The three Israelis killed on Thursday were innocent – but the State of Israel is not Where is the house that got hit with the rocket I asked the guy behind the counter of a snack bar in Kiryat Malachi on Thursday Go to the third traffic circle and make a left parked my car and started walking toward the satellite dishes It’s a poor neighborhood on the edge of a poor town shabby tenements with dirt for front lawns After a minute or so of walking and scanning the buildings for signs of a long-range rocket’s impact It took up the left side of the top floor of a five-story building: a giant hole where the front half of the apartment – the balcony and living room – had been a few hours before squarish hole surrounded by raw concrete blasted into a mess of jagged angles The crowd was of reporters standing around Yuli Edelstein the minister of public diplomacy and Diaspora affairs I knew what he was saying without having to hear it an Israeli army spokesman was answering questions so I asked him the only question I wanted to ask: Why had Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari on Wednesday afternoon when the rocketing had gone down dramatically for at least a day and when there were reports that the Gazan organizations that had been firing the rockets had agreed to a cease-fire replied:  “There was no reduction in the rocketing.” And the cease-fire But here is Yedioth Ahronoth on Wednesday: “After three days of firing of Qassams and Grads on communities in the south, yesterday was relatively quiet. Two rockets were fired yesterday…” Here is Haaretz on the same day: “Since Monday’s reports of the agreement by Palestinian militant groups in Gaza to hold their fire there has been relative quiet in the Gaza envelope area with two rockets hitting the Ashdod area and Hof Ashkelon Regional Council area yesterday… There were no reports of damage or casualties in either attack.” And during the day Wednesday six rockets were fired from Gaza and another four from the direction of Sinai So Israel did not start “Pillar of Defense” after days of relentless escalation but after a day-and-a-half when things had started to calm down in charge of maintaining Israel’s security in Gaza This title will no doubt sound absurd to anyone who in the past several hours has heard Jabari described as “an arch-terrorist,” “the terror chief of staff” or “our Bin Laden.” But that was the reality for the past five and a half years Israel demanded of Hamas that it observe the truce in the south and enforce it on the multiplicity of armed organizations in the Gaza Strip The man responsible for carrying out this policy was Ahmed Jabari These are voices in the wilderness in Israel today Most everybody seems to be “on message.” I didn’t talk to any of the residents in Kiryat Malachi because “man on the street” interviews seem staged and artificial to me and after doing thousands of them over the years I figured I knew pretty much what the residents in Kiryat Malachi would say That evening I went to my job as a copy-editor at Haaretz, and towards the end of the night, I edited the story about the three people who’d been killed in that building Itzik Amsalem’s mother implored him to take cover but he insisted on photographing the Iron Dome at work heard them arguing and came into their apartment Mira Scharf was renting an apartment next door with her family before they were to return to New Delhi where she and her husband were Chabad emissaries I don’t want those Gazan rockets to hurt anybody But I’m not “rooting” for Israel in this war because I don’t want to go on hurting the Palestinians The three people who got killed in that building in Kiryat Malachi were innocent – but the State of Israel is not it’s the hurt that the State of Israel inflicts on the Palestinians which provided most of the fuel for that monstrous rocket I was a columnist and feature writer for The Jerusalem Post as well as the correspondent in Israel for the U.S I wrote feature articles for the Sunday Times of London during the second intifada and have been writing for American Jewish publications since 1990 I would describe myself as an ultra-liberal Zionist; as journalist Bradley Burston put it I’m “probably as far left as a centrist can be.” I was born in New York grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Israel in 1985 Our team has been devastated by the horrific events of this latest war The world is reeling from Israel’s unprecedented onslaught on Gaza inflicting mass devastation and death upon besieged Palestinians as well as the atrocious attack and kidnappings by Hamas in Israel on October 7 Our hearts are with all the people and communities facing this violence We are in an extraordinarily dangerous era in Israel-Palestine The bloodshed has reached extreme levels of brutality and threatens to engulf the entire region are seizing the opportunity to intensify their attacks on Palestinians The most far-right government in Israel’s history is ramping up its policing of dissent using the cover of war to silence Palestinian citizens and left-wing Jews who object to its policies one that +972 has spent the past 14 years covering: Israeli society’s growing racism and militarism We are well positioned to cover this perilous moment – but we need your help to do it This terrible period will challenge the humanity of all of those working for a better future in this land Palestinians and Israelis are already organizing and strategizing to put up the fight of their lives Can we count on your support +972 Magazine is a leading media voice of this movement a desperately needed platform where Palestinian and Israeli journalists and thinkers can report on and analyze what is happening Our fact checking systematically raises standards in public debate and changes the behaviour of powerful actors We’re campaigning to tackle bad information online protect our elections and improve the quality of information in public debate Our policy work aims to improve the information environment in order to protect and encourage good public debate Our technology and training work is designed to help everyone work faster and smarter We’re a team of independent fact checkers and campaigners who find At least two of the pictures are not of Tel Aviv We located the site of the images in the Israeli city of Kiryat Malakhi Posts on social media platforms Threads and X (formerly Twitter) claim to show “smoke columns rise over Tel Aviv” The posts are worded slightly differently but all make the same point and include the same pictures—two