分类： world

One of Australia’s most high-profile military figures, Victoria Cross recipient and former Special Air Service (SAS) corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, has been approved for bail following his arrest last week on six counts of the war crime of murder. The 45-year-old, who denies all allegations against him, stands accused of involvement in the killings of multiple unarmed Afghan detainees between 2009 and 2012 — allegations that include both personally carrying out fatal acts and ordering subordinates to kill. The case marks an unprecedented moment in Australian legal history, as it is the first time criminal war crime charges have been brought against an Australian special forces soldier for actions in the 20-year Afghan conflict.

Roberts-Smith appeared at his bail hearing via video link from Sydney’s Silverwater Prison on Friday. His legal team argued the extraordinary nature of the case, which is set to involve years of delays and massive volumes of sensitive national security material, made pre-trial detention unfair to his right to mount a proper defense. Leading barrister Slade Howell told the Sydney Local Court that the matter falls into completely uncharted legal territory for Australia, with layers of complexity that will almost certainly slow court proceedings significantly. He noted that if Roberts-Smith remained in custody, he would not be able to access and securely store the sensitive materials needed to build his defense, irreparably compromising his right to a fair trial. Howell also added that the intensity of ongoing global and domestic media scrutiny surrounding the allegations could ultimately undermine the possibility of selecting an impartial jury, and that the evidence presented in the earlier civil defamation case would differ drastically from what will be brought forward in criminal proceedings.

The decision to grant bail came after Judge Greg Grogan ruled that Roberts-Smith’s case was exceptional, and that the strict bail conditions imposed would mitigate any risks raised by prosecutors. The terms of Roberts-Smith’s release require him to report to local police three times weekly, surrender all electronic devices for unrestricted law enforcement access, and forfeit his passport before he can leave custody. Prosecutors had pushed for the former soldier to remain behind bars, arguing that the charges are graver than almost any other criminal matter before Australian courts, and that Roberts-Smith was planning to relocate overseas just days before his arrest, demonstrating a clear flight risk. Prosecutor Simon Buchen SC also highlighted that the allegations had already gone through a full civil trial in 2023, where a judge found the claims of misconduct to be substantially true on the balance of probabilities, meaning the allegations are not untested as his defense has claimed. Prosecutors also raised concerns that Roberts-Smith could seek to interfere with witnesses or tamper with evidence if released.

The current criminal proceedings build on a years-long investigation into alleged Australian special forces misconduct in Afghanistan. In 2018, Nine Entertainment newspapers first published the initial allegations against Roberts-Smith, prompting the decorated soldier to launch a high-profile defamation suit against the publications. While the defamation trial ended with a ruling that substantial truth existed to the reports of war crimes, the criminal proceedings that followed require a higher legal standard: proof beyond a reasonable doubt for a conviction. Legal analysts note the case is expected to take at least several years to reach trial, due to the massive volume of evidence and national security procedural steps that will be required before any jury can hear the matter.

In a surprise announcement posted to his Truth Social platform Wednesday, former US President Donald Trump confirmed that Israel and Lebanon have reached an agreement for a 10-day ceasefire set to enter into force at 10pm local time Thursday, or 5pm EST. The announcement came after Trump held separate calls with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump wrote in his post that both leaders had agreed to implement the temporary truce to open a path toward long-term peace between their two nations, and he extended an invitation to both leaders to attend high-level peace talks at the White House. These talks would mark the first substantive negotiations between Israel and Lebanon since 1993, and the first planned White House meeting of its kind since 1993, Trump added, noting that both sides have expressed a desire for lasting peace and that he expects rapid progress.

The announcement caps days of behind-the-scenes US diplomatic efforts to arrange the first direct highest-level contact between the Lebanese and Israeli heads of state in decades. However, senior Lebanese government sources have pushed back on the narrative of coordinated direct talks, revealing that President Aoun refused to hold a direct call with Netanyahu before a ceasefire was formally put in place.

