Israel systematically targeting journalists in Gaza, says senior Hamas official
Press TV – August 25, 2025
A senior Hamas official has condemned in the strongest terms Israel’s killing of five journalists in an attack on Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, saying that the occupying regime is deliberately and systematically targeting members of press to cover up its atrocities in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“The crime of targeting Nasser Hospital could only be committed by a rogue terrorist entity, with the continued complicity of the United States and the helplessness of international law,” Basem Naim said on Monday.
He added, “The repeated targeting of Palestinian journalists and the prevention of foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip have become a constant goal for the Zionist enemy so that it can hide its crimes from the international public opinion.”
Five journalists were among 20 people killed in an Israeli attack on Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, according to the region’s Ministry of Health.
The ministry said that the victims were killed on the fourth floor of the hospital in a double-tap strike – one missile hitting first, then another moments later as rescue crews arrived.
Those killed included Al Jazeera photographer Mohammad Salama; Hussam al-Masri, who worked as a photojournalist for the Reuters news agency; Mariam Abu Daqqa, who worked as a journalist with several media outlets, including The Independent Arabic and The Associated Press news agency; and journalist Moaz Abu Taha, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
A fifth journalist Ahmed Abu Aziz, who worked for the Quds Feed Network and other media outlets, succumbed to his wounds, according to the media office statement.
“The journalist colleagues were martyred when the Israeli occupation committed a horrific crime by bombing a group of journalists who were on a press coverage mission at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis Governorate and many martyrs fell victim to this crime,” the statement read.
“We hold the Israeli occupation, the American administration, and the countries participating in the genocide crime such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France fully responsible for committing these heinous brutal crimes.” the media office noted.
As Israel persists in prohibiting foreign journalists from accessing the coastal territory, Palestinian reporters continue to be the exclusive source of firsthand reporting from within the war zone.
The Federation of News Agencies of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has expressed its deep concern over the continued assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli forces while carrying out their duties.
The federation emphasized that what is happening in Gaza constitutes a clear violation of international laws and norms, and comes in the context of Israeli violations of freedom of the press and media, and its policy of confiscating the truth, gagging, covering up its daily violations, and preventing them from reaching global public opinion.
France has ruined its reputation as a free country – Durov
RT | August 24, 2025
Telegram founder Pavel Durov has said that France ruined its reputation as a free country by briefly detaining him last year.
Durov was arrested at a Paris airport in August 2024 on charges of allowing criminals to use his messenger for illegal activities, including extremism and child abuse. The Russian-born tech entrepreneur was later released on €5 million ($5.86 million) bail and allowed to return to Dubai, where he resides.
In a post on Telegram on Sunday, Durov described his detention as “unprecedented” and “legally and logically absurd.” He said the investigation had produced no evidence of wrongdoing, stressing that Telegram’s moderation practices follow industry standards and that the company has complied with all legally binding requests from French authorities.
Durov also claimed that French investigators bypassed EU-mandated legal channels when sending queries to the platform, a mistake he argued could have been avoided “simply by googling the process or asking.”
“Sadly, the only outcome of my arrest so far has been massive damage to France’s image as a free country,” Durov said, adding that he must still return to Paris every two weeks with no appeal date in sight.
Telegram has since updated its privacy policy to allow the collection of metadata, including IP addresses, device information, and username changes, for up to one year, with the option of handing it over to “relevant judicial authorities.”
Last month, Durov accused France of waging “a crusade” against free speech, claiming that intelligence officials had tried to pressure him into censoring conservative content during Romania’s 2024 presidential election. The French intelligence agency, the DGSE, later said it had merely “reminded” him of the responsibility to police content while denying election interference.
Tulsi Gabbard Shuts Down Foreign Malign Influence Center, Citing Political Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2025
The Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), a government office created during the Biden administration under the pretense of countering foreign disinformation, has been officially shut down as part of a broad overhaul of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) led by Director Tulsi Gabbard.
The move is being described by the administration as an effort to dismantle wasteful, politicized, and unconstitutional programs that have operated well beyond the intended scope of US intelligence work.
