An aggregated food security report released on 29 April warns that more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon will face acute hunger from April to August 2026 due to worsening living conditions from the US-sponsored Israeli war.
Joint findings by the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Lebanon’s Agriculture Ministry have concluded that around one in four people will fall into the “crisis” phase of food insecurity or worse.
This marks a steep increase from November to March, when 874,000 people – around 17 percent of the country’s population – were already in that category, as more than one million people were displaced by Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Israeli forces continue their attacks in south Lebanon, where residents have been warned not to return, with both sides continuing to exchange fire despite a ceasefire announced on 17 April.
The instability has compounded existing vulnerabilities in agriculture and rural livelihoods, particularly in the south and the Bekaa Valley, where some of the heaviest Israeli attacks have taken place.
WFP official Allison Oman Lawi said earlier gains had been reversed, warning that “families who were just managing to cope are now being pushed back into crisis.”
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis indicates that households are increasingly unable to meet basic food needs, with many reducing meal sizes, skipping meals, or turning to debt and asset sales to survive.
FAO representative Nora Ourabah Haddad said the findings confirm “continued and deepening fragility,” calling for urgent agricultural support to prevent further collapse.
The report warns that without sustained humanitarian assistance, acute food insecurity is likely to deepen further in the coming months.
Israeli forces intensified attacks across Lebanon on 27 April, expanding strikes to the Bekaa region for the first time in weeks while continuing heavy bombardment across southern towns, causing injuries and widespread destruction.
The escalation came alongside Hebrew media claims that Israeli occupation forces had begun scaling back parts of their ground presence, redeploying units while maintaining “limited operations” that include raids and the demolition of buildings under claims of Hezbollah affiliation.
Despite these reports of partial withdrawal, airstrikes and artillery fire persisted, with jets flying low over areas such as Bint Jbeil, where Lebanese resistance fighters continue to operate.
Israeli army soldiers add zip ties to the mast of an Israeli flag flying at a special area for exercises during a military drill in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on July 8, 2025.
Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.
Syrian journalist Oudai Efnikher is deeply familiar with life under Israeli occupation. He was born in Kafer Hareb, a village in Syria’s Golan Heights, from which he and his family were expelled after Israel seized the territory during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Now he is once again facing down Israeli forces, as they “take our land, kill our crops, and abduct our fathers.”
“This is a slow occupation, but soon, we will lose what they have not yet taken,” Efnikher told Truthout.
After Bashar al-Assad was ousted by Syrian rebels in December 2024, Israeli forces wasted no time before launching a massive aerial bombardment campaign on the country, destroying almost 80 percent of the military capacity left behind by the Assad regime.
Israeli forces also entered the demilitarized buffer zone established by a UN Security Council resolution in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria. They seized the territory and then established a “security buffer” beyond the last demarcation line administered by UN observer forces.
200 masked settlers descended on the West Bank on March 22, throwing Molotov cocktails and terrorizing Palestinians. By Theia Chatelle , Truthout
March 28, 2026
The area now under Israeli military control is off-limits to Syrian civilians and government forces. Farmers have been unable to tend to their land, and landowners have little hope they will ever be able to access it again
In total, Israel now occupies an additional 177 square miles of Syrian territory than it did before the fall of Assad.
“Maybe Israel will take it all. They already have a safe zone in southern Syria, so that could ultimately be the best option for Israel,” Syrian political analyst Issam Khoury told Truthout.
But what is most concerning for Efnikher is not the Israeli military’s presence in Syria, but what has become regular incursions by Israeli settlers.
On April 22, a group of roughly 40 settlers affiliated with the far right Halutzei HaBashan movement, or the Pioneers of Bashan — a reference to the name in the Torah for the fertile territory located northeast of the Sea of Galilee, which the Torah says was once ruled by the tyrant King Og before Moses defeated him — entered Syrian territory and asked the Israeli government to legalize settlement activity there.
According to Efnikher, who has been working to monitor Israeli settlement activity in Syrian territory since Assad’s fall in December 2024, this was the fifth such incursion by Israeli settlers into Syria.
According to Etkes, this is how the Israeli settlement movement functions: by “changing the facts on the ground” until what was once unthinkable becomes reality.