This diplomatic friction comes just two days after Washington hosted a first round of direct ambassador-level talks between Israeli and Lebanese envoys, the first such official direct engagement between the two nations since 1993. The senior Lebanese official explained that Lebanon had already demonstrated goodwill by participating in the Washington talks, but would not take an additional step that would grant Netanyahu a symbolic political victory he failed to achieve through military force on Lebanese soil. The official added that a pre-ceasefire call between Aoun and Netanyahu would carry severe domestic political consequences for Lebanon, warning it could trigger widespread internal unrest that would destabilize the already fragile country.

The current crisis erupted after US-Israeli strikes on Iran killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on March 2, prompting Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah to launch a retaliatory cross-border rocket strike against Israel. In response, Israel launched a sustained, large-scale military campaign across Lebanon. A truce agreement was reached to pause US-Israeli military operations against Iran starting April 8 that was meant to include Lebanon, but Israel continued its offensive, leveling entire towns and villages across southern Lebanon. Despite the ongoing fighting, Iranian officials have continued to prioritize a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of ongoing diplomatic negotiations with the US to end the broader regional conflict.

Even as news of the impending ceasefire broke Thursday morning, Israeli forces continued their military campaign. After Israeli media reported that a direct call between Aoun and Netanyahu would happen imminently, Israeli warplanes targeted and destroyed the Qasmiyeh bridge, the last remaining crossing connecting southern Lebanon to the rest of the country. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency confirmed that enemy aircraft carried out two consecutive strikes on the structure, which connected the Sour and Saida regions, leaving it completely destroyed.

The Qasmiyeh strike is part of a broader Israeli campaign to sever transportation links across southern Lebanon. Last month, the Israel Defense Forces announced it would target all bridges and crossings along the Litani River, which cuts across southern Lebanon from east to west, a move designed to isolate large swathes of the territory from the rest of the country. In recent weeks, the military has carried out that plan, damaging or destroying at least nine spans across the river. The Qasmiyeh bridge had already been hit in late March, suffering major damage, but Lebanese military engineers had partially repaired it and reopened it to traffic just last week. According to Lebanese outlet L’Orient Today, Lebanese soldiers stationed near the bridge preemptively closed access roads ahead of Thursday’s strike, but the attack still completely shattered the crossing, leaving it irreparable, a Lebanese security official told Reuters.

The ongoing Israeli strikes have continued to claim civilian lives across the country. On Thursday alone, at least 11 people including women and children were killed in multiple Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon, while one additional person was killed in a strike targeting a vehicle on the highway connecting Beirut to Damascus, the capital of neighboring Syria. Official Lebanese government data puts the total death toll from Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2 at more than 2,190 people.

The violence has disproportionately targeted medical and humanitarian personnel. On Wednesday, Lebanese paramedic organizations confirmed that the Israeli military killed four rescue workers and wounded six more in three sequential targeted strikes on the southern village of Mayfadoun. The strikes deliberately targeted medical teams in waves: the first wave hit medics responding to a call for wounded civilians, the second struck responders who arrived to assist the first team, and a third hit medics rushing to support both groups. The Lebanese Ministry of Health reports that 91 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli forces in the past six weeks alone.

Israel has not carried out large-scale strikes on Beirut since April 8, when the military conducted roughly 100 simultaneous strikes across Lebanon in a 10-minute window that killed more than 350 people. But deadly strikes against civilian and infrastructure targets across southern Lebanon have continued unabated, as Israeli ground forces push forward with their incremental ground invasion into the southern part of the country. Notably, the US announcement of the ceasefire deal made no mention of Hezbollah, the political and military movement that controls much of southern Lebanon and has been Israel’s primary opponent in the ongoing fighting.

Long-sealed documents pulled from Israeli state archives have recently brought a long-rumored chapter of Zionist paramilitary history into sharp, new clarity, detailing repeated efforts by the radical Zionist Stern Gang to forge a strategic partnership with Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, when British forces held the Mandate of Palestine. First reported by leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the declassified files trace these secret outreach attempts directly to Avraham Stern, founder of the extremist armed group that split from the larger Irgun Zionist militia to continue anti-British resistance through World War II. The core ideological foundation for the proposed alliance, records show, was shared opposition to British rule in Palestine – the territory the wider Zionist movement targeted as the site of a future independent Jewish state.