A fact sheet released by ODNI reveals that FMIC, along with its earlier incarnations, served as a tool for suppressing domestic political speech, particularly viewpoints at odds with the previous administration.
“FMIC and its predecessor entities were used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition,” the document states.
Furthermore, it details the existence of a sustained partnership between the center and major technology companies, including X, Facebook, and Google, which ODNI says lacked any objective or scientific grounding and may have been weaponized against Americans.
This coordination, according to ODNI, took place under the guise of countering foreign influence but functioned in practice as a mechanism to police and control public discourse online.
The fact sheet highlights a specific incident from October 2020, when FMIC, then operating as the Election Threats Executive, was involved in shaping how social media platforms responded to the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
That reporting was rapidly suppressed across major platforms, an act that later drew widespread condemnation from free speech advocates. The ODNI document directly connects FMIC to that censorship effort, noting its coordination with platforms on their response to the story.
Gabbard, speaking with Fox News host Jesse Watters, condemned the center’s activities in clear terms. “It was essentially used as a means to censor Americans’ free speech, calling it, ‘Hey, you’re spreading disinformation,’” she explained.
Gabbard further stated that FMIC worked directly with social media companies to silence dissent, particularly criticism of the Biden administration, which she described as “a direct contradiction and undermining of our fundamental constitutional rights.”
Although the ODNI fact sheet stops short of using the term “abolished,” it does confirm that FMIC’s functions are being dismantled and its personnel absorbed elsewhere.
The agency’s language states it is “refocusing functions within the Foreign Malign Influence Center” and integrating any necessary components into other divisions like Mission Integration and the National Intelligence Council. Nevertheless, in her interview, Gabbard was clear that the center’s days of operating as an independent entity are over.
Beyond FMIC, the Gabbard-led reforms are targeting a range of other ODNI entities accused of serving partisan purposes rather than advancing national security.
Among those being eliminated are the External Research Council and the Strategic Futures Group, both criticized for pushing politically motivated intelligence. According to the fact sheet, the overall restructuring, referred to as “ODNI 2.0,” will slash agency staffing by nearly half and save taxpayers over $700 million per year.
4chan Rejects UK Ofcom Fine, Citing US Free Speech Protections and Threatening Legal Action
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2025
4chan’s legal team has firmly rejected an attempt by UK regulator Ofcom to impose penalties under Britain’s new Online Safety Act, declaring the proposed fine unenforceable and a direct challenge to free expression protected by US law.
The media regulator wants the site to pay a £20,000 ($27,010.78) penalty, with additional daily fines if it continues to ignore requests tied to its ongoing investigation.
However, Preston Byrne, the attorney representing 4chan, argues that the demand lacks legal standing in the United States.
Speaking to the BBC, Byrne described the regulator’s actions as “an illegal campaign of harassment” directed at American tech firms.
Byrne made clear his client would not comply: “4chan has broken no laws in the United States, my client will not pay any penalty.”
Ofcom launched its investigation to determine whether the platform meets requirements laid out in the Online Safety Act, which compels digital services to shield UK-based users from “harmful” content.
In August, the regulator issued what it called a “provisional notice of contravention,” accusing 4chan of failing to respond to two formal data requests.
The site, long known for its loose moderation policies and anonymous posting, has been a regular target of controversy over the years. Its open nature allows for a broad range of user expression, which some governments now seek to restrict under the pretext of safety.
In a public statement released on X, legal representatives for 4chan doubled down.
Byrne & Storm, alongside Coleman Law, stated: “American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email.” They argued that US courts have consistently refused to enforce foreign censorship fines, and if necessary, they would escalate the matter in federal court to protect those constitutional rights.
The statement added that US authorities were already briefed on the situation, and it urged the Trump administration to “invoke all diplomatic and legal levers” in defense of US-based platforms against what it called “extraterritorial censorship mandates.”
Ofcom declined to provide further comment while the investigation remains open.
TikTok bars calling Israeli forces ‘terrorists’ after hiring ex-soldier
Press TV – August 24, 2025
TikTok updated its content guidelines to prohibit labeling Israeli forces as “terrorists,” shortly after appointing a former Israeli soldier and self-described “proud Zionist” to oversee its so-called “anti-Semitism” policies.