The settlers see themselves as fulfilling a biblical mandate. They consider this Syrian territory part of the ancient land of Israel. Still, the Israeli military condemned the incursion, calling it “a criminal offence that endangers civilians and IDF troops.” Dror Etkes, a longtime Israeli settlement monitor who led the advocacy group Peace Now’s Settlement Watch project and later founded Kerem Navot, an organization that tracks Israeli land seizures in the West Bank, says none of this comes as a surprise.
“Nothing is surprising anymore, not after Gaza,” he said. “Many things I didn’t think would happen have happened, so I think I should be pretty cautious when it comes to predicting what will happen in this country.”
Etkes watched settlers build their first outposts in the West Bank in the 1960s, and then, after the Second Intifada, the construction of the separation barrier. “If you had asked me 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, not to mention 50 years ago, whether half a million Jews would be living in the West Bank, whether we would have 350, 360, 370 outposts in the West Bank, of course nobody would have said yes,” he added.
According to Etkes, this is how the Israeli settlement movement functions: by “changing the facts on the ground” until what was once unthinkable becomes reality. And this, he says, is the goal of the settlement movement — whether it’s in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, or the West Bank.
The Pioneers of Bashan is not the only settler organization entering closed military zones to pressure the Israeli government to legalize settlements in foreign territory.
In southern Lebanon, a group called Uri Tzafon has worked to build a movement to establish outposts in territory currently occupied by the Israeli military. The group has flown drones into Lebanese territory, urging residents to leave, and planted trees to cement a claim to the land.
It was the same in Gaza with the far right Tzav 9 movement, which on more than one occasion since October 7, 2023, attempted to enter the enclave and establish outposts.
Slowly, the borders of the Israeli imagination — much like the state’s own physical borders — are being expanded by the settlement movement.
Slowly, the borders of the Israeli imagination — much like the state’s own physical borders — are being expanded by the settlement movement. In many cases, these incursions have taken place with the implicit endorsement of the Israeli military.
According to both Etkes and Efnikher, it would have been impossible for the settlers to enter Syrian territory without at least the tacit approval of Israeli forces. There are hundreds of miles of fencing dividing the Israeli-controlled Golan from Syrian territory, reinforced by hundreds of thousands of mines.
Efnikher added that there are a number of gates in the fencing that allow the Israeli military to cross into and beyond the demilitarized buffer zone, which is how the Pioneers of Bashan were able to enter Syrian territory.
The Israeli military said in a statement after detaining and escorting the settlers back to Israeli-controlled territory that “settlement in Bashan is essential to preserve the achievements of the war.”
The push for these settlements is part of the project of Greater Israel, which seeks to expand Israel’s borders to what some settlers and religious nationalists claim were the boundaries of the ancient Israelite kingdom — a biblical vision, contested by mainstream archaeology, that imagines a realm stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, encompassing parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt
But the expansionist drive is not only about land. It is also about water. Efnikher pointed to the Mantara Dam, the largest dam in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate. The dam controls water flow into the Yarmouk River, another critical water supply for southern Syria.
Before he was a journalist, Efnikher owned a restaurant overlooking the dam. It has been closed since Israeli forces expanded their occupation of the territory — a significant financial blow to him and his family, though he stressed that he is better off than most.
Israeli forces have destroyed thousands of dunams of farmland with pesticides in the process of building their outposts, and have established checkpoints — including aerial ones — to regulate the movement of Syrians near the buffer zone.
“There is a heavy psychological toll, falling heaviest on children and the elderly,” Efnikher said. “We’re talking about villages displaced since 1967 and families still affected across generations, now living through yet another occupation.”
He pointed to the West Bank as emblematic of what the Quneitra Governorate might soon become.
Israel has held control of the West Bank for so long that many Palestinians and Israelis in the territory, more than a third of whom are children, do not remember a time when it was free of Israeli outposts and settlements. Now, according to the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, there are more than 279 illegal settlements and 700,000 settlers living in the West Bank.
“This is a model [they’re] trying to copy-paste in Syria and in Lebanon. It’s the same people, coming from the same places, from the same ideological greenhouses.”
The commitments of the settlement movement vary, but at its forefront are those who see it as their personal mission to restore Jewish sovereignty over the land they claim as Greater Israel, even if it must be paid for in blood.
