This work by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Some Israelis and foreign tourists arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport to leave the region, fearing an escalation of tensions and attacks that began early this morning on the Israeli-Lebanese border in Tel Aviv, Israel on August 25, 2024. [Nir Keidar – Anadolu Agency]
Israel has cancelled the entry visas of 27 left-wing French parliamentarians and officials just two days before their planned visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, according to a statement released by the group on Sunday, as reported by France 24.
This development comes shortly after Israel barred two British Labour MPs from entering the country, and amid heightened diplomatic tensions following French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France would soon recognise the State of Palestine. Macron has also urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza during the ongoing conflict with Hamas.
Israel’s Ministry of the Interior stated that the cancellations were made under existing legislation, which authorises the denial of entry to individuals deemed to act against the interests of the state.
Seventeen members of the group, affiliated with France’s Ecologist and Communist parties, described the Israeli move as “collective punishment” and appealed to President Macron to take action.
In a joint statement, the group said they had received an official invitation from the French consulate in Jerusalem for a five-day mission intended to “enhance international cooperation and support a culture of peace.”
“Two days before our departure, Israeli authorities cancelled our entry visas, which had been granted a month earlier,” the statement read. “We want to understand what triggered this abrupt decision, which seems to be a form of collective punishment,” they added.
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Wounded Palestinian kids receives medical attention at Nasser Medical Complex after an Israeli airstrike struck a residential home in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza on April 19, 2025 [Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency]
Nearly 600 children have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since last month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday, Anadolu reported.
Citing figures released by the UN children’s agency (UNICEF), UNRWA said that over 1,600 other children have also been injured since Israel resumed its assaults on 18 March.
“The humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is now likely at its worst point since October 2023,” it added.
The Israeli army resumed its deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip on 18 March and has since killed 1,864 people and injured nearly 4,900 others despite a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement that took hold in January.
More than 51,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
Original article by Middle East Monitor republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services pray by the bodies of fellow rescuers killed a week earlier by Israeli forces, during a funeral procession at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
“This report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” said the Israeli group Breaking the Silence.
The Israel Defense Forces’ report on the killing of 15 paramedics in Gaza last month was “sure to lead to increased demands for an independent investigation,” said one journalist for Sky News, which recently released an extensive account of the incident that experts and advocates have called a potential war crime.
The IDF said it had found “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident” that took place on March 23, when Israeli troops opened fire on a convoy of vehicles that included ambulances, killing the 15 rescue workers.
But officials claimed that there was “no attempt to conceal the event” and the report suggested the firing of a deputy commander for providing an “inaccurate report” and the reprimanding of a commanding officer should satisfy the international outcry over the incident, after which United Nations and Palestinian Red Crescent officials discovered the medics’ bodies and their crushed rescue vehicles had been buried in a shallow mass grave.
An Israeli probe into Israel's killing of 15 Palestinian medical and rescue workers in Gaza finds no cover-up even though Israeli forces lied about their vehicles not having had their lights on and Israel continues to detain the sole survivor. https://t.co/p7Xi4DA2rV
“Is this meant to be a joke?” said Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha after the IDF announced the commanders would be fired and reprimanded. “How is this supposed to help the children and families of these medics? …These war criminals should be arrested and handed over to the [International Criminal Court] for due legal processing.”
The IDF report found that six out of 15 Palestinians killed “were identified in a retrospective examination as Hamas terrorists,” but did not produce evidence to support the claim; Sky News, which released its investigation on on Friday, also did not find evidence.
The report also claimed that the army decided to “gather and cover the bodies to prevent further harm and clear the vehicles from the route in preparation for civilian evacuation”—an explanation for the buried bodies and ambulances.
As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the IDF’s claim that soldiers “did not randomly attack” the convoy but rather fired on suspected “terrorists” in “suspicious vehicles” was refuted by video evidence from the phone of one of the medics who was found in the mass grave—believed to be Refaat Radwan.
The video showed a convoy of clearly marked ambulances and fire truck, with headlights and flashing lights on—contradicting the IDF’s claim that the vehicles were driving with their lights off.
Despite the video evidence, the IDF report said there was “no evidence to support claims of execution” and accused those who have made such accusations of “blood libels.”
The Sky News report released Friday found that Israel’s claim that the medics were not fired at from a close distance was false and that expert analysis of Radwan’s cellphone video determined shots had been fired from as close as 12 meters away
Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer said that in the case of the medics’ killing, “video evidence exposed [the IDF’s] lies forcing this flimsy effort mascarading as accountability so they can sweep it under the rug.”
Israel is able to repeatedly attack civilians and aid workers and claim that their deaths were accidental, Munayyer suggested, because “western media is willing to believe as fact initial Israeli narratives around atrocities.”
Given how frequently this happens, there is simply no other plausible explanation for the failure of western media to adjust by treating the Israeli military a source of information without credibility than this: they want to support their atrocities.
The Israeli probe found “professional failures,” said former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, but the IDF “doesn’t seem to have examined the rules of engagement, approved by senior officials, that permit killing before clear identification of a combatant.”
The killing of the paramedics underscored the “atmosphere of impunity” in Gaza, said one Israeli policy analyst.
“What we know is that we cannot trust the Israeli [military]. Unless The New York Times would have gotten hold of that video clip, I don’t think that we would know the truth,” Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera. “It would be another cover-up.”
Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice told Al Jazeera that the IDF report “invites many questions that it will be difficult, I suspect, for the [Israeli military] to answer.”
“For example, [there is] the proposition that six of these people were Hamas, presumably members of Hamas on active [military] service, not people who might have been associated with Hamas in some way. No documentary evidence at all is identified [for that],” he told the outlet.
Breaking the Silence, a group made up of Israeli veterans of the IDF who speak out against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, said the report was “riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details.”
“We all remember when the IDF claimed that the ambulances emergency lights weren’t on—and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” said the group.
“Another day, another cover-up,” Breaking the Silence added. “More innocent lives taken, with no accountability.”
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