The documents lay out how the Stern Gang dispatched member Naftali Lubenchik to meet secretly with German officials on the group’s behalf. A 1951 archival account notes that Lubenchik held the false belief that Nazi Germany did not aim for the total physical annihilation of European Jewry, but only sought to expel Jewish populations from the continent and concentrate them in a single territory. This misreading of Nazi intentions laid the groundwork for the militia’s diplomatic overtures.

Long before these contacts became public, the mainstream Zionist paramilitary Haganah – the dominant armed Zionist organization in Mandatory Palestine – was already aware of the Stern Gang’s actions. A 1941 Haganah intelligence document, titled “Contacts with the Axis” (a reference to the Nazi Germany-Fascist Italy alliance), contains previously unreported remarks from Eliyahu Golomb, the Haganah’s de facto commander at the time. Speaking to a small, closed circle of associates, Golomb acknowledged he had received intelligence that a high-profile Jewish militant codenamed “S” had been in contact with German enemy forces. The newly released records confirm the “S” in question was Avraham Stern.

A Polish immigrant who settled in Palestine in the 1920s, Stern held radical views: he pushed for unrestricted Jewish immigration to the region and demanded the full expulsion of what he called the “foreign” British presence from land he deemed inherently Jewish. His animosity toward British rule ran so deep that he was willing to set aside ideological differences with the Nazi regime to achieve his goal of a Jewish state, a stance that put him sharply at odds with the other major Zionist factions of the era. While the Irgun and Haganah had agreed to a moratorium on anti-British attacks for the duration of the war against Nazi Germany, the Stern Gang continued to launch assaults on British targets and even rival Jewish groups throughout the conflict.

Historical records compiled by Haaretz confirm multiple separate outreach attempts to German leadership. One formal proposal even outlined terms for “active partnership” with Nazi Germany in the war, framing the alignment as rooted in “shared interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations” and calling for a formal post-war alliance between a newly established Jewish state and the German Reich. As late as 1943, Stern Gang member Natan Friedman – who later changed his name to Natan Yellin-Mor and went on to serve as a member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset – wrote that “Germany has not yet been defeated and may still become our ally.”

Ultimately, the Stern Gang’s efforts to secure a Nazi alliance never came to fruition, but the Haganah closely monitored every step of the outreach, per Haaretz’s reporting. By 1942, after a string of deadly bank robberies and violent shootouts between the militia and British mandatory authorities, British forces tracked down Stern, killing him at the age of 34. At the time, Stern’s collaboration overtures were a major source of embarrassment for the mainstream Zionist movement, and the Haganah even joined British efforts to crack down on the Stern Gang, hunting down its members.

The newly declassified files also lay bare the full extent of Stern’s core worldview at the time. One document records his conviction that Britain had “betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state.” In contrast, he argued, “Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state.” Stern firmly believed a practical agreement with the Nazis was achievable, writing, “negotiations should be opened, and Jews of Europe should be recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British.” Additional files confirm Stern sought to “seize control of all of Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel] by force with the help of a foreign power” – a foreign power explicitly identified as Nazi Germany.

For his part, Yair Stern, son of Avraham Stern, has pushed back on the framing of his father’s actions in an interview with Middle East Eye for a documentary focused on the militia founder. He downplays the Nazi overtures as a minor, context-specific episode intended to rescue European Jews from persecution, arguing his father could not have known the full scope of the Nazis’ planned Holocaust – which was not formalized until shortly before Avraham Stern’s death in 1942. He also dismisses confessions from former Stern Gang members about the collaboration efforts, claiming the statements were extracted under duress during Haganah interrogations and cannot be considered credible.

Gaza’s de facto administration has publicly pushed back against recent inaccurate comments from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who falsely claimed that more humanitarian aid is currently entering the Gaza Strip than at any point in the past five years, crediting the U.S. for what he called a prioritized approach to the crisis.

Vance made the contested claim during an appearance at a Turning Point USA event held on Tuesday, asserting that the improved aid flow was a direct result of the U.S. administration taking the humanitarian situation in Gaza seriously. The very next day, Gaza’s Government Media Office issued a formal condemnation of the remarks, rejecting them as disconnected from on-the-ground reality and directly contradictory to independently verified field data.