“It’s been almost 58 years since this project started. And all of it started actually illegal[ly] or half-legal, started without official authorization. This is a model [they’re] trying to copy-paste in Syria and in Lebanon. It’s the same people, coming from the same places, from the same ideological greenhouses,” Etkes said.
Efnikher warned that Israeli forces are intensifying their incursions in the Quneitra region: They enter the villages, make arrests — by his tally, more than 70 Syrians from the Quneitra Governorate are currently held in Israeli prisons — set up checkpoints, and then withdraw.
But Efnikher fears it is only a matter of time before they stay. The presence of the Pioneers of Bashan is one troubling sign. “They are winning,” Efnikher said of the Israeli forces. Even for Etkes, there is little hope.
“Look at what they achieved in the last 58 years in the West Bank,” he said. “They have very good reasons to be very optimistic.”
Press freedom is under attack
As Trump cracks down on political speech, independent media is increasingly necessary.
Truthout produces reporting you won’t see in the mainstream: journalism from the frontlines of global conflict, interviews with grassroots movement leaders, high-quality legal analysis and more.
Our work is possible thanks to reader support. Help Truthout catalyze change and social justice — make a tax-deductible monthly or one-time donation today.
about:blank This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Theia Chatelle is a freelance journalist and photographer covering conflict, human rights, and displacement across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Based in Jerusalem, she reports on war and social movements, with a focus on human-interest storytelling and investigations into state power. Her work has appeared in The Forward, The Nation, Haaretz, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, among other outlets. Her photography has been published by MS NOW and USA Today, among others. Chatelle holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American Studies from Yale University. She was a 2025 fellow at the International Women’s Media Foundation and is an alumna of the Rory Peck Trust and the Type Media Center.
Israeli rights group says Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya held in ‘harsh conditions’ without medication or treatment
Lina Altawell
28 April 2026
Istanbul
An Israeli court extended Tuesday the detention of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Gaza Strip, without filing charges against him, amid harsh conditions and denial of medical care, a rights group said.
Abu Safiya, a pediatric consultant, was detained on Dec. 27, 2024, when Israeli forces raided the hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia, detaining him at gunpoint after the facility was destroyed and put out of service.
“The Beersheba District Court approved Tuesday morning the extension of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s detention under the Unlawful Combatants Law without filing any charges, and rejected the defense’s request for his immediate release,” Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights said in a statement.
The Unlawful Combatants Law allows Israeli authorities to detain Palestinians from Gaza for prolonged periods without trial.
Although the Beersheba court extended his detention for six months in October 2025, the group said authorities indicated that the latest extension is “indefinite.”
“The court upheld the detention despite arguments that detaining a doctor while performing his medical duties constitutes unlawful detention,” it said.
“Dr. Abu Safiya is currently held in Negev Prison under harsh conditions, without access to his medication or receiving medical treatment, despite the deterioration of his health,” the rights group warned.
Israel continues to detain Abu Safiya despite his repeated denial of engaging in any activity outside his professional medical role, disregarding calls from Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups demanding his immediate release.
“Dr. Abu Safiya had been tirelessly running the hospital, providing essential care to children and bearing witness to the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare sector under Israel’s genocide.
He continued his work even after the tragic death of his own son during an Israeli airstrike. Like many health workers before him, he was detained while caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties,” Amnesty International said in an earlier report.
With US support, Israel launched a genocidal war on Oct. 8, 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians and injuring over 172,000, most of them women and children, since October 2023, and causing destruction to about 90% of civilian infrastructure.
Despite a ceasefire in place since Oct. 10, Israel has continued its actions through blockade and daily attacks, killing 818 Palestinians and injuring 2,301 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Israel also continues to block the entry of agreed quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies and shelter materials into Gaza, where about 2.4 million Palestinians, including 1.5 million displaced, live in severe humanitarian conditions.
*Writing by Lina Altawell
Share News
Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized formPlease contact us for subscription options
In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
Joshua Scheer
Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t raise his voice — he doesn’t have to. In this wide‑ranging conversation with Tucker Carlson, Sachs lays out a devastating, historically grounded indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the manufactured “Iran threat,” and the decades‑long fusion of American empire with Israel’s regional ambitions. What emerges is not a hot take but a cold, clinical autopsy of a war machine that has slipped beyond democratic control.
