News Watch: Labour's benefit-bashing, Gaza & Yemen airstrikes, and a new nuclear era for Europe
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This is MediaStorm's Newswatch.

You look at some of the fake news on these platforms, there's just so much out there right now. Some breaking news to bring you now. People want to be able to express opinions. I understand that. I have only one objective, which is to make sure the BBC is truly impartial. Well, I don't think that the mainstream media was lying. I think we missed the overarching story.

Welcome to Media Storms Newswatch, helping you make sense of the mainstream media. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wardia. This week's Media Storms. Defence goes nuclear. Benefit saving or benefit blaming? The US war in Yemen. Hello listeners, new and old. Because I'm hopeful we have loads of new listeners for some reason or the other.

We're back at Spotify for your Newswatch and for tomorrow's Deep Dive. Oh, what did you think of last week's episode? I thought it was a nice return to MediaStorm mini investigation form. Abuse in academia is an unreported, undiscovered kind of topic right now. There's so many nuances to it and so many layers. And so I'm really glad that that story was brought to us.

Yeah, me too. I missed being on the investigative trail. If any listeners missed it, last week, MediaStorm published an investigative episode about abuse in academia, asking, are universities protecting...

Predatory Professors. Go check it out. Also, thank you so much to our new Patreon subscribers. We're honestly overwhelmed with how many people signed up from our plea a couple of weeks ago. It really means so much. And yeah. We're looking at all your names now. It's probably a few too many to read, but we see you and we're so grateful.

And for anyone who hasn't subscribed to Patreon, if you can afford it, the reality of grassroots non-clickbait journalism and podcasting is that we simply cannot survive on ad revenue and we do depend on people choosing to fund what we stand for instead. So yeah, if you can afford it, the link is in the show notes. If you can't, stay with us. And for everyone who has, thank you. Thank you also to Philippa who emailed in for an amazing list of episode suggestions we will try and get round to. Well, speaking of new ideas, Helen,

Helena and I were invited on a Tortoise podcast on Monday called The News Meeting and we had to pitch a story and sort of compete for the most, the top story of the day. Neither of us voted for each other. I know, we turned on each other at the first opportunity. I felt instantly like something broke inside me. Yeah, I don't know why I didn't vote for you. Anyway, I regret it. Moving on. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, but we had to do an exercise for every story, which was to give the long story short. Basically a TLDR, right? A nugget summary of the story. And I think we should do that with our media storms today. Okay, you begin then. Story one. Defence goes nuclear. Okay, I can sort of see where you're going with that, but I haven't read much about new nuclear defences. Well, watch out for it. I think you'll have to do so actively.

Today, EU leaders meet for a two-day summit to discuss, among other things, propping up defences in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Not to mention Donald Trump ripping up the world order and turning America's back on its traditional alliances and so-called values. Yeah, that's definitely the real catalyst. We've seen aid budgets and...

benefits slashed, money being repurposed for defence spending in a way that would have been wildly controversial a couple of years ago, but it now fits a pretty widespread consensus that Europe needs to step up militarily and rely on itself. However...

This wave of militarisation we're seeing may have more to it than just getting our defences up. Militarisation, right, or times of defence, it's always an opportunity for profit and for power for various parties, and the media has to be very careful how it frames these developments to make sure the moment is not exploited by a very powerful arms industry.

I read a great and quite alarming analysis in The Economist I want to share because it flagged one element of this whole defence race that I personally feel is going largely under the radar. And this is the fact that according to The Economist, Europe is now having its most intense debate about upscaling nuclear weapons since the 1950s. Eek. Eek. Eek.

The article, titled Europe Thinks the Unthinkable on a Nuclear Bomb, it started with this quote from Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister. We would be safer, he said, if we had our own nuclear arsenal. Now this simple statement, it breaks a massive taboo. And it's only justified by what he describes as, as you pointed out, the profound change of American geopolitics.

And at the same time, Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor of Germany, a country with one of the strongest historic oppositions to nuclearization, has called on Britain and France, Europe's only two nuclear powers, to supplement the American shield, basically expand their field of nuclear protection deterrence. And France, which in the past has actually reserved its own nuclear weapons simply for protecting itself and made no commitments to others, has...

Finally signalled changing this historic position, President Macron announced a, quote, strategic debate on using our deterrence on the European continent.

We did an episode on nuclear armament last series with a Nobel Prize winning physicist and a Japanese peace activist. And if I'm right in remembering, if any non-nuclear state starts developing its own nuclear weapons or any nuclear state transfers control of its own weapons to another, then that would mark the collapse of the...

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Oh, yeah. I knew it was something, some kind of nuclear treaty, which has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons for over 50 years. Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly right.

So what does it say about the long-term logic of nuclear deterrence if we already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy human civilization and still we have to keep making more? The thing is, most people don't know the scale of the nuclear deterrence that exists today. And that is where I think crucial context is missing every time this debate resurfaces.

