Despite Western media's systematic attempts to normalize Israeli state terrorism, it is inescapably evident even from their distorted lens just how wicked the Netanyahu regime is.

All Palestinians released so far in hostage exchanges by the Israeli regime are women and children. Women and children! Why were they even in detention in the first place? What sort of despotic regime does that?

One that is supported to the hilt, militarily and diplomatically, by the United States and other Western governments. So much for "Western Values".

And for all their valiant attempts to cover up for outrageous war crimes, the Western media can only be seen to be contemptible laundromats washing the blood away. They are as complicit in this sickening genocide as the U.S. and European governments are. The BBC and CNN, etc, are the most trusted news sources, according to their advertising. Yes, the most trusted to make you throw up.

Viewers are told that Israeli "hostages" are being exchanged for Palestinian "prisoners". The insulting implication is that the Israelis held by the Hamas militants are more innocent than the Palestinians held by the Israeli state.

More than 7,200 Palestinians are currently in Israeli prisons. Over the past six weeks since the deadly attacks by Hamas on October 7 when more than 1,100 Israelis were killed (a third of them soldiers and many of the civilian victims killed by the Israel Defense Forces using excessive lethal firepower), there have been more than 3,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem thrown into detention centers.

Palestinians are being locked up at a greater rate than ever before. For every Palestinian released over the past week, more than ten have been put into detention. This makes a mockery of the so-called hostage swaps that the Western media are reporting.

Meanwhile, a surge in violence from Israeli state forces and settler vigilante groups has killed over 240 Palestinians in the West Bank, including nearly 60 children. The latest victims were two boys, aged 9 and 15, who were shot dead in the city of Jenin by IDF stormtroopers.

The massive bombing of Gaza has killed at least 15,000 people and nearly half of the death toll is due to children. Another 7,000 are missing and nearly half of them are believed to be children.

The Financial Times reported speaking with sources who said that Israel plans to wage war on Gaza for over a year. In a little less than two months, Israel has killed at least 15,000 people, damaged 100,000 buildings, displaced 1.7 million Palestinians, and destroyed most of Gaza's medical facilities.

On Friday, FT reported sources said Israel was preparing for a multi-phase conflict in Gaza that will last at least a year. "This will be a very long war...We're currently not near halfway to achieving our objectives," said one person familiar with the Israeli war plans.

According to the sources, Israel's goals include "killing the three top Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Marwan Issa — while securing a decisive military victory against the group's 24 battalions and underground tunnel network and destroying its governing capability in Gaza."

The West sought to set up a US military base in the Black Sea and a British base in the Sea of Azov after the Minsk accords were reached, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference following an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) foreign ministers' meeting.

"The plan was to establish a US military base in the Black Sea and a British one in the Sea of Azov. If you look at the map, you will understand that this is unacceptable [for Russia] under any circumstances," he pointed out, commenting on the West's attempts to threaten Russia's security from Ukraine with the Minsk Agreements still in place.

Leaked cable raises the possibility the US is flying surveillance missions over Gaza from RAF Akrotiri and sharing the intelligence with Israel, which would further implicate Britain in war crimes in Gaza.

The cable, published by WikiLeaks and classified as 'secret', was written in April 2008 by the US embassy in London and sent to Washington.

A letter included in the cable is from Will Jessett, then the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) director of counter-terrorism, who asks for "new procedures for requesting intel flight clearances" regarding US spy missions from British bases.

Jessett refers to "the regular intelligence flights that the US undertakes from RAF Akrotiri" - the huge British air base on Cyprus. He added that "these flights have become routine".

He goes on to write that the American aircraft are flown by the State Department and US military "or possibly other agencies", assumed to mean the CIA.

Families with many children should become a dominant trend in modern Russia, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, insisting that achieving this goal should become the government's utmost priority.

Speaking at the World Russian People's Council - a forum organized under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church - to discuss the country's future, Putin placed special emphasis on the importance of family values.

"Large families must become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia's peoples," he said, describing the family not only as the pillar on which the state and society stand, but also as "a source of morality."