From the 1953 coup to the present blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Sachs traces how Washington’s obsession with dominance — and Israel’s pursuit of permanent military supremacy — has pushed the world to the brink of a conflict that could collapse the global economy in weeks. He dismantles the nuclear‑weapons narrative, exposes the bipartisan addiction to sanctions and covert warfare, and warns that the U.S. is now trapped in a crisis of its own making.
This is one of Sachs’ clearest, most unflinching interviews to date — a map of how we got here, and a warning about what comes next if the “grown‑ups” don’t seize the wheel.
Jeffrey Sachs Warns: The U.S.–Israel War Path Toward Iran Is Leading the World Into Economic and Political Collapse
Jeffrey Sachs has spent decades advising governments, studying development, and watching empires rise and fall. In his latest interview, he delivers a stark message: the United States and Israel are steering the world toward a catastrophic confrontation with Iran — and the window for avoiding disaster is closing fast.
A Global Crisis Triggered by a Manufactured One
Sachs argues that the current crisis is not an accident but the predictable outcome of decades of U.S. interference in Iran, beginning with the 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister. That single act — the theft of Iran’s sovereignty and its oil — set the stage for 70 years of hostility, sanctions, proxy wars, and regime‑change fantasies.
According to Sachs, the present escalation is driven less by Iranian behavior than by Washington’s refusal to accept that Iran slipped out of U.S. control in 1979. The “Iran menace,” he says, is a propaganda construct — a way to justify endless pressure on a country that has not invaded another nation in more than a century.
The Strait of Hormuz: A Choke Point for the World Economy
Sachs warns that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a direct consequence of the spiraling conflict — has already triggered a global economic emergency. Oil, gas, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metals flow through this narrow waterway. With it blocked, the world economy is “reeling,” and the clock is ticking.
The off‑ramp exists, Sachs insists: de‑escalation, diplomacy, and reopening the strait. But it requires political maturity — something he argues is in short supply in both Washington and Jerusalem.
Israel’s Parallel Agenda: Regional Dominance at Any Cost
Sachs draws a sharp distinction between U.S. and Israeli motives. For Washington, Iran represents a rebellion against American empire. For Israel, Iran is the last major obstacle to full military dominance across the Middle East and North Africa.
He argues that Israel’s political leadership — backed by a powerful U.S. lobby — has long sought to neutralize Iran not because of nuclear fears, but because Iran resists Israeli hegemony. This, Sachs says, is the real engine behind the push for confrontation.
The Nuclear Lie
One of Sachs’ most forceful points is his dismantling of the nuclear narrative. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran has sought international monitoring and compliance frameworks — including the JCPOA — only to see the U.S. sabotage its own agreements under pressure from domestic political forces aligned with Israel.
Calling the nuclear rhetoric “Orwellian,” Sachs argues that the real goal is regime change, not nonproliferation.
A War That Would Reshape the World in Weeks
Sachs warns that a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran would not be a limited strike. It would trigger a regional war, destroy infrastructure across the Gulf, and plunge the global economy into chaos. Within weeks, he says, the world would look “profoundly damaged,” with the risk of escalation into a global conflict.
This is not hyperbole, Sachs insists — it is the logical outcome of the current trajectory.
The Real Question: Who Is Steering U.S. Policy?
Throughout the interview, Sachs returns to a central theme: the absence of democratic control over U.S. foreign policy. Decisions of war and peace are being shaped by lobbies, political vanity, and imperial reflexes — not by the interests of the American public.
The result is a government that no longer serves its citizens, a political class insulated from consequences, and a foreign policy apparatus that treats global stability as collateral damage.
A Final Warning
Sachs’ message is clear: the U.S. and Israel are playing with forces they cannot control. The world is at a fork in the road — diplomacy or disaster — and the people making the decisions are the least equipped to choose wisely.
For Americans, the stakes are not abstract. Sachs argues that the economic, political, and moral costs of this conflict will fall squarely on the public, not on the leaders who helped create it.
As the war with Iran drags on, now suspended in a ceasefire as the combatants attempt to organize negotiations, the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has a harsh assessment of the results so far. According to Stiglitz, President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran was a ‘calamitous’ mistake, the consequences of which have been war crimes, death, and the destruction of the global economy.