TikTok appointed Erica Mindel as its new Public Policy Manager for Hate Speech 15 days before the ban was announced, according to users on X.
They also pointed out that the guidelines previously prohibited “all racial supremacy” but have now been narrowed to exclusively address “White supremacy.”
According to her LinkedIn profile and job description, Mindel is tasked with shaping the company’s hate speech policy and serving as TikTok’s internal and external expert on anti-Semitism.
Mindal spent two and a half years in the Israeli military as a madrichot shirion – an instructor in the occupation army – and also worked with the US State Department.
“I am a proud American Jew,” she once said.
She was hired following pressure from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a notorious Zionist lobby group in the US. She is based in New York City and is reported to earn an estimated £280,000 annually.
Her two-and-a-half years as an Israeli military instructor, coupled with her work for US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, suggest that her role is aimed at censoring pro-Palestinian content while amplifying Israeli narratives amid the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.
The move comes as the Israeli regime persists in its systematic oppression of Palestinians by worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Disturbing images and videos depicting emaciated children, relentless bombardments, and widespread destruction continue to surface on social media platforms, shedding light on the dire situation faced by Palestinians in the region.
Backed by the US, Israel launched its onslaught on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after Palestinian resistance fighters waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the Zionist entity in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The Israeli military has so far killed more than 62,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Bands boycott UK festival after Irish group ‘cut off’ for waving Palestinian flag
Press TV – August 24, 2025
Several bands have pulled out of a major UK music festival after an Irish folk band said organizers cut their set when they displayed a Palestinian flag and chanted “Free Palestine.”
The Mary Wallopers were performing at Victorious Festival in Portsmouth on Friday when organizers accused them of using a chant “widely understood to have a discriminatory context.”
The Mary Wallopers dismissed the allegation as “misleading,” saying, “Our video clearly shows a Victorious crew member coming on stage, interfering with our show, removing the flag from the stage and then the sound being cut following a chant of ‘Free Palestine’.”
Organizers first claimed the set was stopped over a chant, but later admitted the sound was cut after the flag was shown. They apologized “to all concerned” and pledged a “substantial donation” to humanitarian relief for Palestinians.
In protest, The Last Dinner Party, The Academic and Cliffords announced on Saturday that they would boycott the festival over censorship.
“We are outraged by the decision to silence The Mary Wallopers,” The Last Dinner Party wrote on Instagram, calling it “political censorship.”
The Academic said they could not “in good conscience” perform at a festival that silences free speech, while Cliffords said they “refuse to play if we are to be censored for showing our support to the people of Palestine.”
The festival, which continues through Sunday with headliners including Kings of Leon, Bloc Party and Gabrielle, now faces growing backlash over silencing pro-Palestinian protest.
Beware Universal Mental Health Screening
By Cooper Davis, Jeffrey Lacasse | Brownstone Institute | August 21, 2025
How would your child score on a common mental health screening?
A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem… that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated.
Will this help your child thrive? Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways? Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality? When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body and brain have adapted to them, making this difficult or maybe even impossible?
For any parent with even minor reservations about our current medical and mental health system, these aren’t theoretical questions. A new public policy has just made them very salient.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a new law mandating universal mental health screenings for every child in public school. This includes healthy children with no signs of behavioral problems. Parents can theoretically opt out, but they’ll have to do so repeatedly, as the screenings will be given at least once a year from grades 3-12.
Media coverage has been laudatory, expounding on the importance of “getting kids the help and support they deserve.” But do you know what a mental health screen is and how it works? Before sounding the applause, parents need to understand what these screenings are, how they’re used, and what the potential outcomes of their use might be.
