Two women arrested during pro-Palestine rally quizzed under caution amid protest outside PSNI station
Martine McCullough, who is aged in her 50s, was also arrested in connection with the same alleged incident said to have occurred at an earlier demonstration during which stickers were placed on an ATM.
Solicitor Padraig Ó Muirigh, who is representing both suspects, said his office was contacted by the PSNI to confirm both his clients would be quizzed by detectives in relation to a protest that took place at the same location on April 26, 2025.
"A protest has been organised by supporters of our clients at 11am this morning at Musgrave Street police station when our clients are due to arrive to be interviewed by the PSNI,' he said in a statement issued on Wednesday morning.
Fellow campaigners staged a protest in solidarity with the pair outside the PSNI station.
Activists applauded and chanted 'we're with you' as both women arrived to be questioned.
A defiant Ms Pentel said they are 'proud to peacefully protest outside Barclays' which they have been doing it for the last eight months.
The Jewish grandmother also vowed to keep raising her voice.
'To protest the genocide, to protest the violence, to protest the way that Israel feels its OK to starve children, to stop humanitarian aid while the world looks on," Ms Pentel continued.
'Well, we won't look on, we won't remain silent.
'We understand that we've been asked to be interviewed under caution, and we're voluntarily going in about an incident on April 26 and all we can say is we're proud to demonstrate with our amazing colleagues every week outside Barclays.
'We have the right to peacefully protest, we want to thank our solicitor Padraig O Muirigh for his time and advice.
'We have the right to peacefully protest and we will continue to do it until the genocide stops.
'We're two grandmothers, when our grandchildren ask us what we did, we know what we'll say, we stood up, we spoke out, we weren't silent, and as a Jewish person I am absolutely ashamed of anybody either Israeli Jewish or London Jewish or wherever who doesn't stand up and who thinks this is OK.'
Israel has been widely criticised for its military operation in Gaza launched in response to a deadly Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu hits back at Starmer over Gaza military offensive
Militants wore cameras to record the massacre which resulted in 1,200 people being killed including hundreds of young people attending a music festival in Israel.
Hamas also took 251 hostages and dozens remain in captivity with less than half believed to still be alive.
According to the Hamas-run health ministry, more than 55,000 Palestinians have died since the current conflict began.
The International Criminal Court has previously issued arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes which Israel denies. A warrant was also issued for a Hamas commander.
Ms Pentel and Ms McCullough previously complained about "being criminalised" for their views on the conflict in the Middle East and insisted they were engaged in peaceful protest – they both refuted allegations of criminal damage.
The PSNI defended its stance saying that body-cam footage was reviewed and the officer's actions were "lawful and proportionate".
Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson previously said that while the right to both freedom of speech and assembly are "fundamental human rights... they must be balanced with the need to uphold the rights of others, protect public health and safety, minimise disruption to normal life and by the need to prevent and detect crime."
Barclays has become a target for pro-Palestine protesters who claim the bank is linked to companies supplying weapons to Israel.
The firm has previously expressed concerns that it has become the target of a disinformation campaign and addressed criticism by pointing out it provides financial services to nine defence companies supplying Israel, but does not directly invest in such firms.
