'We will pursue you everywhere': hostage families warn Netanyahu against Gaza offensive
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Daily Mail
19 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Toronto film festival 'pulls October 7 documentary because Hamas did not give permission to use bodycam footage'
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has pulled a documentary about the October 7 massacre because Hamas did not give organisers permission to use bodycam footage shot by the terrorists, according to Israeli media. The festival was set to show 'The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue', directed by Barry Avrich, which follows the story of retired IDF general Noam Tibon during and after the attack that saw around 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage. Israel 's Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa'ar, has slammed the organisers, and likened cancelling the film due to a lack of Hamas 'clearance' to asking for Adolf Hitler's approval for Auschwitz footage, reported i24NEWS. The festival had originally approved the film, which follows Tibon on his mission to save his son, his wife and two daughters as they were attacked by Hamas-led terrorists at their home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7. The documentary uses bodycam footage filmed by the terrorists themselves during the massacre, which was the single deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. The film was pulled by TIFF due to the prospect of disruptive anti-Israel protests at the festival, which will run from September 4-14, as well as concerns about copyright, Deadline reported. 'The invitation for the Canadian documentary film "The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue" was withdrawn by TIFF because general requirements for inclusion in the festival, and conditions that were requested when the film was initially invited, were not met, including legal clearance of all footage,' the organisers said in a statement. 'The purpose of the requested conditions was to protect TIFF from legal implications and to allow TIFF to manage and mitigate anticipated and known risks around the screening of a film about highly sensitive subject matter, including potential threat of significant disruption. 'As per our terms and conditions for participation in the festival, 'TIFF may disqualify from participation in the Festival any Film that TIFF determines in its sole and absolute discretion would not be in TIFF's best interest to include in the Festival.' Tibon, an ex-IDF general and a staunch critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul, drove from his Tel Aviv home to southern Israel on the morning of October 7 to help the communities attacked on the border. Since that day, he has been vocal about his opposition to the Israeli government. The filmmaking team behind the documentary told Deadline: 'We are shocked and saddened that a venerable film festival has defied its mission and censored its own programming by refusing this film. 'Ultimately, film is an art form that stimulates debate from every perspective that can both entertain us and make us uncomfortable. 'A film festival lays out the feast and the audience decides what they will or won't see. 'We are not political filmmakers, nor are we activists; we are storytellers. We remain defiant, we will release the film, and we invite audiences, broadcasters, and streamers to make up their own mind, once they have seen it.' Reacting to the film's cancelation, the documentary's subject Tibon said it was 'absurd and outrageous'. The documentary follows the story of retired IDF general Noam Tibon during and after the attack that saw around 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage 'The Toronto festival surrendered to pressure and threats, choosing to silence and erase October 7. 'Barry Avrich's documentary tells a human, not political, story, documenting the grim reality of Israel's darkest day. The claim that it cannot be screened because it lacks "usage rights" for Hamas footage from that day is absurd and outrageous - and an insult to the victims. 'Freedom of expression is the courage to present and hear challenging content, even if it is uncomfortable for some audiences.' Last year, TIFF received backlash from Ukrainian activists because of its antiwar documentary 'Russians at War', which was labelled Russian propaganda by its critics. The festival cancelled the film's screening before showing it days later with heightened security. Pro-Palestinian activists also disrupted Israeli filmmaker Shemi Zarhin's film, 'Hamada', while Israeli demonstrators, critical of the government, picketed Alexandra Bloom's screening of 'The Bibi Files' about Netanyahu using leaked interrogation footage. 'The Road Between Us' was originally invited to play at TIFF subject to certain conditions, including changing its name from 'Out of Nowhere: The Ultimate Rescue', and getting legal clearance to use footage filmed and livestreamed by Hamas terrorists, Deadline reported. The filmmakers were asked to confirm clearance of the footage, provide a letter of indemnification - legally accepting liability for any copyright violations - as well as well provide added security for the screening. When the documentary team reportedly did not comply with the conditions, producers got an email formally uninviting the film from the festival by TIFF boss Cameron Bailey on August 12.
