Rupert Joy

🚨Dutch parliament votes in support of suspending the trade part of the EU-Israel association agreement 👇

Channel 4 News was at the scene of an airstrike in Lebanon that hit near a hospital just moments after a team of paramedics attended a funeral for one of their colleagues in Nabatieh. It comes as President Trump has announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will begin later tonight. More than a million people have been displaced by the Israeli invasion of the south, while airstrikes have struck across the country, targeting villages and major cities.

This has been widely recorded. What we need is action against Israel until it stops committing war crimes against civilians and civilian infrastructure. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Guys, the ‘godmother’ of the settler movement is on Twitter marking the anniversary of the Holocaust while praying for Holocaust in Gaza WAUW

Belgium seizes two British cargoes of military components bound for Israel presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04…

Israeli journalists do the best reporting on criminal activity carried out by settlers in the West Bank. In Gaza, Israel said the bombing was necessary to stop Hamas. But in the West Bank, there was no violence or Hamas offensive.

Our report detailing the repeated Israeli military attacks on paramedics and healthworkers in Lebanon. The young paramedic we talk to at the end was killed in yesterday’s triple hit on emergency crews trying to help the wounded

Deeply

The claim of the Chancellor and PM that the economy was recovering nicely before Trump’s Iran war has this morning been corroborated by @ONS. See attached. All history now though, due to Trump’s extreme energy shock

Israeli forces continue to bombard towns in southern Lebanon, including the village of Bint Jbeil, where reporter @LyllaYounes's family is from. "It's not just real estate that is lost when these homes are destroyed," she says. "Our grandparents built these structures."

Horrifying video which totally contradicts the Israeli military claims that the ambulances are being used for ‘military purposes’. The attacks killed 4 medics in Nabatieh in south Lebanon including a young father we interviewed a few weeks ago, Mahdi Abou Zeid. I’ll repost the report in this thread. His last words to us:’ If we rest, who will do the job’ 🧵

BREAKING: UN Human Rights Council experts have called on all member states to suspend arms transfers to Israel, Reuters reports.

The Israeli military bombed an area and then bombed three different sets of medics who were trying to get there to help the injured, according to the Lebanon health ministry cited here. These reports come out time and time again.

And against this backdrop discussions to strengthen U.K./EU defence and security links - meant to help drive a wider ‘reset’ in relations - largely tread water…

ב-1 באפריל הוטל צו של שטח צבאי סגור למשך שנה שלמה (!) על שטח מסביב לדומא, שבו מתגוררים בין 100 ל-200 איש סך הכול בכמה מקבצים - בדואים ופלסטינים. לאנשים מבחוץ - פלסטינים, זרים וישראלים - אסור להיכנס. הרקע - כמו באזורים אחרים: אלימות מתנחלים. אבל כמו באזורים אחרים שבהם הוטל צו -->

Israel to build new settlements on privately-owned Palestinian land in the West Bank newarab.com/news/israel-bu…

Breaking: New study using observational constraints projects that the Atlantic Ocean circulation #AMOC will weaken ~50% by 2100, even for medium emissions and without Greenland melting. Seriously bad news. theguardian.com/environment/20…

I think this is the dairy/sandwich shop we used to stop at on the way back from our trips to Zahlé growing up. It’s cool to see it featured on TasteAtlas! Even though Beirut is only a 45-minute drive from the Upper Metn, we would maybe make just one or two trips during our whole, months-long summer vacations in Lebanon, and it still felt very foreign growing up. A trip to “the city” more often meant going to Aley or Zahlé. To that point, I remember being both surprised and finding it endearing when one of my great-aunts mentioned she had not been to Beirut in decades. All of the vices of the big city put together cannot tempt salt-of-the-earth mountain people to leave their villages! 😄

The war in Iran and Lebanon, as well as Orban's election loss have seen Israel's position in Europe, which was already awful, collapse completely. A friend in the Israeli Foreign Ministry told me, "we don't have any strategy in Europe, and even if we had one, I doubt it would do any good. Here is the current situation: 1) Italy: Meloni suspended the defense cooperation agreement. If the left takes power, full diplomatic rupture is possible. 2) Germany: Chancellor Merz condemned settlement expansion. Minister Smotrich responded with Holocaust/ghetto rhetoric. Relationship already strained by years of insults from the Netanyahu government. 3) Hungary: Orbán was ousted. New PM Péter Magyar signaled he won't continue Orbán's pro-Israel line, meaning Israel likely lost its EU veto shield against sanctions. 4) Spain: Sánchez accused Israel of fundamentally violating international law. Spain imposed an arms embargo, opened an embassy in Tehran, and has no ambassador in Israel. Israel expelled Spain from the joint headquarters in Kiryat Gat. 5) France: Blocked U.S. military flights carrying munitions to Israel through its airspace. Israel halted all defense procurement from France and vetoed French mediation in Lebanon talks. 6) Slovenia: Declared a full arms embargo on Israel (symbolic, as it doesn't sell weapons to Israel). Belgium & Netherlands — Described as lost long ago, no specific recent events detailed. 7) Belgium: Has become a leading voice for suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement based on human rights clauses. 8) Netherlands: Even under more conservative leadership, the Dutch have expressed deep concern over the regional escalation, prioritizing NATO unity and de-escalation over unilateral support. 9) The only two countries somewhat supportive are Serbia, which announced a joint drone-manufacturing venture with Israel and the Czech Republic. The fear Israel has is that their trade relations with the EU will be downgraded. That will have serious consequences for their economy as the EU is the top trade partner for Israel. The hardest-hit sectors would include industrial machinery, pharmaceuticals, chemical products, and agricultural goods like fruits and vegetables, which rely heavily on thin margins preserved by zero-tariff. The EU has also considered halting €16 billion in direct support for joint projects. Every percentage point lost in European trade could deduct hundreds of millions of shekels from national output.

'Diseases are everywhere': Gaza's 'catastrophic' healthcare crisis is worsening haaretz.com/gaza/2026-04-1…