“No decision is more important than waging war against another country. Yet the United States has done exactly that without even a nod to its own system of checks and balances and reasoned deliberation,” writes Stiglitz. “The disastrous result is now clear: America is once again embroiled in a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives — mostly civilians — and in which it has almost certainly committed multiple war crimes.”
What’s more, Stiglitz asserts that the longer the war lasts, “the greater the damage will be. But even if the war ends quickly, the effects will linger. After all, critical supply chains have already been disrupted, and oil and gas production facilities destroyed. Most estimates suggest that repairs will take years.”
The economic damage comes on the heels of Trump’s tariffs, which, along with the war, have contributed to rising inflation. With the world “already facing an affordability crisis that US policies have made worse, the risk now is that central bankers everywhere will either raise interest rates or at least slow the pace at which they were lowering them.” As a result, what economic gains were made as the world recovered from COVID have been lost.
This is going to exacerbate the affordability crisis, which will in turn worsen the housing and credit situation. At the same time, “Trump’s regressive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations now in force, the US has less fiscal space to buffer the disruptions he has caused.” What’s more, “Trump’s claim that the US will benefit as a net oil exporter is nonsense. Yes, Exxon will benefit, but US consumers pay prices that are set globally — and that have risen substantially.” So Americans will pay at the pump while big oil sees soaring profits. Stiglitz says there is little cause for optimism, concluding, “Yet another nail has been added to the coffin of the peaceful, borderless world that our forebearers sought to build after World War II. Under Trump, the country that laid the foundations of that world is now dismantling it… And with democracy in the US in such a weakened state, the human errors and their consequences are piling up fast.”
Iranian attacks on US bases across the Middle East have caused far more damage than the Trump administration has publicly acknowledged, and an Iranian fighter jet was able to bomb at least one US base, NBC News reported on Saturday, citing unnamed US officials.
The administration has attempted to cover up the damage to US bases in the war, and has gone as far as requesting that Planet Labs and other satellite imagery companies black out war images, making it difficult to ascertain the damage.
The NBC report said that the Pentagon has also kept the information on the damage from Congress. “No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” a Republican congressional aide told the outlet. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record high budget.”
Iranian missile and drone attacks have targeted US bases in seven Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Jordan, and Qatar. US officials said that an Iranian F-5 fighter jet was able to bomb the US base at Camp Buehring in Kuwait despite it having air defenses, marking the first time in many years that an enemy fixed-wing aircraft struck a US military installation.
Smoke rises from the direction of a US naval base after a missile attack on the service center of the US Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, February 28, 2026 (screenshot of social media footage obtained by REUTERS)
The US armed Iran with Northrop Grumman-made F-5 fighter jets before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Iran has developed its own version of the aircraft, known as the HESA Kowsar.
Kuwait was also the site of a March 1 Iranian drone attack that killed six US Army Reserve soldiers and injured more than 20. The drone targeted a makeshift operations center in Port Shuaiba, and according to survivors of the attack who spoke to CBS News, the facility was unprotected despite claims from US War Secretary Pete Hegseth that the drone was able to “squirt” through air defenses.
The Pentagon has confirmed the deaths of at least 13 US soldiers and the injuries of more than 400 in the war. The bases across the region were mostly evacuated since they were so vulnerable to attack, something The New York Times previously reported. “Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage,” the Timesreported on March 25.
The NBC report said that the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain “sustained serious damage” and that other US bases in the country also suffered serious damage that is likely repairable. The report also cited the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank, which said it assessed Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 bases, and that the repairs would cost at least $5 billion, though the number doesn’t account for some of the radars, weapons systems, and other equipment that was destroyed.
The years 2024 and 2025 were the deadliest for reporters worldwide since records began. In those two years, Israeli attacks were responsible for 70% of the deaths
Funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Weshah at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza Strip on April 9.Majdi Fathi (NurPhoto/ Getty Images)
The death of Amal Khalil, 43, a Lebanese reporter for the media outlet Al Akhbar, brings up to nine the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army in seven weeks of offensive in Lebanon, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The reporter’s killing occurred even though a ceasefire, which called for a 10-day cessation of hostilities by Israeli troops in Lebanon, was in effect since Thursday.