Daily Mail
19 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Israel's prime minister dismisses accusations that his regime is starving Gazans
Israel 's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 'if we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon' amid a growing war of words over starvation in Gaza. In a press conference, he rebutted accusations of deliberately starving civilians. Netanyahu has consistently denied claims that his forces are committing genocide in the Gaza strip, or imposing a policy of starvation, and has said that Israel tries to avoid civilians who are put in harm's way by Hamas. The remarks came during press conferences in Jerusalem as he defended his government's latest military push into Gaza City. The planned offensive, he said, is aimed at defeating Hamas, but it has drawn condemnation from some of Israel's closest allies and the United Nations, who say it 'will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza'. Netanyahu also rejected accusations that Israel had pursued a starvation policy, insisting on Sunday: 'There is no starvation. There hasn't been starvation. There was a shortage. And certainly, there was no policy of starvation. 'If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, two million Gazans wouldn't be living today after 20 months.' However, humanitarian organizations have warned of 'imminent famine' in the region. Reports from Gaza of civilians starving to death has inflamed tensions with Israel's partners around the world and inspired backlash at home and abroad. Speaking on Sunday, Netanyahu also challenged claims that humanitarian aid had been fully cut off. At the press conference, he said: 'We never said we were stopping all entry of humanitarian aid. 'What we said was that, alongside halting the trucks that Hamas was seizing - taking the vast majority of their contents for itself, then selling the leftovers at extortionate prices to the Palestinian population… we would stop this.' Netanyahu also laid out his vision of victory in Gaza following 22 months of war, with the military ordered to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the central camps further south. With a pre-war population of some 760,000, according to official figures, Gaza City was the biggest of any municipal area in the Palestinian territories. But following the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 that sparked the war, its population has only swelled, with thousands of displaced people fleeing intensive military operations to the north. Gaza City itself has come under intense aerial bombardment, and its remaining apartment buildings now rub shoulders with tents and other makeshift shelters. Amir Avivi, a former Israeli general and head of the Israeli Defense and Security Forum think tank, described the city as the 'heart of Hamas's rule in Gaza'. 'Gaza City has always been the center of government and also has the strongest brigade of Hamas,' he said. The first challenge for Israeli troops relates to Netanyahu's call for the evacuation of civilians - how such a feat will be carried out remains unclear. Unlike the rest of the Strip, where most of the population has been displaced at least once, around 300,000 residents of Gaza City have not moved since the outbreak of the conflict, according to Avivi. Israel has already tried to push civilians further south to so-called humanitarian zones established by the military, but there is likely little space to accommodate more arrivals. 'You cannot put another one million people over there. It will be a horrible humanitarian crisis,' said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli former military intelligence officer. Israel continues to face major backlash over the burgeoning humanitarian crisis in the strip. Dozens of people are reported to have died from starvation in recent weeks. The Israeli government claims the reports are unfounded, and says Hamas is harnessing a famine narrative for leverage in ceasefire talks. In July, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it would open humanitarian corridors to let in aid convoys into Gaza to deliver food and medicine. It also said there would be a 'local tactical pause in military activity' for humanitarian purposes. But international groups and journalists on the ground continue to report dire conditions inside the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Last week, it was reported that the Israeli prime minister and the U.S. president Donald Trump, had a heated phone call after Netanyahu denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza. According to people familiar with the conversation, Trump cut him off and shouted at him. He also told him his aids had presented evidence that many children were starving. However, Netanyahu's office denied the reports and said it was 'fake news'. While Gaza's population continues to bear the brunt of the war, Israel is gearing up for a major push into Gaza City and continues to pound the strip. An Israeli airstrike killed Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, 28, and several of his colleagues outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on August 10. The network said the journalists were in a tent set up for media crews when it was hit. The Israel Defence Forces said al-Sharif was a Hamas operative who 'posed as a journalist', accusing him of running a 'terrorist cell' involved in rocket attacks, allegations that remain unverified and have been rejected by Al Jazeera. Local journalists who knew him say that earlier in his journalism career, he had worked with a communications office run by Hamas. Press freedom groups and the UN human rights agency condemned the strike, calling it a possible grave breach of international humanitarian law. On Monday, several Gazans gathered to pay their respects to Sharif and his four colleagues who also died in the attack. Media freedom groups and international organizations condemned the killing. A posthumous message written by the journalist in the eventuality of his death said he had been silenced and urged people 'not to forget Gaza'. Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to take control of the remaining parts of Gaza, including large sections of Gaza City and Al-Mawasi, an area designated by Israel as a safe zone but now crammed with displaced Palestinians. The plan has triggered further criticism abroad, with Germany suspending some arms exports to Israel and Australia joining other Western nations in recognizing a Palestinian state. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 61,499 people have been killed in the territory since Israel's campaign began, figures the United Nations deems credible. Hamas's October 2023 assault on Israel left 1,219 people dead, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The Guardian
19 minutes ago
- The Guardian
How German media outlets helped pave the way for Israel's murder of journalists in Gaza