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The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Israeli minister says Sydney Harbour Bridge protesters ‘useful idiots' who fell for terrorist propaganda
An Israeli government minister has said the thousands of Australians who marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest the killing in Gaza were 'naive' and 'useful idiots' for Hamas. Sharren Haskel, Israel's deputy foreign affairs minister, also said during Friday's interview on ABC radio that there was not a 'real famine' in Gaza. Haskel has been scathing of Australia's pledge this week to recognise a Palestine state. Anthony Albanese announced on Monday that Australia would recognise Palestinian statehood at the UN next month. The push followed similar moves from the UK, France and Canada and came a week after an estimated 225,000 to 300,000 people walked across the harbour bridge. Haskel on Friday downplayed the Sydney protest. 'I truly believe that most of this crowd was the same crowd who was gathering together since 8 October [2023],' she said. 'The rest are useful idiots that are being used as tools in the hands of those who are trying to promote those radical jihadist ideas. And unfortunately, many naive people in Australia are falling for a lot of the propaganda of those terrorist organisations and those radical jihadist organisations.' Haskel noted a poster of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was displayed at the front of the Harbour Bridge rally behind prominent protesters including former foreign minister Bob Carr and Labor politicians Ed Husic and Tony Sheldon. All three disavowed the image with Sheldon rebuffing the person holding the poster as a 'single misguided individual' Haskel told the ABC she was disappointed at 'people marching with terrorist organisations'. Global humanitarian experts and the UN have voiced deep alarm at the situation in Gaza, with the Hamas-run health agency reporting dozens of deaths from malnutrition and starvation. The World Food Programme emergency director, Ross Smith, has said it was the most severe hunger crisis the world had faced for decades and 'unlike anything we have seen in this century'. A joint statement from more than two dozen foreign ministers, including Australia's Penny Wong, said this week that 'humanitarian suffering in Gaza has reached unimaginable levels' and 'famine is unfolding before our eyes.' But Haskel downplayed the starvation concerns. 'Many of the funerals who were reported and filmed in the last few days with many Hamas operatives leading those funerals, none of them looked like a skeleton, none of them were looking as if they're starving. Some of them look quite well-fed,' she claimed. Haskel said she had just returned from Sudan where there was a 'real humanitarian crisis' with people who looked like 'skeletons'. 'That's how a real famine looks,' the minister said. 'I'm not saying there isn't a humanitarian crisis, but there's a long way to go and describe it as famine or starvation ... there's a very big difference.' Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, told ABC TV on Thursday evening that the timing of western countries backing Palestinian recognition 'has been very hurtful to any prospects of negotiating some settlement in Gaza with Hamas'. 'There's an enormous level of disappointment and some disgust.' The UN said in June 2024 that a Palestinian state was recognised by 146 UN member states at the time – around three-quarters of the UN's membership. Huckabee claimed the US and Israel had not been told about Australia's impending recognition. Albanese spoke to the Israel prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, several days before Moinday's announcement. Wong said she'd told her US counterpart, Marco Rubio, shortly before the announcement. Senopr Labor minister Mark Butler told the Seven Network on Friday that Wong had told Rubio about the decision. Albanese told ABC radio in Melbourne: 'We're a sovereign nation … we're also entitled to put our views and we didn't do it shyly.' Albanese stood by Australia's decision to recognise Palestine. 'Australians have been disgusted by what they see on their TV every night. They were disgusted by the terrorist actions of Hamas on 7 October – the slaughter of innocent Israelis, the taking of hostages and the ongoing holding of those hostages have outraged Australians,' the prime minister said. 'But Australians have also seen the death of tens of thousands of people [in Gaza]. When you have children starving, when you have children losing their lives with families queuing for food and water, then that provokes, not surprisingly, a human reaction.'
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Jeremy Bowen: The divides within Israel over the war in Gaza
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister and by far the dominant force in its politics, has not budged from what he believes is the essential truth about the war in has given Israel – and the outside world – a consistent message since Hamas attacked Israel almost two years ago. He stated it clearly when he ordered the first big ground offensive of the war into the Gaza Strip on 28 October 2023, three weeks after the attacks, and since then he has repeated the themes many times."We will fight to defend our homeland. We will fight and not retreat. We will fight on land, at sea and in the air. We will destroy the enemy above ground and below ground. We will fight and we will win."This will be a victory of good over evil, of light over darkness, of life over death. In this war we will stand steadfast, more united than ever, certain in the justice of our cause."His speech adopted the cadences of Winston Churchill's rallying call in June 1940 of "we shall fight on the beaches," after Britain's defeat by Germany in northern France and the evacuation of more than 338,000 allied soldiers from Dunkirk. Before Churchill