Tag: israel

Israel Killed Reporter Abu Akleh—but US Media Disguised the Facts

Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.

Footage of the moments after her death show Abu Akleh, still wearing her press vest and helmet, lying face down on the ground below a tree, as Shatha Hanaysha, another Palestinian journalist and writer for Mondoweiss, sits by her side and attempts to reach out to her. Writing for Mondoweiss (5/11/22), Yumna Patel described the video:

A young Palestinian man is then seen jumping over a wall behind Abu Akleh and Hanaysha. When he attempts to retrieve Abu Akleh’s body, another round of sniper fire can be heard, and he quickly takes cover behind the tree.

No armed combatants are there. Journalists are shouting for an ambulance. The young man tries a second time to remove Abu Akleh, but fails. He manages to help a shaken Hanaysha hide behind the tree. The footage is harrowing.

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AL JAZEERA ACCUSES ISRAEL OF “BLATANT MURDER” AFTER ITS STAR REPORTER SHOT DEAD IN WEST BANK RAID

The media outlet Al Jazeera accused Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting and killing our colleague” on Wednesday after Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the face while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the Al Jazeera Media Network said that Abu Akleh—who worked as the publication’s Palestine correspondent—was wearing a press jacket that clearly identified her as a journalist when Israeli forces shot her “with live fire.”

Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, called the attack “a blatant murder,” saying Abu Akleh, 51, was “assassinated in cold blood.”

The statement continued:

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns this heinous crime, which intends to only prevent the media from conducting their duty. Al Jazeera holds the Israeli government and the occupation forces responsible for the killing of Shireen. It also calls on the international community to condemn and hold the Israeli occupation forces accountable for their intentional targeting and killing of Shireen.

The Israeli authorities are also responsible for the targeting of Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samudi, who was also shot in the back while covering the same event, and he is currently undergoing treatment.

Al Jazeera extends its sincere condolences to the family of Shireen in Palestine, and to her extended family around the world, and we pledge to prosecute the perpetrators legally, no matter how hard they try to cover up their crime, and bring them to justice.

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Israel Successfully Tests New Laser Missile Defense System

Israel’s new laser missile defense system has successfully intercepted mortars, rockets and anti-tank missiles in recent tests, Israeli leaders said Thursday.

The Israeli-made laser system, known as the “Iron Beam,” is designed to complement a series of aerial defense systems, including the more costly rocket-intercepting Iron Dome.

“This may sound like science-fiction, but it’s real,” said Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. ”The Iron Beam’s interceptions are silent, they’re invisible and they only cost around $3.50” apiece, he added.

Little is known about the laser system’s effectiveness, but it is expected to be deployed on land, in the air and at sea. The goal is to deploy the laser systems around Israel’s borders over the next decade to protect the country against attacks.

Thursday’s announcement also sent a message to Israel’s foes, including archenemy Iran. The tests took place last month in the Negev Desert.

The announcement came near the anniversary of the 11-day Israel-Gaza war, in which Gaza’s ruling Hamas militant group fired more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel.

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Hacker group releases info on Mossad’s alleged involvement in Kazakhstan

The hacker group known as ‘Open Hands’ has once again released sensitive information about the Israeli Mossad and its activities.

Their recent data leak from 7 April was a mini-documentary film showing alleged Mossad activity in Kazakhstan. The film featured anonymous members of the hacker group whose faces were blacked out by shadows. They spoke English, Russian, and Arabic.

The film showcased how the Mossad secretly engages in business activity related to the mining of lithium and other rare earth ores through various front companies.

The film can be found on their Telegram channel.

While it is also found on YouTube, it is unclear for how long it will last until it is subject to YouTube’s censorship policies. Various Silicon Valley social media giants have been accused of bias towards the US, Israel, and their allies.

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Is that Darth Invader? Israeli TV channel unwittingly runs ‘live footage’ from Ukraine… showing a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars

An Israeli TV news channel has run ‘live footage’ of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine featuring a crash-landed TIE fighter from Star Wars.

The clip even shows stormtroopers standing beside the Imperial aircraft on a snowy road. 

An investigation at Channel 13 has been launched and the editor has been suspended after the video was aired during a montage of destruction in Ukraine.

The clip was originally an advert produced by Disney and Lucasfilm in 2014 to promote a new Star Wars channel on Sky Deutschland.

It shows the stormtroopers surveying the crashed starfighter on a German autobahn while cars zoom past.

The original caption said: ‘Warning: Unsecured crash on the A3. Please turn right and not overtake!’

It is believed the video started circulating on the messaging app Telegram after the Russian invasion, duping people into believing it showed footage from the war. 

Ukraine has warned about disinformation being shared online, saying Russia is preparing an online campaign to suggest senior military and political figures have surrendered.

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Booster Shots Causing More Injuries Than Previously Thought, Israeli Survey Shows

More Israelis are experiencing injuries and reactions following COVID-19 booster shots than the country’s passive reporting system indicates, according to a survey conducted by the Israeli Ministry of Health (MOH).

The MOH conducted an active survey of booster shot recipients to collect data on adverse events associated with booster doses, then compared the survey data to the data available from the country’s passive reporting system. 

The survey concluded Israel’s passive reporting system was grossly underreporting adverse events.