Israel's offensive against Hamas has also been deadlier than years of US assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a UN report

RT's Steve Sweeney takes a look at the overall statistics from Israel's relentless assault on Gaza as it seeks to eliminate the militant group Hamas. The damage sustained by the Palestinian enclave has already been described by the UN as "the darkest chapter in Palestinian history."

According to a new UN report, the combined explosive power unleashed by the IDF in Gaza since October 7 already exceeds that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the US at the end of WWII. The Palestinian death toll is now higher than the count following several years of US strikes on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Israeli bombardment campaign was launched following the surprise Hamas attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed. Israel's response has so far claimed the lives of over 15,000 Gazans, including some 6,000 children, according to the enclave's health officials.

Watch the full report here:

The funny thing about Henry Kissinger dying at age 100 is that he lived long enough to become one of the least crazy warmongers in the DC swamp — not because he got saner, but because the US empire has gotten so much crazier. Almost everyone running the US government today is a worse warmonger than Kissinger was at the end of his life.

Sane person: Stop murdering thousands of children.

Crazy person: You hate people because of their religion.

Israeli officials keep openly saying again and again that the plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing, yet the western political/media class adamantly insists on continuing to frame Israel's actions in Gaza solely as a war against Hamas. Hamas isn't the target, it's the excuse.

Israeli spies are preparing to assassinate Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Türkiye, and Qatar once the war with the militant group is over in Gaza, officials have told the Wall Street Journal. The operation was reportedly planned more than a month ago, but postponed so that hostage negotiations could take place.

The Israeli intelligence services began drawing up plans for the assassination campaign after Hamas' October 7 attack on the Jewish state, the American newspaper reported on Thursday, citing anonymous officials. Some reportedly wanted to embark on the campaign immediately, but were ordered to wait so that negotiations to free the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas could progress.

The killings have been authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the officials said, adding that it is now a matter of when, not if, the campaign will begin.

While such operations are usually planned in secret, the Israeli government has explicitly warned that it intends to kill Hamas operatives outside Gaza. Before the officials leaked the story to the Wall Street Journal, Netanyahu declared last month that he had "instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are."

Yemen may be slated as the poorest country in the Arab region, but it is emerging as posing the most potent threat to Israel.

In the past week, the Yemenis have detained three Israeli cargo ships as they transit through the Red Sea.

There is poetic justice in this. Yemen doesn't have much oil reserves. It has been devastated by more than eight years of war and famine, and yet it is showing a strength that puts so-called rich Arab and Muslim nations to shame over their venality and lack of integrity.

While Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates corner vast oil wealth and Muslim leaders like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan talk tough, it is war-torn, impoverished Yemen that is taking any meaningful stand against Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Strategically located at the southern end of the Red Sea - a vital international shipping route - Yemen effectively has a veto on which vessels can pass through its territorial waters.

The Yemeni armed forces and the country's Houthi rebel movement have declared solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocidal onslaught by Israel since October 7. They warn that all Israeli vessels will be blocked from passing into or out of the Red Sea.

The Yemenis are making good on their threat. The latest Israeli ship to be interdicted is reported to be an oil tanker.

Former President Trump is not immune from civil lawsuits blaming him for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, an appeals court ruled Friday.

The appellate court was asked to decide whether Trump's false claims of election fraud and rallying cry for supporters to gather at the Capitol and "fight like hell" was outside his presidential responsibilities, meaning he could be held liable for it under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

A three-judge panel affirmed unanimously that Trump's post-election efforts to subvert the 2020 election results were done in his capacity as a presidential candidate — not a president.

"When a first-term President opts to seek a second term, his campaign to win re-election is not an official presidential act," Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wrote in an opinion.

The appeals panel noted that Trump himself recognized his campaign to win re-election was in his personal capacity, citing a motion Trump filed "in his personal capacity as candidate for reelection to the office of President" with the Supreme Court when challenging election administration in several battleground states. Presidents can carry out their official duties without exposure to civil liabilities, but when they are not acting in that capacity, the protection doesn't carry over, the panel ruled.