These figures add to the 264 other journalists killed in the line of duty in the context of the wars in Gaza and Iran since October 7, 2023. According to CPJ, 260 of these deaths were caused by Israel. The majority of the victims were Palestinian journalists in Gaza, although the count also includes 31 journalists killed in Yemen, 15 in Lebanon, and four in Iran in the last two and a half years. According to the Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate, the number of reporters killed in Lebanon since October 2023 stands at 27.
While Lebanon remains in shock over Khalil’s death, Beirut has announced it will seek international justice, considering the Israeli attack that killed her a war crime. The Lebanese government accuses Israel of deliberately targeting her and her colleague Zeinab Faraj. The two women had taken shelter in a house in the southern village of al-Tiri after an initial airstrike killed two people traveling in a vehicle. Shortly afterward, the building where they were located was also attacked. The Lebanese Red Cross rescued Faraj, who was taken to a hospital, but as teams searched for Khalil, an Israeli drone dropped another grenade on the building.
Funeral of journalist Amal Khalil, in Basariye (Lebanon), this Thursday.Aziz Taher (REUTERS)
“This is not the first time that Israel has prevented emergency services from reaching journalists injured in their strikes,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Journalists are civilians and protected under international law. Israel’s blatant disregard for such norms — and the international community’s failure to hold them accountable — is abhorrent.”
In many cases, Israeli troops justify the attacks by claiming the journalists have connections to Hamas or Hezbollah. In Khalil’s case, the Israeli army, without denying the Lebanese government’s version of events, maintains that the two journalists had just left a building used by Hezbollah for military purposes. According to a spokesperson, both vehicles had crossed the defensive line and approached Israeli troops, thus constituting “an imminent threat.”
“Targeted assassinations”
2024 and 2025 were the deadliest years for journalists worldwide since the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) began documenting these cases in 1992. In both years, Israel was responsible for 70% of the recorded deaths, according to the organization. In addition to the 264 journalists who were killed, 174 were wounded and 106 imprisoned since the start of the war in Gaza.
The CPJ counts both journalists killed while carrying out their work and those whose deaths are linked to their professional activity, whether accidentally in conflict zones or as a result of deliberate attacks. According to the organization, Israeli troops have carried out more targeted killings of journalists than the military of any other government since records began. To date, the CPJ has documented 64 cases of journalists deliberately killed by Israeli forces between 2023 and 2025 in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen.
Among the dead was Anas Al Sharif, an Al Jazeera reporter and one of the most recognizable faces of the Gaza war. He was killed in August 2025 in an Israeli attack on the journalists’ tent where he lived with five other reporters, outside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Anticipating he might be targeted, Al Sharif had left a farewell message.
That same month, five other journalists were killed in a bombing of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. After an initial explosion at the building, where civilians and reporters had gathered to assess the damage, a second blast occurred and was broadcast live by several television stations.
The head of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau has also been targeted: he was wounded and lost several family members, including a son who was also a journalist. This April, Al Jazeera journalist Muhammad Washah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the vehicle he and another Palestinian were driving on the coastal road in Gaza City, according to health officials cited by Reuters.
Funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Mohammad Weshah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, on April 9.Majdi Fathi (NurPhoto/ Getty Images)
In the last incident in Lebanon recorded by the CPJ before Khalil’s death, three other journalists were killed in the south of the country. An Israeli attack on a vehicle on the Jezzine road killed journalist Ali Shoaib of the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV; journalist Fatima Ftouni of Al Mayadeen TV; and her brother, freelance photojournalist Mohamad Ftouni.
War crimes
“The deliberate attacks and killings of journalists by Israeli forces constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law,” Amnesty International notes on its website.
Since October 2023, Reporters Without Borders has filed five complaints with the International Criminal Court against Israel for “war crimes against Palestinian journalists in Gaza.”
These actions are in addition to previous ones, such as the lawsuit filed by Al Jazeera in 2022 after the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in May of that year while covering a raid by Israeli troops on a refugee camp in Jenin, in the West Bank.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
A US legal memo reveals Iran war was launched at Israel’s request, contradicting Trump’s repeated claims of independence.
Key Developments
US document states war was conducted in “collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.”