The context for the ongoing dispute traces back to an October 2023 ceasefire brokered by the U.S., designed to end a year-long armed conflict that has left Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents trapped under a tightened Israeli blockade that has cut off access to basic necessities, while daily Israeli bombardment has devastated the coastal enclave. The conflict has already killed more than 72,000 people and injured over 170,000, according to local counts, and parts of Gaza were formally declared to be in famine earlier this year, with dozens of recorded deaths from starvation and malnutrition linked to the blockade.

Under the terms of the October ceasefire agreement, Israel was mandated to lift longstanding restrictions on aid entry and allow up to 600 trucks of essential supplies—including food, fuel, medicine, shelter materials and commercial goods—to enter Gaza daily. To date, Israel has failed to meet this requirement, maintaining strict limits on aid deliveries that have left the territory’s catastrophic humanitarian crisis largely unaddressed.

Gaza’s Government Media Office laid out clear data contradicting Vance’s claim, noting that the average number of trucks entering Gaza per day since the ceasefire took effect is just 227—only 37 percent of the agreed-upon daily target. As a recent example, the office pointed out that only 207 trucks entered the enclave on April 9, and fewer than 80 of those carried humanitarian aid.

The office emphasized that ignoring these verified facts amounts to dangerous misinformation that obscures the systemic reality of restricted aid access and deliberate deprivation imposed by Israeli occupation, which has consistently failed to meet its legally mandated humanitarian obligations. It added that distorting facts to present a false picture of the situation will neither reduce the severity of Gaza’s ongoing humanitarian catastrophe nor absolve any involved party of its legal and moral responsibilities for the crisis.

Official United Nations data further backs up the refutation of Vance’s claim. In the period between 2021 and early 2023, before the current large-scale conflict began, up to 12,000 trucks of goods entered Gaza per month—an average of roughly 400 trucks per day, most carrying commercial supplies. That number dropped dramatically after former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crime charges, announced a total blockade of Gaza, stating that “no electricity, no food, no fuel” would be allowed to enter.

During the height of active conflict, some months saw total aid entry drop to just 600 trucks for the entire month, an average of only 20 trucks per day. The highest monthly volume recorded during the conflict was 5,670 trucks, equal to roughly 190 trucks per day—still less than half of the ceasefire agreement’s target and well below pre-conflict averages. Even weeks after the ceasefire took hold in November, total truck entry hit just 4,282 for the month, an average of only 142 trucks per day, per UN data.

That downward trend has continued into 2024: 3,513 trucks entered in January, 2,660 in February, 2,032 in March, and only 586 had entered as of mid-April. As aid volumes continue to fall, Gaza officials and residents have issued repeated warnings in recent weeks that stockpiles of food, fuel, medicine and shelter materials are once again reaching critically depleted levels.

Just last week, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released a statement confirming that Israel continues to deliberately obstruct aid access, even as living conditions across Gaza remain catastrophic. MSF noted that this intentional obstruction is leading to widespread preventable deaths across the enclave, adding that even though the intensity of active bombardment has decreased since the ceasefire, the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic for residents.

Sabreen Abu Ouda, a 45-year-old Gaza City resident, told Middle East Eye earlier this week that many Gaza residents are growing increasingly terrified that the enclave is heading back toward widespread famine. Abu Ouda and other residents reported that severe shortages of bread and other essential supplies, including staple foods and cooking fuel, have worsened dramatically in recent weeks. Vegetable prices have skyrocketed due to widespread scarcity, while eggs, chicken and other proteins have all but disappeared from local markets, leaving millions of residents unable to access adequate nutrition.

Technology giant Apple has ignited widespread public condemnation after its streaming platform Apple TV+ began promoting a new Israeli drama series, with critics accusing the company of whitewashing Israel’s ongoing military campaigns and alleged genocide in the Gaza Strip. The controversy erupted this week following the release of the official trailer for *Unconditional*, an eight-part thriller series. The opening shot of the trailer introduces lead character Gali, a 23-year-old played by Talia Lynne Ronn, in full Israeli military uniform, who is detained in Moscow on charges of drug smuggling. The plot follows Gali’s mother Orna, portrayed by Liraz Chamami, as she investigates her daughter’s alleged entanglement in a operation described on screen as “something critical for Israeli National Security.”