told the British in his celebrated peroration that "we shall never surrender," he had not spared them from the truth that they had suffered a "colossal military disaster".Hamas inflicted Israel's worst defeat in a single day on 7 October, and the horror that it could break open the borders, and kill and take so many hostages, is still very real in Israel. It is a big factor shaping attitudes to the war, the way it is being fought, and how it might few Israelis have ever doubted that their cause is just, but Netanyahu's statement that they would be "more united than ever" could not have been further from the condition of Israel almost two years is as divided now as at any time in its history, and Netanyahu, a deeply divisive figure when Hamas attacked, is presiding over fault lines in Israel that have opened into chasms. Israeli views on the suffering in Gaza On the edge of the anti-Netanyahu demonstration in Tel Aviv, several hundred Israelis stood silently, each holding a placard with the name of a Palestinian child killed by Israel in of the signs had a photograph of a smiling girl or boy, next to the day they were born and the day they were killed. Children who did not have a photo were represented by a drawing of a silent demonstrations to stop the killing are getting bigger - some are held outside airbases, where they try to catch the eye of pilots arriving for bombing raids into Gaza - but the demonstrators still hold a minority view. Timina Peretz, one of the organisers, says they started after Israel broke the last ceasefire with Hamas on 18 March and went back to war. "We realised how many children died just in the same week. I refuse to stay silent while it's happening, a genocide and starvation of people... "On the street, we're getting a lot of good reactions, like people saying, 'thank you'. And we have many people cursing us and [getting] really offended and upset from these images."I asked if they get called traitors. "Of course, they do a lot of them, they say that if we think the way we think, or we act the way we act, we should just go… to live in Gaza."They can't understand how the basic idea of criticising the state is something that is rooted in democracy."Opinion polls taken since the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) went back to war in Gaza in March, breaking the last ceasefire, suggest that a large majority of Jewish Israelis are not troubled by Palestinian suffering in Gaza.A sample recorded in the last three days of July by the Israeli Democracy Institute says that 78% of Jewish Israelis, who make up four-fifths of the population, believe that given the restrictions of the fighting, Israel "is making substantial efforts to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to Palestinians in Gaza". The pollsters also chose a more personal question, asking whether individuals were "troubled or not troubled by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza?"Some 79% of Jewish Israelis surveyed said they were not troubled. Meanwhile 86% of those in Israel's Palestinian Arab minority who were asked the same question said they were very or somewhat troubled. Netanyahu, his ministers and spokespeople insist that Hamas, the United Nations, witnesses, aid workers and foreign governments are telling lies about the humanitarian crisis in a news conference conducted in English for the international media on 10 August, Netanyahu condemned reports of starvation in Gaza. He wanted "to puncture the lies… the only ones that are being starved in Gaza are our hostages".He has, for many years, equated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Accounts of hunger, and IDF soldiers killing Palestinians struggling to find food that have been believed and condemned by Israel's allies, including Britain, France and Germany, should he said be viewed in the context of the long history of the persecution of Jews in Europe."We were said to be spreading vermin to Christian society, we were said to be poisoning the wells, we were said to slaughter Christian children for their blood."And as these lies spread around the globe, they were followed by horrific, horrific massacres, pogroms, displacements, finally culminating the worst massacre of them all – the Holocaust."Today the Jewish state is being maligned in a similar way." 'We are in a trauma time - hostages are dying' Ms Peretz blames the Israeli media for not showing the suffering and deaths of Palestinians. That subject went closer to the heart of the national conversation when it was raised on a popular Saturday evening television talk show hosted by Eyal Berkovic, the former West Ham United football of the regular guests was an Israeli journalist called Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps. They had been discussing, as they had previously, the suffering of the hostages and their families, and Israeli soldiers who had been killed fighting in Gaza. Then, she told me, she felt it was her duty as a journalist to mention something that was not often spoken about on Israeli TV. "I just [said] that the war is also killing a lot of Palestinians in Gaza, which is a very simple statement, no political point of view. There was no patience to listen to it."Voices were raised. Eyal Berkovic has made a name for himself as a TV host by not holding Elbaz-Phelps, who also works as a correspondent for French TV, recalled his response. "He said, I do not have to worry about the people in Gaza, they are my enemies. To which I responded, you can let me say that I worry about the horrific images coming out of there. "And he said, for sure, you can finish your point. This is very representative of the Israeli public opinion." She defended the work of Israeli journalists. "I think 95% of what the world knows about Israel's government and decisions is brought by the Israeli journalists," she argues."But I think there is a huge difference when you talk about something and when you