What is the role of journalism when Palestinian reporters are treated as criminals and left to die? Last October, I spoke with the journalist Hossam Shabat. He described families packing what little they had left in northern Gaza as Israel began implementing its 'generals' plan'. Six months later, Shabat was dead – killed by Israel, accused of being a Hamas operative. Israel does not try to hide these killings. Instead, it often smears its victims in advance – branding journalists as 'terrorists', accusations that are rarely substantiated. These labels serve a clear cause: to strip reporters of their civilian status and make their killing appear morally acceptable. Journalists are not legitimate targets. Killing them is a war crime. The latest round shook the world: five Al Jazeera journalists were assassinated in a press tent in Gaza City, among them Anas al-Sharif, whose face had become familiar to anyone following Gaza up close. Both the UN and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had warned that al-Sharif's life was in danger. Weeks later, he was dead. Meanwhile, a growing consensus recognises Gaza as the site of a livestreamed genocide. Yet in Germany – a country that prides itself on having learned the lessons of its own genocidal history – some of the most powerful media institutions have played a part in enabling Israel's actions. Some German journalists have even justified the killing of their Palestinian colleagues. The clearest example is Axel Springer, Europe's largest publisher and owner of Bild, Germany's biggest newspaper. Hours after the killing of al-Sharif became public, Bild splashed his image under this headline: 'Terrorist disguised as journalist killed in Gaza' (which was later changed to 'Journalist killed was allegedly a terrorist'). Let that sink in. About a week before, Bild had published another piece: 'This Gaza photographer stages Hamas propaganda.' The article targeted the Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, accusing him of staging images of starving Palestinians as part of a Hamas campaign, despite the evidence that the subjects of the photos were indeed starving and waiting for food. In the article, Fteiha's title as journalist appeared in quotation marks, implying he wasn't a real journalist, and that images of starvation were exaggerated fabrications. The Bild story – along with a similar piece in the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) – was swiftly amplified on X by Israel's foreign ministry, which cited them as proof that Hamas manipulates global opinion. Fteiha was branded an 'Israel- and Jew-hater' serving Hamas. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation quickly piled on, joined by rightwing influencers. In this case, German media had become a direct pipeline for Israeli talking points, quickly recycled into the international arena and repackaged as 'evidence'. Fteiha said in response: 'I don't create suffering. I document it.' Calling his work 'Hamas propaganda', he continued, 'is a felony against the press itself'. Just days before the Bild and SZ articles were published, one of Germany's largest journalists' associations, Deutscher Journalisten-Verband (DJV), issued a statement warning of 'manipulation' in press photography. It specifically cast doubt on images showing emaciated children in Gaza, claiming their condition 'apparently is not attributable to the famine in Gaza'. The DJV offered no evidence for this claim – largely because no such evidence exists. Facing backlash online, the association cited a July article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, whose author had speculated whether images of emaciated infants were really the result of starvation – or rather of preexisting conditions such as cystic fibrosis. The piece suggested that publications had been either negligent or manipulative in publishing these photos without further detail. Omitted was the fact that hunger and preexisting conditions can't be neatly separated and that no preexisting condition alone could produce such extreme emaciation. Bias isn't new in the German media landscape. At Axel Springer, support for the existence of the state of Israel is second on the list of the company's guiding principles, its so-called essentials. In September last year, Bild helped derail ceasefire negotiations by publishing an 'exclusive' report – excerpts from a Hamas strategy leaked to Bild by Benjamin Netanyahu's aides. In it, Bild claimed Hamas was 'not aiming for a quick end to the war', which neatly absolved Netanyahu of any responsibility for the breakdown in talks at the time. (In response to queries about the story, a Bild spokesperson told +972 magazine that the publication does not comment on its sources.) As it turned out, the Hamas document had been broadly misrepresented by Bild. The timing couldn't have served Netanyahu better: the story landed as mass protests put pressure on his position. Shortly after the Bild report was published, Netanyahu cited it in a cabinet meeting to cast the demonstrators as pawns of Hamas. The Bild article remains online, uncorrected. The problem, however, extends far beyond Bild and Axel Springer. Across legacy German media, failures to provide fact-based, balanced coverage of Israel and Palestine have been far reaching – and became glaringly obvious after the 7 October attacks. Fabricated claims, such as that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies, along with various other pieces of deliberate misinformation, remain uncorrected. Outlets across the political spectrum in Germany routinely omit historical context, frame Palestinian deaths in passive, depoliticised terms, and display a near-blind faith in Israeli military 'verification' – while ignoring a well-documented record of misinformation by Israeli state sources. In January, the ostensibly leftwing Die Tageszeitung ran a piece headlined: 'Can journalists be terrorists?' The article cited the Israeli military four times – and did not quote a single journalist in Gaza. Across the German media landscape, such narratives contribute to stripping Palestinian journalists of credibility, and – in the worst case – handing Israel readymade justifications for targeting them. Germany's 'never again' pledge should carry weight given its deeply genocidal history. Yet it rings hollow when the country's dominant outlets launder or supply propaganda to legitimise mass killing in Gaza. This is not journalism in the service of truth – it is journalism in the service of violence. Breaking this cycle would require a serious reckoning with the editorial cultures and political loyalties that have enabled German journalism to be weaponised in this way. The killing of journalists in Gaza makes one thing painfully clear: Israel does not want a record to be left. When the history of this genocide is written, there will be chapters on the media's role. Germany's section will be uncomfortably large. No one should claim they didn't see it happening. Hanno Hauenstein is a Berlin-based journalist and author. He worked as a senior editor in Berliner Zeitung's culture department, specialising in contemporary art and politics