The new law does not specify how children will be screened, what questionnaires will be used, or what procedures will be followed when a child’s answers are seen as troubling. But to get a sense of the ground that self-report mental health questionnaires cover, you can screen your kids right now with a commonly used questionnaire:
While this is a self-assessment, the questions are the same whether you’re a parent or teacher filling this out on behalf of a child. Each of the 35 questions can be answered “never,” “sometimes,” or “often.” The scoring is simple:
- 0 = “never”
- 1 = “sometimes”
- 2 = “often”
If the total score is at or above 28, professionals will consider it likely that your child has a mental health problem. The law doesn’t define what happens next. Ideally, there would be a lengthy (and costly) multi-hour clinical assessment for each such child that views these results skeptically, and heavily considers normal developmental issues and transitory problems. In the real-world mental health system, it’s hard to imagine that actually happening.
Unfortunately, the bias of the current system is towards overmedicalization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. The implementation of universal screening is likely to worsen these problems.
In the past, some physicians gave annual chest X-rays to smokers. This was a form of universal screening in response to concerns about lung cancer. At first blush, this sounds reasonable. The problem? False-positive results. Studies showed that annual X-rays did not prevent mortality. They did cause anxiety in patients. And incidental findings were common, causing unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and interventions.
Current screening guidelines now target high-risk individuals. This is an example where the medical establishment carefully weighed the risks and benefits of universal screening and concluded that it was not in the interests of patients, and with a well-defined disease in mind, lung cancer.
Mental health diagnosis is not like cancer. It is a fuzzy, subjective enterprise. We don’t have blood tests or brain scans; we have flawed checklists and clinical judgment. And obviously, being improperly identified as having a mental disorder comes with a real cost for the child.
Screening every single child makes it inevitable that some healthy children will be thrust into the mental health pipeline. Even assuming that the questionnaires work reasonably well, a 15% false-positive rate is likely. Combine this false-positive rate with twice-a-year universal screening from grades 3-12, and your child will have 20 separate chances to be wrongly identified as having a mental health problem…at which point the government ostensibly gets involved in the mental health of your child.
It’s easy to imagine the catastrophic results. A child’s mental health screen inaccurately identifies a mental health problem; the busy therapist confirms a diagnosis; there’s eventually a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribes psychotropic medication. Out of 20 screenings, this only has to happen once to alter your child’s life forever.
I (C.D.) know, because it happened to me.
I was caught up in a similar diagnostic dragnet in 1991, when my teacher read about Ritalin in Time magazine and began “identifying” students she believed might have the condition, which at the time was known as “ADD” (the “H”, for hyperactivity, came later). My parents chose not to medicate me, but did send me to a psychologist and a pediatric psychiatrist. From them, I learned that my constant chair-tipping, foot-tapping, wiggling, and inability to tolerate boredom — the very traits that drove me to act out in class and leave little space between impulse and action — weren’t just part of me, but symptoms of a medical condition. It was presented as both permanently part of my nature and “acceptable,” yet somehow also extrinsic to me and framed primarily as a “deficit.” (At that time, ADD was not as widely viewed as a full disability as it is today.)
At 17, when I was legally able to decide for myself — though I now view the “informed” part as questionable — I chose to begin drug treatment. Even without the drugs, however, the diagnosis had already shaped my sense of self: diminishing my agency, reinforcing a feeling of abnormality, and feeding the belief that my more organized, conscientious, and inconspicuous peers possessed something essential that I never would. You can hear a fuller account in The Atlantic’s Scripts podcast series (“The Mandala Effect,” Episode 2, on YouTube).
My experience is just one example of how a single screening can lock a child into a lifelong diagnostic identity — and once that process starts, there are few real off-ramps. Surely no one in favor of this law wants that scenario to come true for any child.
But with 1.4 million schoolchildren in Illinois, we’re talking about dealing with the results of up to 28 million separate mental health screenings in the decade after implementation. Will the mental health professionals dealing with this deluge approach the medicalization of your child’s supposed problems carefully, gingerly, sensitively? A 2004 study found that screening 1,000 children for ADHD using the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM criteria would result in 370 false positives. And it’s common for children to be prescribed psychotropic medication at their first consultation with their physician or psychiatrist.
