense Forces said in a post on Soroka Medical Center, targeted by Iran, is the main hospital in Israel's south and has over 1,000 beds and provides services to the approximately 1 million residents of the area."Several hits were identified as a result of the missile barrage—one of them hitting the largest hospital in southern Israel," the IDF posted on to Magen David Adom rescue service, at least 40 people were per AFP, a spokesperson for the hospital said that damage has been caused to the hospital and extensive damage in various areas. "We are currently assessing the damage, including injuries. We ask the public not to come to the hospital at this time," they hospitals in Israel are said to have activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to hospital floors and move patients underground, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly.