Admission contradicts Donald Trump’s claims that Washington acted independently.
Memo frames ongoing war as legally continuous conflict, removing need for renewed justification.
US Memo Contradicts Trump Narrative
A US State Department legal memorandum has revealed that the so-called Operation Epic Fury, launched on February 28, was carried out “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally,” directly contradicting repeated public claims by US President Donald Trump that Washington acted independently in its war against Iran.
The document explicitly states that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Iran “at the request of” Israel, framing the military campaign not as a unilateral American decision, but as part of a coordinated war effort aligned with Israeli objectives.
This admission stands in clear contrast to Trump’s earlier assertions that the United States was acting on its own strategic calculations, without external influence, in launching the large-scale military operation.
The memo goes further by constructing a legal argument that the war did not begin with Operation Epic Fury, but is instead part of an ongoing, long-term armed conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran.
‘Collective Self-Defense’ of Israel
According to the document, US military action is justified both as collective self-defense of Israel and as an exercise of Washington’s “own inherent right of self-defense.”
It argues that hostilities have been continuous for years, citing repeated US communications to the United Nations Security Council and asserting that no formal end to the conflict ever occurred.
“The United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense,” the memo states.
By defining the war as “ongoing”, the document claims that Washington is not required to reassess legal justifications such as imminence or proportionality for each new military action.
President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.
The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.
In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.
“Trump needs to disabuse them of that notion. He has reportedly told Iran that it has three to five days to make a serious counteroffer. If it fails to do so, he should resume combat operations — starting with strikes targeting Iran’s recalcitrant leaders. If the Iranian regime is really ‘fractured’ between a faction that wants a deal and a faction that does not, there is a simple solution: Kill the faction that does not,” Thiessen said.
Thiessen said the US should maintain the blockade and claimed the US military could open the Strait of Hormuz by force and that it just needed 14 more days to “finish the job” against Iran.
The Trump administration has pushed the narrative that Iran’s military has essentially been obliterated, but Iran was able to continue missile and drone attacks throughout the entire war, and according to US officials speaking to The New York Times, US intelligence assesses that Tehran likely has access to the majority of its missiles and launchers.
Published date: 23 April 2026 15:40 BST | Last update:1 hour 50 mins ago
Amal Khalil, the seasoned journalist, was born during a years-long Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. She was killed there four decades later by invading Israeli forces.
“Amal was present in every home. Every home in Lebanon has lost her,” Ali Khalil, her brother, said tearfully a day after she was targeted and killed by Israel.
“Amal resembles the south in all its details – its sweet breeze, its valleys, its mountains, and its old houses. She resembles all of that.”
Khalil is remembered fondly by her colleagues as generous, fearless and pioneering.
“I want to express gratitude for everything she did for us young journalists,” Hussein Chaabane, a Lebanese investigative and legal journalist, told Middle East Eye.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
“She was so generous even if we were competitors. She never hesitated in sharing a contact, a key – and she had all the keys in the south.
“She knew it like the palm of her hand and she shared this love and dedication with everyone who needed it.”
Khalil, 42, was killed on Wednesday as she went to cover an earlier Israeli attack in the town of al-Tayri.
‘She knew [the south] like the palm of her hand and she shared this love and dedication with everyone who needed it’
– Hussein Chaabane, journalist
An initial strike hit a vehicle in front of Khalil and freelance photographer Zeinab Faraj, prompting the pair to take shelter in a nearby house.
A second strike then hit the house, according to the health ministry. Rescuers retrieved Faraj, who sustained a head wound, but were fired on before they could reach Khalil.
Hours later, they found Khalil dead under the rubble.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam described the killing as a war crime and said Lebanon would spare no efforts in pursuing the culprits internationally.
“The killing of Amal was the killing of a woman of resistance,” Lebanese filmmaker Bachir Abou Zeid told MEE.
“Israel killed her because she was a journalist of resistance, not simply because she was a journalist.”
Writer shaped by occupation
Khalil was born in 1984 in al-Baisariyah, in the Saida district of southern Lebanon.
She grew up during the civil war and Israel’s occupation of large parts of southern Lebanon, and recounted seeing occupied villages in the distance when she was a child. Her own town was retaken from Israeli forces shortly before her birth.