A comprehensive, in-depth psychological assessment for each child might help reduce false positives — but it would also mean spending 3-6 hours assessing each child, which represents a high burden in terms of both time and money. School districts in Illinois already report that a lack of time, expertise, and financial resources presents challenges to implementing universal mental health screening. The law passed anyway.
It’s hard to argue that attempts to identify and measure human misery, suffering, and emotional pain are a bad thing, etc.—especially when the goal is “getting people the help they need.” It sounds right. But the kids who will be screened every year in Illinois? They have many kinds of problems: social, relational, environmental, academic, psychological, and physical problems. Children today have issues navigating a modern life dominated by endless screens, scrolling, and even more endless data.
And also, they have some problems that you’re supposed to have—problems that have been a critical part of growing up since the dawn of time.
Our culture is currently debating the medicalization of human problems, the credibility of medicine, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, and the ethics of imposing medical authority as state policy. Covid lockdowns were a prime example of this, and, similar to universal mental health screening, they were imposed without consideration of the unintended consequences.
Mandatory Covid vaccinations also led many Americans to rethink the role of government in their bodily autonomy, and to consider how arbitrary social policy could be when it claimed to be for the greater good (e.g., insisting that those with immunity to Covid must still get vaccinated). For those who have grown skeptical of medical authority, universal mental health screening will likely be viewed as another overextension of the government into the lives (and minds) of their children. Children aged 12-17 can already receive psychotherapy in Illinois without parental consent; universal screening offers a new on-ramp to this process.
The new Illinois law seems almost tone deaf, out of step with the lessons learned from Covid. This critique is cultural, social, and ethical in nature. But universal mental health screening is supposedly based on science. The new Illinois law does not give details; it just authorizes universal screening as if it is an unmitigated good. The devil (and the science, or lack thereof) will be in these details – how the policy is implemented. Assuming that the rationale for universal screening is scientific, we present critically important questions that should be addressed as procedures are developed:
- What is the evidence that universal mental health screening improves real-world outcomes for children? Is there evidence that it could cause harm? The scientific rationale for the program needs to be stated clearly, citing compelling data, and explicitly addressing the measures taken to avoid harm.
- Given that Illinois has already implemented universal mental health screening in some school districts, what were the outcomes for the children? After testing positive for a mental health condition, how many were further assessed, and how much time was spent on each child? How many ended up in psychotherapy or on medication? Usually, a pilot program tests the effectiveness of an intervention, and it is only adopted on a wide scale if it is shown to be effective and not harmful – where is that data?
- How many children a year does Illinois expect to inaccurately identify as having a mental health problem (e.g., how many false positives)? How many children will make it from 3rd to 12th grade without ever screening positive? What measures will address the known issue of false-positive results in universal screening? Do Illinois public schools have the time, money, and expertise to carefully assess each child who screens positive for multiple hours to ensure that they do not overdiagnose and overtreat Illinois children? If universal screening results in a surge of children who ultimately end up on psychiatric medication, how will the public know? Implementing this program without addressing these issues ignores the potential harm of universal screening.
- How will Illinois taxpayers know if this program is a success? What metrics will be tracked? The easy out is to focus on the implementation of the program, and if a high proportion of children are screened, call it a success, never mind the details or outcomes. But using the screening of children as a measure of success for a universal screening program is tautology; data must be collected that demonstrates that the program helps children measurably and does not harm them.
There are good reasons to object to the new Illinois program based on general principles. If the issues above go unaddressed, or if sufficient resources are not provided to allow careful and precise identification of children in distress, it has the potential to be a disaster.
Cooper Davis is an advocate, speaker, and writer. He is the Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative (ICI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for mental health system reform and helps people make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal.
ILLINOIS TO FORCE MENTAL EXAMS ON KIDS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
A shocking new Illinois law will force public schools to conduct annual mental health checks on students from 3rd through 12th grade. Jefferey exposes the hidden risks and potential harm this invasive mandate could bring to children.
The war on truth: Why are Palestinian journalists being systematically erased?
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 22, 2025
The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on 10 August has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.
By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.
More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist”. This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.
This Israeli discourse, which dehumanises entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.
