cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/45099

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46420696

April 23, 2026

At the beginning of this state was the Nakba: our day of celebration was the day of another people's historic catastrophe, a people who were here before us. Everything since has been bound up with what came before. What began in 1948 has not ended, not even in 2026.

From the Nakba to today, the basic principles by which Zionism operates have not changed, nor has the policy of successive governments of the Jewish state. The Nakba has never ended; it has merely altered in form. How disheartening it is to think that the values that led to the Nakba 78 years ago are still driving the State of Israel in 2026 - the same principles, the same objectives, the same methods.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the central area of Gaza are casting ballots today for local elections in the first vote since the Gaza war.

Over 1 million people are eligible to vote, including more than 70,000 people in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah area, according to the Ramallah-based Central Elections Commission.

An AFP journalist visiting stations in the West Bank said turnout was low this morning, with the elections commission reporting a turnout of 15% so far.

Most of the electoral lists are aligned with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party or feature candidates running as independents. There are no lists affiliated with Hamas, which controls nearly half of the Gaza Strip.

The Fatah party is the driving force behind the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), the latter of which governs the West Bank in a tense partnership with occupying Israel and is deeply unpopular among Palestinians. Many in the West Bank continue to face relentless settler attacks, with two Palestinians, including a 14-year-old boy, killed on Tuesday after Israeli settlers opened fire near a school in the village of al-Mughayyir.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46389822

April 24, 2026

According to media group The Aftershock, the activists used ladders to climb over razor-wire fencing to enter the premises.

After occupying the roof, they drilled holes into it and subsequently abseiled into the building.

The Aftershock reported that the ceiling of the clean room, where Israeli drone parts are reportedly made, was broken. It said that such contamination of the clean room could knock it out of use for some months.

One of the activists involved said: “We are sick and tired of our government’s collaboration in this genocide that Israel is committing on the Palestinian people."

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/44914

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/45990864

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46388644

April 24, 2026
[with video]

As they passed through the village, Khalil holding her phone out the window to film, an Israeli strike hit the car in front of them, Faraj said, speaking from the Beirut hospital where she is recovering.

The women pulled over and got out of the car, hunkering down on the side of the road as a drone remained in the sky overhead. About an hour later, a second strike hit Amal Khalil’s car, next to them.

“Amal was crawling, she was wounded — her nose and head and shoulder and leg,” Faraj recalled, speaking with difficulty with her face swollen and bruised. Faraj said Khalil had also suffered burn wounds after the targeted car next to them caught fire.

The journalists were able to speak with their families and colleagues. Faraj said Khalil had put on a brave face and tried to assure her family that they were fine.

Milani calls the internet blackout a war crime because it leaves tens of millions of Iranians unable to avoid Israel or the U.S. bombing them.

Iranian business owner, who said he had traveled to Turkey for just two days to check his WhatsApp messages and the international news.

Ukraine has succeeded in depriving Russia of much of the windfall profits it would have made from oil exports during March and April, as the war in the Gulf sent prices soaring to above $100 a barrel, a series of sources suggest.

Ukraine intensified a long-range strike campaign against Russian port and energy infrastructure on March 21 in a calculated bid to prevent Russia from offloading oil onto tankers and to counteract the suspension of US sanctions on Russian oil, which had been in place since 2022.

“In March alone, Russia’s oil revenue losses from our long-range capabilities are estimated at no less than $2.3bn. In just one month. We continue this work in April,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Sunday, April 19.

Russia’s oil transhipments in March fell by 300,000 barrels a day, and refined products by 200,000 barrels a day, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service cited S&P Global Platts as saying.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46389139

April 23, 2026 [with video]

Severe shortages of water, power and money combined with a U.S energy blockade have deepened poverty and increased hunger across the island as severe blackouts persist. Even those who are more affluent are now eliminating long-established and often beloved routines as they adapt to increasingly dire realities.

Cuba’s government has said that the elimination of the U.S. energy embargo was a top priority for its delegation, calling it an “act of economic coercion” and “unjustified punishment.”