Khalil grew up reading As-Safir, a now defunct popular Lebanese newspaper, through which she says she learnt about everyday people’s struggles, about prisoners and the forcibly disappeared, and about the civil war.
She studied Arabic literature in the city of Saida, and – without the knowledge of her parents – travelled to Beirut, where she became involved in communist activism.
It was then that her writing career began to take off, and she wrote several pieces for al-Hasnaa magazine.
“One story I particularly remember was for the Valentine’s Day special issue, about how queer people celebrated love in a conservative society,” she recalled in an interview in January with The Public Source, a Beirut-based outlet.
Khalil joined the nascent Al-Akhbar newspaper in April 2006, a few months before the first issue went to print. She would go on to work there for 20 years.
Weeks after she joined, Israel launched a 33-day war on Lebanon – a moment which Khalil described as a turning point in her career.
She had initially joined the paper to write about women’s and cultural issues. But amid the backdrop of war, she collected the stories of those displaced and bombarded by Israel.
It was a theme that would continue throughout her professional life.
‘The pressure to break me was relentless, but I didn’t yield’
– Amal Khalil
Khalil was largely based in the city of Sour, also known as Tyre, where she pursued public interest stories.
“Going after corruption cases and social issues in the area, sparing no one – not even my family – led to confrontations,” she recounted.
“I was threatened, assaulted, and intimidated. The pressure to break me was relentless, but I didn’t yield.”
Although al-Akhbar has provided favourable coverage of Hezbollah and resistance against Israel, she said she did not write with limitations.
She recalled al-Akhbar defying a request by Hassan Nasrallah, then Hezbollah’s leader, to not publish a WikiLeaks documents about Nabih Berri, the parliament’s speaker, back in 2011.
Over time, she became al-Akhbar’s go-to field reporter for the whole of the south, covering Sour, Bint Jbeil and Nabatieh, among other areas.
Face to face with Israeli troops
Khalil knew all too well that Israeli forces have a habit of targeting Lebanese journalists.
In 2010, she wrote an obituary for her slain colleague Assaf Abu Rahhal, who was killed by Israeli shelling.
She recalled a Lebanese soldier handing her Abu Rahhal’s blood-stained ID card. “It was all that remained of Assaf. I will never forget that day,” she said.
Khalil was unwavering in her support for leftism and resistance against occupation.
In more recent years she began to produce more video content, learning to edit the films herself, even though she was insistent that she did not want to appear in them.
‘I’m here to tell the stories of the people, not to become the story myself’
– Amal Khalil
“For me, it was simple: I’m here to tell the stories of the people, not to become the story myself,” she said.
During Israel’s 2023-2024 war on Lebanon, which broke out when Hezbollah attacked Israel in solidarity with Palestinians being slaughtered in Gaza, she documented evidence of Israeli targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure.
“From the very first day of the genocide, Amal confronted Israel through her coverage,” said Abou Zeid.
“Her documentation, her movement from one area to another, and her amplification of the story of the people in the land and the south.”
After a ceasefire was announced in February last year, she reported on Israel’s near-daily violations of the truce.
Khalil was confronted by Israeli forces on a number of occasions during her career. The closest shave, she said, was in November 2024, when Israeli forces fired volleys to drive her and colleagues back from a bulldozer.
‘Never accepted Israeli limitations’
Colleagues and friends remember that Amal refused to bow to Israeli orders or limitations on her movements.
“Not for a single moment did Amal abide by Israeli instructions about where she could go,” said Abou Zeid.
“Amal was not a journalist in the conventional sense of the profession. Her love for the land and for her people outweighed everything.”
Khalil said herself following the 2024 war that people had advised her to restrict her movements, but that her faith and her revolutionary upbringing taught her to stand “in the face of oppression”.
‘Her love for the land and for her people outweighed everything’
– Bachir Abou Zeid, filmmaker
“My alignment with the people of the south, my presence among them since the July 2006 war, has always been the right choice. They have always lived up to that faith placed in them,” she said.
“They will grow stronger, more steadfast, and more committed to this unwavering compass, toward truth, and toward Palestine.”
(Photo credit: Emilio Morenatti/AP Photo/picture alliance)
Peace and Justice Post 
You must be logged in to post a comment.