I'm not providing it now with the intention of steering the debate one way or another, but because once you know this context, you realise you actually cannot have the nuclear debate without this basic layer of understanding. It was laid out to us on MediaStorm by Dr Ira Helfand, the physicist winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. So here is the necessary context to any nuclear debate.

If there's a war today, major cities like Moscow, New York, London are targeted with 10, 15, perhaps 20 or even more nuclear warheads, each of which is six to 50 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. And the destruction that they would cause is literally beyond our imagination. Within a thousandth of a second of the detonation of that bomb, a fireball forms that reaches out for two miles in every direction.

four miles across. Within that area, everything is vaporized. The buildings, the trees, the people, the upper level of the earth disappears. And to a distance of 25 kilometers in every direction, the heat is so intense that everything flammable burns. Wood, plastic, gasoline, heating oil, cloth, paper, it just all ignites. And you get hundreds of thousands of fires, which in about a half an hour's time coalesce into a firestorm

all the oxygen is consumed and every living thing dies. The people who survived this first day would be living in a world we can't imagine. There'd be no cell phones, no electric grid, no internet, no food distribution system, no public health system. There'd be no law and order. And most of the people in the countries that fought this war that survived the first day

would succumb over the coming months to radiation exposure, to hunger, to epidemic disease, to exposure from the elements. These are just the effects in the countries that fight the war. But a war between the United States and Russia puts 150 million tons of soot in the upper atmosphere from all the fires.

And that blocks out the sun and it drops temperatures across the planet. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia, the temperatures drop 25 degrees centigrade, 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That's colder than we've seen on this planet since the last ice age. Food production across the entire planet will stop and the vast majority of the human race will starve to death.

Either of these scenarios means the end of human civilization. The US-Russia war might mean the extinction of our species, but they both mean the end of civilization as we know it. This reality needs to be at the heart of the conversation about nuclear weapons. What conceivable benefit that they might confer on any regime is worth running this risk.

That is so scary. Honestly, after we did this episode last series, I had such an anxiety spike. It's necessary context, but freak me out. So if you want to get freaked out, scroll back for the full episode. It's true. But look, information is power. We should at least know what nuclear armament means if we're going to debate it. And the thing is that debate is so clouded in secrecy. Yes, it is.

That is partly to do with national security. But how much is it a matter of security and how much is it a deliberate attempt to keep the public in the dark? Check out our nuclear episode to find out. You mentioned many European states are scrambling to pull together more pennies for defence and one area being slashed in the UK is welfare. In a way that many have pointed out feels much more Tory than Labour.

The Department for Work and Pensions, or DWP, is being criticised for the biggest cuts to disability benefits on record. Specifically, what we've seen this week is an axe taken to PIP, aka Personal Independent Payments, designed to help people cover extra costs incurred by their disability and also the health element of universal credit. So there's a focus with these cuts on chronic illness and disability, right? Correct.

So Labour's Work and Pensions Secretary, Liz Kendall, said millions who could work are trapped on benefits, denied the income, hope, dignity and respect that we know good work brings. That's pretty patronising. I know. Apparently, look, Labour wants to help them. But my media storm question is, is it really about benefit saving or is it about benefit blaming? There you go. That's your TLDR. Oh, catchy.

Now, of course, as people point out, we do need to save money right now. But while these savings are wildly controversial, they're not actually wildly substantial. They amount to about five billion pounds. Yeah, no, who needs five billion? I mean, I'm not saying I'd say no to five billion pounds. No, I mean, five billion, it sounds like a lot. But just for some context, actually, I have some good context to offer here.

Because yesterday, Matt Hancock was questioned by the COVID inquiry, specifically about the whole PPE scandal. Remember when the Conservative government kept giving PALS taxpayer money to produce what turned out to be faulty PPE? Well, the value of COVID contracts with corruption red flags is an estimated £15 billion. So yeah, £5.15 billion. Context is king. Or queen. Yeah.

Sorry. But while what we're seeing is limited in economic debt, it has dived to whole new lows in terms of certain toxic narratives. Bashing people on benefits, winding back social learnings about disability and mental health.

Some of the common tropes that we've seen surfacing in media coverage are like people on benefits are living it up or work is good for you and people are just too damn lazy to work. But by the way, this time last year, the United Nations published a report for the British government concerning the rights of persons with disabilities. And this report found a pervasive framework and rhetoric that devalues disabled peoples and undermines their human dignity within government,

which it tied to increasing media rhetoric aimed at raising hostility against benefit claimants, including disabled people. So what you say is the UN told us we were breaching human rights in media and we didn't learn. Yeah. Okay. Devil's Advocate.

I have seen a lot of alarm about the rate at which costs are rising, specifically this category of benefits costs. It's nearly doubled since before the pandemic. Wait, let me get my list of scary stats out. A record 2.8 million people are out of work due to long-term illness. Nearly a million 16 to 24-year-olds are so-called NEETs, a term I learned means not in education, employment or training.

The majority of them are young men. This is a 42% rise in three years.