Ukraine’s defence ministry has fired a top commander after photos emerged of a group of emaciated soldiers who have been left on the frontline for months without proper food and water.

The scandal erupted after the wife of one of the soldiers, Anastasiia Silchuk, posted the images on social media. The four men appeared to be pale and visibly malnourished, with prominent ribcages and thin arms.

The soldiers had spent eight months defending a shrinking bulge of territory on the left bank of the Oskil River, near the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, their relatives said. Supplies of food and medicines could only be flown in by drone.

“When the lads arrived at the frontlines, they weighed over 80–90kg. But now they weigh around 50kg,” Silchuk posted. After one delivery, she said, no more food turned up for 10 days. The soldiers were forced to drink rainwater and melt snow to survive.

“The longest they went without food was 17 days. They weren’t listened to on the radio, or perhaps no one wanted to listen to them. My husband shouted and begged, saying there was no food and water,” she said, adding that the problem was bigger than just one case.

Donald Trump's Pentagon officials are examining potential measures to penalize NATO countries that have declined to back the Iran conflict, with reports suggesting this includes a review of Britain's sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

[...] Britain fought a war against Argentina in 1982 to maintain control after Argentine forces invaded the islands. Argentina's current president, Javier Milei, is among Trump's closest international supporters.

After an intense bombardment struck near his home, five-year-old Jad Zohud suddenly lost his ability to speak.

He is not alone. Across Gaza, specialists are reporting a rising number of children who can no longer speak following war-related injuries or psychological trauma.

For some, the cause is physical – head injuries, neurological damage or blast trauma. For others, there is no visible wound. Their silence follows repeated exposure to violence that overwhelms their ability to process or communicate.

Child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk, who has worked in Gaza twice with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, describes it as “silent suffering” often hidden beneath the scale of the destruction.

Jeffrey Epstein housed some of his alleged abuse victims in flats in London after police in the UK decided against investigating him, according to reports.

The BBC said it had uncovered evidence of four flats in Kensington and Chelsea in receipts, emails and bank records contained within the Epstein files. Six women who stayed in the properties have since accused the late financier of sexually abusing them, the broadcaster said.

Some of the women – including some from Russia and eastern Europe – were brought to the UK after the Metropolitan police decided not to investigate Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 allegation that she had been a victim of international trafficking to London, the BBC said. Giuffre was one of Epstein’s most high-profile accusers, alleging the convicted child sex offender abused and trafficked her.

She claimed in a 2021 US lawsuit that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had sex with her at a home in London in 2001 when she was 17 after she had been trafficked by Epstein. Mountbatten Windsor has denied the allegations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is "in excellent physical condition" after the publication of his annual medical report revealed he had a malignant tumour removed.

In a post on X on Friday, Netanyahu said that during routine medical monitoring following successful surgery for an enlarged benign prostate, doctors found an early-stage malignant tumour.

Treatment had "removed the problem and left no trace of it", he added.

Netanyahu said he had requested to delay publication of his health record so it was not released at the height of the US and Israel's war with Iran, to prevent Tehran from spreading "even more false propaganda against Israel".

The 76 year-old Israeli leader said he underwent the initial surgery for an enlarged benign prostate in 2024 and has been under routine medical monitoring. "A tiny spot of less than a centimetre" was discovered during the most recent check up.

An internal Pentagon email outlines options for the United States to ​punish NATO allies it believes failed to support U.S. operations in the war with Iran, including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the U.S. position on Britain's claim to the Falkland Islands, a U.S. official ‌told Reuters.

The policy options are detailed in a note expressing frustration at some allies' perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the United States access, basing and overflight rights - known as ABO - for the Iran war, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the email.

The email stated that ABO is "just the absolute baseline for NATO," according to the official, who added that the options were circulating at high levels in the Pentagon.

Asked whether they are being held as detainees or are free to leave, Cubillos described the situation as contradictory.

"They tell us we are completely free, that we shouldn't be afraid, that we are fully protected. But we want to leave and they don't let us," he said.

"We are prisoners, with the freedom to have a phone and technology, that's it," Rodelo said.>>>