show something, and you will see images of Gaza from above that mainly are going to show the people how IDF is winning the war on the ground."You don't have human stories, you don't have faces… because Israelis are in pain, and the stories also are happening inside of Israel." Ms Elbaz-Phelps believes the reason is that Israelis are still dealing with their trauma, after 7 October."The word outside is covering Gaza and talking about the suffering of the population in Gaza. Which is right, but there is not, I think, acknowledgement of how much the Israeli people is living in a trauma."We are not in a post-traumatic area. We are in a trauma time. Hostages are dying inside the tunnels of Hamas. [People are] begging the government to find a way and make a hostage deal."Only when the hostages will come home, then maybe the healing can start. The pain of the Israeli public, how much they're still on 7 October, is something that is not completely grasped outside of Israel." Too hard to cope with Around 20 Israeli hostages are still believed to be alive in Gaza. Israelis of all political persuasions were horrified by recent videos posted by their captors showing two badly emaciated young men in tunnels under fate is front and centre of the attitudes of most Israelis to the war. I met the pollster Dahlia Scheindlin, who has often criticised Netanyahu's conduct of the war in her column in the liberal daily newspaper Haaretz, in "hostage square" next to Israel's military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Since October 2023, this has been the centre of the hostage families' campaign to get their people out of Gaza."The reason why the majority of Israelis consistently support ending the war is to get the hostages back," she about the lack of concern in Israel for the people in Gaza, she tells me: "It's because a large portion of Israelis believe that the suffering has been exaggerated or even partly fabricated by Hamas." Israelis, she continues, are inclined to believe that the problem is the messaging. "Israelis have been obsessed with PR for a long time. They call it Hasbara."That inclination to blame criticism of Israel on poor public communications has gone into overdrive during the war, and [is] on steroids [in] relation to the accusations of starvation."The far-right wing calls it the campaign of fabrication. They think [even the way] the Israeli media is starting to cover it is amplifying Hamas' narrative."But I think mainstream Israelis are sort of suppressing it because it's too hard for them to cope with. This is the kind of thing you hear people say in private conversation."They are too consumed with the hostages or their own family members who are fighting in Gaza, and they just can't handle the sense that Israel might be doing something wrong." 'It's very easy to judge…' Outside the secular Israeli mainstream of Tel Aviv and the cities on the Mediterranean coast, I have found few doubts about the justice of Israel's conduct of the in the occupied West Bank, down a dirt road, is a Jewish settlement called Esh Kodesh, which is part of a complex of small settlements. Just a generation ago these were a collection of caravans on hilltops, but they are now well Katzoff, a father of seven who is originally from Los Angeles, has created a winery and a bar called "Settlers," which feels like a small piece of the American west. He labels his wine "liquid prophecy". It is a social centre, not just for his community but for an overwhelmingly right-wing and religiously-observant clientele who make special journeys of the customers were armed when I visited. A soldier with a dusty uniform sat eating a burger and drinking red wine with his M-16 cradled on his lap. Others had left their assault weapons behind the bar. A woman had a 9mm pistol in a holster strapped on over her flowery dress. The young men at the corner table were, Aaron said, decompressing after a stint in still does reserve duty as an IDF officer and has fought in Gaza. He has no doubts about the justice of Israel's actions."Come down to a tunnel in Gaza," he told me. "See what it means not to have oxygen and in the humidity and heat try to fight terrorists that are hiding behind women and children and shoot at you…"It's very easy to sit in an air conditioning room and judge people who do that, war is not easy." What, I asked him, about ending the war now, as so many Israelis want."Sometimes you can't always get there now... You want everything to be Wonderland... but the world's not like that."Things take time, and it's sad, but that's reality." A 'collapse of support' before 7 October In the months leading up to 7 October 2023, thousands of Israelis had been demonstrating in the streets against plans to change the judicial system in what they saw as an assault on democracy."This has been an unpopular government since well before the war," argues Ms Scheindlin. "Once the war began, by contrast to most other countries where you see a rallying of support for the government, there was a complete collapse of support." Enough of Netanyahu's political base on Israel's right wing accepts his insistence that the war cannot end until total victory over Hamas, for him to have rebuilt his poll ratings from rock bottom. But he is still trailing opposition have pointed to evidence that they say shows he is prolonging the war to stay in office. As a private citizen he would face a national inquiry into the security failures that gave Hamas its opening on 7 October 2023. His long running trial on corruption charges serious enough to carry a potential prison sentence would also accelerate from its current glacial in his coalition, the finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have threatened to topple his government if he makes any kind of deal with Hamas. They want not just the defeat of Hamas, but the annexation of Gaza, the removal of Palestinians and their replacement by Jewish families of the hostages, meanwhile, have appealed to Netanyahu to do a deal with Hamas before the men still being held the prime minister, doubling down on his theme of a fight until total victory, announced a new offensive that has appalled many hostage families and been condemned by many of Israel's plans were also opposed by the current leadership of the IDF. Its chief of staff General Eyal Zamir made it known that he opposes the Netanyahu plan for a new offensive in Gaza, reportedly telling the cabinet that it would endanger the hostages and worsen the humanitarian crisis. Zamir was appointed in March when his predecessor resigned after falling out with the prime minister over the conduct of the war. Now the Israeli media is speculating that Netanyahu will force Zamir to resign. One report says Zamir is convinced he's been "marked for dismissal" for challenging Netanyahu's plan. 