Critics have zeroed in on the series’ framing of an Israeli soldier as a sympathetic victim, a narrative that has drawn particular fury amid more than two and a half years of deadly Israeli military operations in Gaza that United Nations officials and leading international genocide experts have formally classified as an act of genocide. As of recent counts, more than 72,000 people in Gaza have been killed since October 2023, according to local health authorities.

“So, two and a half years into an ongoing genocide carried out by Israel, Apple TV is releasing a show depicting an Israeli soldier (who, for some reason, is wearing a uniform in a Russian airport) as a victim,” one social media user posted on platform X, summing up widespread anger. “The fucking audacity.”

Many critics have characterized the series as a deliberate propaganda push to sanitize Israel’s global image at a time when its actions in Gaza have drawn global condemnation. “Rome deaf [sic] and reprehensible genocide washing. SHAME ON YOU!!” one commenter wrote in response to Apple’s *Unconditional* announcement, while another rejected the project outright: “Save your Zionist propaganda. We say no thanks.”

Prominent Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa joined the criticism, framing the series as a calculated effort to shift public perception in the wake of widespread global outrage over Israel’s violence in Gaza. “This series is nothing more than a manipulation of public imagination and collective conscience in the wake of nearly three years of all of us seeing Israelis commit unspeakable carnage,” Abulhawa wrote. “They are working to literally engineer your thoughts in direct opposition to what you’ve seen in real life with your own eyes.”

Media analyst Sana Saeed questioned the strategic logic of Apple’s investment, noting that Israel has become an increasingly divisive cultural and political taboo among younger generations of Americans, a key demographic for long-term streaming growth. “To be investing in anything Israeli – in any industry where you need to condition the young consumer as a long term, loyal and committed consumer – is an explicit and political choice not rooted in market research and brand growth, but in something transparently insidious,” Saeed wrote.

The conflict extends far beyond Gaza, too: since February 2025, the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran has killed at least 3,600 Iranians, according to U.S.-based human rights organization HRANA, while an additional 2,100 people have been killed in Lebanon over the same period.

Within hours of the trailer’s launch, critics uncovered a 2015 Instagram post from lead actor Talia Lynne Ronn captioned: “Whoever messes with us gets tear-gassed.” The post shows Ronn posing with a group of armed women, and additional photos from the same year appear to confirm Ronn served in the Israeli military during that period. One social media user labeled Ronn “the Israeli actress playing an IDF terrorist in the new Apple TV series” who “was of course an IDF terrorist in real life as well.”

Middle East Eye has reached out to both Ronn and Apple TV+ to request a response to the criticism. The backlash has already translated into consumer action, with multiple users announcing they are canceling their Apple TV+ subscriptions and boycotting Apple products entirely. “I just canceled Apple TV. I will never purchase another Apple product. Thoroughly disgusted by this genocide propaganda,” one user posted.

Additional scrutiny has been drawn by the series’ creative origins: *Unconditional* is produced by the same team behind *Homeland*, the long-running Showtime drama that was adapted from an original Israeli series and ran from 2011 to 2020. Throughout its run, *Homeland* faced persistent accusations of Islamophobia and harmful, inaccurate depictions of Middle Eastern cities and Muslim communities.

Critics have pointed to multiple past examples of *Homeland*’s misleading framing: “I remember in the Homeland series they showed Islamabad as some slum city when in reality it is one of the most beautiful capitals on earth,” one commenter wrote. Another added, “Homeland once depicted Hamra Street in Beirut as some back alley shithole and funny enough they did the filming for that in Tel Aviv. Unsurprising that the writers are making Israeli slop now.” Back in 2012, then-Lebanese Tourism Minister Faddy Abboud even threatened legal action against the *Homeland* production team over the show’s negative and inaccurate depiction of Beirut.