Reuters:
"The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. ...

The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.

'Agency staff members have been subject to threats and coercion by the Israeli authorities while in detention, and pressured to make false statements against the Agency, including that the Agency has affiliations with Hamas and that UNRWA staff members took part in the 7 October 2023 atrocities,' the report says."
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-falsely-admit-hamas-links-2024-03-08/

-->Could it be that UNRWA staff did not participate in the Hamas attack, and that they were tortured into making those statements? Can the world believe anything that Israel has said? Believing is easier if one only reads the NYT. Our newspaper of record didn't cover this story.

=====

The Intercept:
"Two of the three victims specifically singled out by the New York Times in a marquee exposé published in December, which alleged that Hamas had deliberately weaponized sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, were not in fact victims of sexual assault, according to the spokesperson for the Kibbutz Be’eri, which the Times identified as the location of the attack.

The rejection of the Times reporting in the kibbutz by Be’eri spokesperson Michal Paikin further undermines the credibility of the paper’s controversial December article 'Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.'

The Times article described three alleged victims of sexual assault for whom it reported specific biographical information. One, known as the “woman in the black dress,” was Gal Abdush. Some of her family members have contested the claims made by the Times. The other two alleged victims were unnamed teenage sisters from Kibbutz Be’eri whose precise ages were listed in the New York Times, making it possible to identify them. ...

When asked about the claims made by the New York Times, Paikin independently raised their name. 'You’re talking about the Sharabi girls?” she said. “No, they just — they were shot. I’m saying ‘just,’ but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.' ”
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt-october-7-sexual-violence-kibbutz-beeri/

-->More lies from our nation's premier newspaper. The NYT is still Israel's mouthpiece in the US.

=====

Common Dreams:
"Flanked by photos of hungry children and destroyed buildings, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a speech Wednesday that the Biden administration must stop merely asking the Israeli government to halt its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and begin using real leverage to bring about an end to the war and ensure the free flow of aid to the territory's starving population. 

'The U.S. government should make it clear that failure to open up access immediately and feed starving people will result in the Netanyahu government not getting another penny of U.S. taxpayer military aid,' said Sanders (I-Vt.), who noted that 'right now we have the incredible situation where a U.S. ally is using U.S. weapons and equipment to block the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And if that's not crazy,' the senator added, 'I don't know what is.' ...

Sanders argued that ending the war and addressing the humanitarian emergency would require the Biden administration and Congress to 'use the incredible leverage we have over the Israeli government to secure a fundamental change in their disastrous policies. ... Of course we have the leverage,' Sanders said. 'We are funding the war.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/sanders-gaza-leverage

-->Of course, the NYT is uninterested in printing Senator Sanders' speech. And the major news outlets followed suit. Pressuring Israel is just off the table for our mainstream media, our Congress and President Biden. This genocide in Gaza is stamped with "Made in America."