'This is like a miracle period' The war has also widened Israel's most bitter division, between the secular population and the religious right. Shuttling between demonstrations by secular Israelis in Tel Aviv and their religious fellow citizens in Jerusalem can feel like commuting between two different is always painful. But for some in Israel's hardline religious nationalist right wing, it is also an opportunity, even a time of miracles that heralds the coming of the Strock, a minister from Smotrich's Religious Zionism party, said last summer that the war had turned events in their direction. "From my point of view, this is like a miracle period," she see an opening granted by God to transform Israel into a state ruled by the Torah, the law of God as revealed to Moses and laid out in the five books of the Hebrew scriptures. War also can speed up their desire to change the map. They believe God gave all the land between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan to the space can be allowed for the shrinking number of Palestinians who still believe it might be possible to make peace with Israel by creating an independent state in Gaza and the West Bank, with a capital in east has said the Jewish state should be on both sides of the river Jordan, taking in Jordan and stretching up to Damascus, the Syrian religious law is not government policy, nor is expanding Israel's borders across the River Jordan. But blocking a Palestinian state is a cornerstone of the Netanyahu coalition. And the coalition can only stay in government as long as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir agree to support it. That gives them a disproportionate influence over the prime minister. On 6 May Smotrich laid out his vision for Gaza and the West Bank, which Palestinians want for a state. Most western governments, including the United Kingdom, see Palestinian statehood alongside Israel as the only way to escape a conflict that has lasted more than a century for control of the land Arabs and Jews both Smotrich said that within six months Gaza's population would be confined to a narrow piece of land. The rest of the territory would be "totally destroyed" and "empty". Palestinians in Gaza would be "totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places". Tension in the old city In the occupied old city of Jerusalem on Sunday 3 August, many Palestinians shut shops and businesses and stayed off the streets as Israeli Jews marked Tisha B'Av. It is a day of mourning for the destruction by the Babylonians of Jerusalem's first Jewish Temple and of its second one by the area where the Temples stood later became the third holiest place for Muslims, now dominated by al-Aqsa mosque where Muslims believe the prophet Muhammad ended his night journey from Mecca, and the golden rotunda of the Dome of the Rock where he ascended to heaven. To try to keep the peace in an area that is a religious and national symbol for Israelis and Palestinians, a set of laws and customs, known as the status quo, is supposed to be rule bans Jewish prayer within al-Aqsa compound, known by Palestinians as the Noble Sanctuary. It has been flouted in recent years with the encouragement of Tisha B'Av he went there himself to lead prayers, an action that in the fragile and tense holy city was seen by some as a provocative political move. Dozens of his followers – and heavily armed police that he commands as national security minister – followed as he strode through the narrow street of the Old City, through the gates of the place Israelis call the Temple Mount. As well as praying, he made a speech linking his presence and prayers in Jerusalem to the war in Gaza and the way he wants to change Israel. The videos of the two starving Israeli hostages were, he said, an attempt to put the state of Israel under pressure, which had to be resisted."From Temple Mount - the place where we proved that sovereignty and governance can be done - from here of all places we should send a message and make sure that today itself we conquer the whole of Gaza Strip, announce sovereignty of the whole of Gaza Strip, take down every Hamas man and encourage voluntary emigration."Only this way will we return the hostages and win the war." 'We want our house back' After Ben-Gvir had left, a big crowd of his young religious supporters stayed on to pray in a long, covered arcade. The sound of their prayers echoed off the vaulted stone roof. Two young women, Ateret and Tamar, sad about the religious commemoration but seemingly excited by the future, explained why they believed the Temple Mount was the heart of said the destruction of the Temples meant, "it's like having a body, but your heart is not there."We just want to say that we want our hostages back. We want everybody to have peace. This is the heart of the whole world, not only our hearts. When God will be here the world will have peace."They explained they prayed every day for the construction of a third Temple on the site. "This is our house for thousands of years, and now we're back here, we want our house."When I asked what would happen to the Muslim holy places that stand there now, they said they didn't and Tamar seemed to be gentle souls, suffused with religious to senior diplomatic sources, the nightmare for security services in both Israel and its Arab neighbours is that a violent Jewish extremist might try to damage al-Aqsa mosque to bring on the third temple, an act that would risk igniting the region. 