This cruelty of language would be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric, except that Israel has, in fact, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports, destroyed over 70 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
While extremist language is often used by politicians around the world, it is rare for the extremism of the language to so precisely mirror the extremism of the action itself. This makes Israeli political discourse a uniquely dangerous phenomenon.
There can be no military justification for the wholesale annihilation of an entire region. Yet again, the Israelis are not shying away from providing the political discourse that explains this unprecedented destruction. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin chillingly said, last May, that “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy… not a single Gazan child will be left there.”
But for the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible.
These figures powerfully illustrate this point: according to a report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on the latest satellite damage assessment conducted in July, 97 per cent of Gaza’s educational facilities have been affected, with 91 per cent in need of major repairs or full reconstruction. Additionally, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have been killed.
But why is Israel so intent on killing those responsible for intellectual production? The answer is twofold: one unique to Gaza, and the other unique to the nature of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism.
First, regarding Gaza: Since the Nakba in 1948, Palestinian society in Gaza has invested heavily in education, seeing it as a crucial tool for liberation and self-determination. Early footage shows classrooms being held in tents and open spaces, a testament to this community’s tenacious pursuit of knowledge. This focus on education transformed the Strip into a regional hub for intellectual and cultural production, despite poorly funded UNRWA schools. Israel’s campaign of destruction is a deliberate attempt to erase this generational achievement, a practice known as scholasticide, and Gaza is the most deliberate example of this horrific act.
Second, regarding Zionism: For many years, we were led to believe that Zionism was winning the intellectual war due to the cleverness and refinement of Israeli propaganda, or hasbara. The prevailing narrative, particularly in the Arab world, was that Palestinians and Arabs were simply no match for the savvy Israeli and pro-Israeli public relations machine in Western media. This created a sense of intellectual inferiority, masking the true reason for the imbalance.
Israel was able to “win” in mainstream media discourse due to the intentional marginalisation and demonization of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. The latter had no chance of fighting back simply because they were not allowed to, and were instead labeled as “terrorist sympathizers” and the like. Even the late, world-renowned Palestinian scholar Edward Said was called a “Nazi” by the extremist, now-banned Jewish Defense League, who went so far as to set the beloved professor’s university office on fire.
Gaza, however, represented a major problem. With foreign media forbidden from operating in the Strip per Israeli orders, the Gazan intellectual rose to the occasion and, in the course of two years, managed to reverse most of Zionism’s gains over the past century. This forced Israel into a desperate race against time to remove as many Palestinian journalists, intellectuals, academics, and even social media influencers from the scene as quickly as possible—thus, the war on the Palestinian thinker.
The Israeli logic, however, is destined to fail, as ideas are not tied to specific individuals, and resilience and resistance are a culture, not a job title. Gaza shall once more emerge, not only as the culturally thriving place it has always been, but as the cornerstone of a new liberation discourse that is set to inspire the globe regarding the power of intellect to stand firm, to fight for what is right, and to live with purpose for a higher cause.
British investigation reveals Reuters’ Israel bias
Palestinian Information Center – August 22, 2025
GAZA – A British outlet, Declassified, has published an investigative report, based on testimonies from Reuters employees and journalists, highlighting a bias in Reuters’ coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The investigation pointed to a recent article titled “Israel kills Al-Jazeera journalist it says was a Hamas leader”, referring to the killing of Palestinian journalist Anas Sharif. According to the report, although Sharif had worked with Reuters and was part of their Pulitzer-winning 2024 news team, the headline was chosen over more accurate alternatives, suggesting an inclination to echo Israeli framing.
The report further noted that this headline, and similar instances, triggered backlash online and raised deep concerns among some staff at the influential news agency.
One email, published by a resigned Reuters journalist in August 2024, expressed disillusionment with the agency’s framing of the “Israel-Hamas war”, stating that their personal values no longer aligned with the outlet’s approach.
He, along with colleagues, had called internally for Reuters to uphold journalistic principles. However, he concluded that senior management was unlikely to reform and continued to suppress internal criticism.