which appear to be taken from a built-up area and a third from a road—which show clouds of black smoke Full Fact has verified that at least two of the pictures were taken in Israel You can help us take action – and get our regular free email Often when we see pictures like this on social media, our first step is to use a reverse image search tool like Google Lens, or Russian site Yandex, to see if it’s appeared elsewhere It’s very common for us to find that a picture or video is actually older, or taken in a different location, than the post claims it is and we’ve written many fact checks where this is the case we focused on key features in the photos we might be able to use in order to work out where they were taken there is a distinctive apartment building with the curved pink arches on the roof Using Google Street View we were also able to compare the building next door which also has a distinctive pink feature running vertically down the length of the apartment block The lower buildings and trees in the social media photos can be seen on the other side of the street on Google Street View Using Google Street View we can also tell the pictures were taken facing the south-east We have not been able to verify if the pictures shared in the post are recent or linked to any attacks carried out by Iran-backed militant groups such as Hezbollah or the Houthis with the situation intensifying in recent weeks On 25 September Israel said it had intercepted a Hezbollah missile which had been intended to hit Tel Aviv, while in July a man was killed and eight people were injured in a Houthi drone strike on the city We don’t know when the first two pictures in the social media post were taken, but Kiryat Malakhi has itself previously been hit with missiles, with a deadly attack on the city taking place in 2012 Earlier this year two people were killed and four injured in a shooting at a bus stop in the city While some posts can be more complicated than others to verify, it’s important to check if pictures shared online show what the posts claim. For help spotting misleading pictures, read our guide. You can read more of our fact checks related to the conflict in the Middle East here Image courtesy of Image courtesy of Ynhocky That Feeling Is ShatteredA disproportionately high number of Israeli soldiers serving and dying in Gaza are of Ethiopian descent Some feel that the war has become a sort of entry ticket into Israeli society – but at what price 2024Get email notification for articles from Osnat Nir FollowMay 18 dry heat wave is beginning to dissipate and the downtown area is filling up with families young people hanging out in the parks and people returning from work who are running errands ahead of the holiday Among them it's hard to miss reservists and soldiers in the regular army who are back from the front for some R&R It's equally hard to miss the fact that many of those here are from the Ethiopian community as Kiryat Malakhi is the urban locale with country's highest proportion of members of the community – 15.5 percent of its population is of Ethiopian descent according to the Central Bureau of Statistics Site developed by     Copyright © Yedioth Internet Ethiopian Jews perform a dance during a visit with President Peres Seven percent of Israeli Ethiopians live in the northern district The international media’s tendency to see Israel through the narrow lens of the state’s presence in the disputed West Bank leads to bizarre outcomes at times this week Agence France Presse gerrymandered the disputed territory into a completely unrelated story: the debate over bringing relatives of Israeli Ethiopians to Israel in light of Ethiopia’s civil war that the Jewish state organised massive air lifts for around 80,000 Ethiopians many of whom ended up living in the occupied West Bank Screenshot from CBS report Many Ethiopians live in central Israel and the southern district The French version of the same article does not contain this error As CBS reported (“The Population of Ethiopian Origin in Israel,” Nov More than 60% of the population of Ethiopian origin lives in two main districts: approximately 38% live in the Central District and approximately 25% live in the Southern District the urban locality with the largest population of Ethiopian origin was Netanya (approximately 11,900 persons) the highest percentage of residents of Ethiopian origin out of the total population in a locality was found in Qiryat Mal’akhi (16.3%) Good morning, @AFPFactCheck. @AFP errs that “many” of Israel’s Ethiopian Jews ended up in West Bank. In fact, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Stats, <2% live in West Bank https://t.co/gPkNY6p0kL pic.twitter.com/FxJsk5083E — Tamar Sternthal (@TamarSternthal) November 15, 2021 2012About 2,000 people gathered yesterday afternoon across from the Kiryat Malakhi municipality carrying signs reading "Down with Racism," "We Are All Equal," "Down with Discrimination" and "Discrimination Destroys the Foundations of Democracy." Members of the Ethiopian immigrant community in this southern Israeli town say that local homeowners' committees refuse to sell to them Listen here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts Earlier this month, American ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced that it will stop selling their products in Israeli settlements located in the occupied West Bank The company’s decision has sparked an uproar by Israeli politicians Along with cries of “antisemitism” and “economic terrorism,” the Israeli government has called on U.S states to sanction the company through domestic laws that effectively punish any boycotts or divestments relating to Israel editors Edo Konrad and Amjad Iraqi unpack the story only to find that it marks a watershed moment in the struggle for freedom and justice in Israel-Palestine The two sat down to discuss the significance of the company’s decision and the backlash it continues to face, the shifting opinions among American Jews and what this moment could mean for the movement for Palestinian rights Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts Edo Konrad is the former editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine Amjad Iraqi is an Israel/Palestine consultant at the International Crisis Group He is also an associate fellow with Chatham House’s MENA Programme a policy member of the think tank Al-Shabaka He was previously a senior editor at +972 Magazine and an advocacy coordinator at the legal center Adalah he has written for the London Review of Books