'We are torn from inside' On the other end of the political spectrum is Avrum Burg, a writer and strong critic of Netanyahu, who used to be one of Israel's most prominent centre-left politicians. He was speaker of the Knesset, the parliament, from 1999 to 2003 and before that he chaired the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organisation, two venerable Zionist he is among those who do not see the war as a miraculous chance to transform the Mr Burg reflects, are "somewhere between religious excitement and psychological despair".There is no middle ground, he argues. "A few Israelis, a majority of government, believe that we're living in a miraculous time. It's an opportunity. It's God given. It is a once in a lifetime opening in order to realign, reorganise, re-something with history."And so many Israelis feel and sense – what for? What does that mean? Why do I have to pay the price? It's a meaningless war. In between, there is no Israel. Israel is a fragmented, broken, torn apart social fabric." That psychological despair – and anger – at Israel's government can be found at the regular demonstrations calling for Netanyahu's one, on a hot and humid night in Tel Aviv, secular opponents of the government waved the blue and white Star of David flag, chanted and banged drums until they stood silent for the national anthem. After, they listened to speeches from retired veteran commanders of the army and the police demanding a Nava Rosalio, the organiser of many mass rallies against the Netanyahu government, spelled out their position."We wish to replace Netanyahu's government, but specifically to bring back all hostages in a deal at once, ending Netanyahu's war in Gaza, which at this point has become completely political and serving nothing but his own political survival, of Netanyahu and his partners." I suggested some might accuse her of repeating the Hamas position. (For more than a year Hamas negotiators have offered to return all the hostages if the IDF pulled out of Gaza and the US and others guaranteed that the Israel would not go back to war once it had its people back. Israel, however, insists that Hamas must be fully disarmed, play no future role in Gaza and that Israel would retain security control in Gaza with the freedom to decide what comes next.)But Ms Rosalio dismissed the suggestion that a ceasefire deal could be any kind of a win for Hamas. "That's for propaganda. We have a great army… which can stay outside of the Gaza Strip and just protect the border. "There is no reason to stay either, unless they imagine or wish to conquer Gaza and to transfer the people of Gaza."We just don't believe the excuse of we're protecting you, the people of Israel. If you wish to protect us, you would have ended this war to allow the people of Israel to rehabilitate, for society to recover."We are torn from inside." In God's hands In the last three weeks I have travelled between the two sides of Israel, from leftists in Tel Aviv silently protesting the killing of Palestinian children, displaying the "psychological despair" described by Avrum Burg, the former speaker of on the other side of Israel, I have witnessed an overwhelming sense that Israel should ignore the mounting pressure and condemnation by some of its allies as well as its enemies, a feeling that its actions are justified by everything Hamas did on 7 October and the continued imprisonment of Israeli hostages in brutal conditions in tunnels. Israel's prime minister, still backed in public by US President Donald Trump despite murmurings that he is becoming exasperated by Netanyahu's refusal to make a hostage deal possible, is planning another offensive and accuses Israel's allies of deep seated religious Zionists who support him believe God is with them and granting in the West Bank, overlooking the Jordan Valley, Aaron Katzoff and his friends in the Settlers wine bar believe they are fulfilling the prophecies of the scriptures, as they drink wine from grapes he says proudly were grown using the methods of Biblical relaxed and happy customers believe the secular liberals protesting against Netanyahu in Tel Aviv are yesterday's Israelis. Now, the future of their state is in their hands, and in God's - and they are confident it will all end image: AFP via Getty Images BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Israel is put 'on notice' as it may be placed on the UN's blacklist over sex violence claims
Israel has been put 'on notice' that it may be placed on the United Nations ' blacklist for countries suspected of committing sexual violence in armed conflict. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has cited 'grave concern' over multiple allegations that Palestinian prisoners have been subjected to degrading treatment in prisons, a detention facility and a military base. It comes as Hamas was added to the list of shame for the first time last night – marking formal acknowledgment for its crimes on October 7, 2023 and to the hostages since that attack. Israel was not listed on the 2025 annual report on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence despite the warning. Guterres wrote to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon on Monday citing concern over his country's refusal to grant UN inspectors access to areas where allegations have been made. The Secretary General said Israel must take steps to avoid being blacklisted including issuing directives against sexual violence. Allegations cited by the UN include accounts of rape of male Palestinian detainees.