The data from the Israeli survey could provide some insight into the extent of the underreporting occurring in the U.S.

It also could corroborate safety signals the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is ignoring.

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Israel insists it only ‘legally’ spies on citizens

An Israeli minister has denied reports that police illegally used Pegasus surveillance software to spy on the country’s own citizens, calling the “central claim” – that the practice was illegal – “not true.”

Several government investigations were launched this past week after the Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported that law enforcement had been using NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus spyware to illegally intercept the calls of citizens.

The newspaper claimed that police had been using the spyware since 2013 to carry out surveillance on citizens “who were not criminals or suspects.”

Omer Bar-Lev, Israel’s Minister of Public Security, told Channel 12 on Saturday that the allegations were not true, “except for the fact that the Israel Police used advanced technology.”

“The central claim that the police are illegally spying is not true,” he declared, citing the assurances of Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai, before claiming to be “very happy that the Israel Police has advanced technological tools to help deal with serious crime organizations that are using advanced technology.”

Commissioner Shabtai vowed on Friday that the police’s “legal use of technological tools” would “continue,” and said the force would carry on “developing and improving these tools.”

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Israel is using counter-terrorism phone surveillance to track Omicron carriers

Rights groups in Israel have called on the country’s top court to repeal the recently announced measures to use the counter-terrorism phone tracking system to track carriers of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The groups raised privacy concerns.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett announced emergency measures including phone tracking to locate those infected by the Omicron variant, which is thought to be more contagious.

The Shin Bet counter-terrorism agency’s phone-tracking technology was to be used to enable to surveillance.

Rights groups have said that the emergency measure is a violation of the Supreme Court’s rulings on such surveillance, which has been used by the country’s domestic intelligence agency since the beginning of the pandemic last year.

“Operation of the Secret Service to trace citizens violates the basic trust between the citizen and the government,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), one of four groups who petitioned the court, said in a statement to Reuters.

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So much for vaccine-generated herd immunity

A reader tipped me to this fascinating paper in a peer-reviewed journal about a Covid outbreak in Israel that began in mid-July, just as vaccine failure was accelerating there.

A vaccinated dialysis patient was admitted to Meir Medical Center – a large Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv – with fever and cough. He remained on the dialysis unit for days, as his condition worsened. (One of many problems with overselling the vaccines is that it led to mistakes like this.)

By the time he was diagnosed with Covid-19, he had infected three fellow patients. He also had a PCR threshold of 13.6 – almost impossibly low, showing viral loads roughly 1 million times those in a lightly infected person. He was moved to a Covid-19 ward, where he eventually died (I say he, though the patient’s gender is not revealed; the paper refers to “they).

The paper, published in Eurosurveillance, a journal published by the European Centers for Disease Control, explains that the outbreak rapidly spread among both patients and staff of the hospital’s dialysis unit, the Covid-19 ward, and other wards. At the time, 238 out of 248 of exposed patients and staff had been fully vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine.

Again, the fact that 96 percent of the people in this population had been vaccinated – a level far above early estimates of the percentages required for herd immunity – apparently made no difference.

Further, all patients and staff were required to wear surgical masks when they were in the same room, and staff on the Covid-19 unit wore N95 masks and face shields.

Ultimately, 39 out of the 238 exposed vaccinated people (16 percent) were infected, along with 3 out of 10 unvaccinated people – a difference that doesn’t reach statistical significance because the unvaccinated group is too small.

Of the infected, 23 were patients and 19 staff. The staff all recovered quickly. But five patients died and another nine had severe or critical cases. All were vaccinated. The two unvaccinated infected patients both had mild cases.

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Israel To Conduct COVID “Genetic Scanning” For All Inbound Air Passengers

The world’s most “ultra-vaxxed nation” Israel is continuing to struggle to keep its coronavirus infections down, despite enacting some of the most stringent rules and requirements on its population, including rolling out one of the earliest versions of a vaccine passport to visit public venues, which has to be “updated” each six months or so based on a booster shot timeline. 

Now Israel will go so far as to conduct “genetic scanning” for travelers arriving in the country. It’s considered a huge and experimental high tech step in screening inbound passengers for coronavirus infections at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made the announcement at a meeting of his cabinet on Sunday, confirming plans to eventually deploy it at Ben Gurion. “We are working on a scanning system for everyone who comes into Israel,” Bennett said. The statements were reportedly not intended to be made public, but were leaked to local Israeli media.

“Israel will thus become the radar for the virus,” he added. However, no further details on how the ‘genetic scanning’ will work were given, nor whether there might be an opt-out mechanism. Thus a Covid passport, which Israel calls its “green pass” – may be linked to an eventual regimen of forced genetic testing at international travel points.

The technology, which will no doubt be hugely controversial given privacy concerns, is being discussed as part of Israeli efforts to keep further Covid variants from entering the country, as The Times of Israel describes:

Bennett expressed support for Social Equality Minister Meirav Cohen, who had warned that “the next variant will come to Israel through Ben Gurion,” saying the proposed genetic testing would help prevent that from happening.

Conventionally since the start of the pandemic airports have often monitored passengers’ temperatures with a quick and simple thermometer scan of their foreheads, but Israeli health officials are now seeking a method which might given greater certitude over whether someone has the virus or not, and especially whether they are carrying a variant.

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