An unnamed source at Reuters told Declassified that “several journalists felt coverage of the Gaza war lacked objectivity.” In response, these staff members conducted an extensive internal investigation, including both quantitative and qualitative analysis of Reuters’ reporting.
The results formed the basis of an internal open letter shared with newsroom staff, intended to strengthen and rebalance coverage of Gaza.
Reuters journalists were also reportedly questioning why the outlet had not published more stories referencing expert claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza, especially when these claims were treated differently compared to similar allegations concerning Russia’s conduct in Ukraine.
Working through 499 Reuters articles covering Israel and Palestine between October 7 and November 14, 2023, the analysis revealed a consistent pattern: Israel-centric stories received significantly more resources than those focused on Palestinian suffering. This was particularly striking given that over 11,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, a figure nearly 10 times higher than Israeli casualties at the time.
The report further noted that in May, Reuters seemed to show early signs of editorial shifts, perhaps reflecting internal criticisms.
Declassified also unveiled an email from Howard S. Goller, Reuters’ International Editor, introducing an update to the outlet’s editorial guidelines on the “War in the Middle East.” This update permits the use of the term “genocide,”but always with attribution—and continues to restrict the use of the term “Palestine.”
Critics told Declassified that Goller’s update reinforces an Israeli-never-critical framing. It omits key context, such as the roles of the U.S. and Israel in derailing ceasefire negotiations.
The investigation adds that these guidelines ignore the illegal colonial settlement enterprise, the Israeli apartheid regime, and dramatically downplay the scale of destruction in Palestine. They also omit how Gaza has become the deadliest place for journalists since the American Civil War in 1861.
BC Nurse Fined and Suspended Over Gender Policy Criticism
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2025
A British Columbia nurse has been hit with a one-month license suspension and ordered to pay over $93,000 in legal fees for publicly supporting women’s access to female-only spaces, a stance that the province’s nursing regulator deemed unprofessional.
Amy Hamm, who has spent more than 13 years working in healthcare and had risen to the position of nurse educator, was disciplined by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) after a years-long process sparked by her political expression outside of work.
The controversy dates back to 2020, when Hamm co-sponsored a Vancouver billboard that read, “I ♥ JK Rowling.”
The message, referencing the author’s defense of sex-based rights, triggered backlash from activists and a city councillor. The ad was removed, and formal complaints were submitted to the College, accusing Hamm of hate speech and transphobia.
In response, the College launched an exhaustive investigation into Hamm’s public activity over several years, compiling a 332-page report that examined her tweets, writing, and podcast appearances from 2018 to 2021.
After 22 hearing days stretched across 18 months, the disciplinary panel concluded that four of Hamm’s statements crossed the line into professional misconduct.
The panel claimed that Hamm made comments about transgender individuals that they deemed discriminatory. Hamm has not accepted this finding and is already appealing it at the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Her legal counsel, Lisa Bildy, said, “In our view, the panel made a number of legal and factual errors that make the decision unsound, and we look forward to arguing these points before the BC Supreme Court. We are now considering whether to appeal the penalty decision as well.”
Bildy also raised broader concerns about the implications for free speech: “This decision effectively penalizes a nurse for expressing mainstream views aligned with science and common sense. The Panel’s ruling imposes a chilling effect on free expression for all regulated professionals.”
Hamm remains defiant. “The College has chosen to punish me for statements that are not hateful, but truthful. I’m appealing because biological reality matters, and so does freedom of expression. I want to express my thanks to the thousands of Canadians who continue to fund my legal case through donations to the Justice Centre,” she said.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is representing Hamm, announced the penalty and reiterated its commitment to pushing back against professional censorship.
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The US-Iran Scenario That Most Scares Israel
By Ali Haydar | Al-Akhbar | October 9, 2013
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a series of threats toward Iran and its interlocutors in the West, including the US, as serious negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program seem more plausible.
As a possible rapprochement looms between the US and Iran, Netanyahu has attempted to impose impossible Israeli conditions on the negotiators, such as the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention threatening military force.
Whatever the deal that could materialize between Iran and the West, Israel is going to find itself before an open-ended path. One can foresee three possible scenarios… continue
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