I mean, the list goes on. I guess the question is, as a society, can we afford ballooning increases in the health-related benefit bill, which is also largely driven by more and more mental health-related claims? I mean, people are questioning the overall disability figure in the UK. It's 16 million people, which would be a quarter of the population. That, as some people have pointed out, is also a lot higher than in the global south. And that's led people to ask whether, you know, this is to do with...

over-diagnosing mental health conditions, which is even something we've reported on in some contexts. Are these not valid questions? Sure, they're valid questions, but they're not being answered by much of the media so much as,

thrown out into the ether without any context. For example, your question about a quarter of Brits having disabilities, a headline commonly published, states that this figure is twice as high as the developing world. Well, okay, but it's perfectly in line with the figure across EU records, which is 27% according to the European Commission. So the discrepancy could be to do with

with less stigma around mental health, for example. Right. Also, like, people are so shocked that we could have worse health than the developing world, as if, I don't know, processed food and obesity and alcohol and vaping and all things. Yeah, exactly. Also, the disability figure may be 16 million, but only 3.6 million are on PIP benefits.

Three quarters of this figure aren't on any benefits at all. But it's not just a case of the media not contextualising. In some cases, what we're seeing can only be described as outright disinformation. OK, I've seen the BBC call Pip an unemployment...

which is not actually the case. I mean, in the cases of people I know on PIP, it's a fund that helps them work in spite of their disability or to manage their disability so they actually can work. I guess that's not disinformation, but... I mean, it's misinformation maybe. It's harmful, certainly. It's embarrassing. It's also nothing on the grand scheme. So read this Daily Mail headline for me. Okay. I will try and evoke the all caps. Oh, yes. The Great Benefit Co-op.

Just 14% of people claiming disability cash can actually prove they are too ill to work. I wonder which part was in capitals. Okay, so 14, they say just 14% of people, one four, claiming disability cash can actually prove they're too ill to work. Yeah, so this is a completely manufactured story written by the deputy political editor of The Mail. Ooh.

Thankfully, it was corrected by Tom Pollard of the New Economics Foundation, and he was also a former government worker in the Department of Work and Pensions. So this mail story was printed on the 13th of March, and it has just been retracted as of yesterday. OK, so the damage is done, whatever it is. On a thread on Blue Sky, Tom Pollard took the chart that the mail used to justify its headline claim, which contained DWP data.

The graph shows the number of people receiving off-work sickness benefits in three different categories. So there's Category 1, acceptable medical evidence. Category 2, limited capability for work. And Category 3, limited capability for work forward slash work-related activity. Okay, quite confusing category names already. What do they mean? Category 1, acceptable medical evidence.

constitutes 14% of the total, hence that Daily Mail headline. Right, that just 14% of the total people on off-work sickness benefits can actually prove medically that they are unfit to work. Right. However, what the Daily Mail has failed to grasp is that Category 1 doesn't refer to the people who have given the most medical proof. In a sense, it's the least.

This is the share of people on sickness benefits who are yet to be properly assessed but have been temporarily given relief thanks to a GP note. So that's the so-called medical evidence. Right, so it's like medical evidence in place of the assessment. Right. The other two categories include people who have already been assessed and then subsequently ranked as either Category 2 or Category 3.

everyone in category one will ultimately go through this assessment process point and either be classed in category two or category three or declared fit to work. Oh, my God. What? Yeah. This is just a lie. This is embarrassing. I mean, honestly, I don't say this lightly. Like, should someone lose their job over this? I know. Like, somebody needs to be fired.

Yeah, it's a complete misinterpretation of that data. It says something though, doesn't it? That even the reporters paid to make sense of the benefit system don't even understand it. As I mentioned, as of yesterday, the deputy political editor who wrote the story replied to Tom Pollard online. This really made me laugh. I don't know why, but OK. He said, Morning, Tom.

Thanks for this thread and apologies not coming back to you sooner. I was away on a long weekend. Oh God, I'm so sorry. Like while people on disability benefits are like stressing because everyone's villainising them. I was just a bit too busy having this weekend to undo my mistake. Yeah, I just wrote this misinformed article and then I popped off on a long weekend and didn't see that it was completely wrong. I'm so sorry. And hurting people.

people. Anyway, he then went on to say, you are correct. There are some significant errors in my story. So it has been taken down. We will also be running a correction. I want to see that correction. I know. And, you know, we've spoken about before how these corrections are often buried in the back pages of papers. As Tom Pollard said in his response to that, thanks for listening. Thanks for taking it down. But, you know, the damage is done. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, I am positively encouraged that you can actually make

a Daily Mail editor to sweat and retract, and he apologised, and I will always give credit for that. But in order to do this error justice, the retraction would have to be so self-effacing. It's not going to happen. No, it's not. The thing is, as complicated as it is to explain the fiscal system to the public, sometimes these news outlets do it very...

very well and very clearly but they do it when it serves a particular demographic and I'm saying this because literally this weekend when I was sorting out my inbox I found this Telegraph newsletter and I just have to read you the introduction it said welcome in today's edition we will reveal how to give away your money without paying inheritance tax

Seriously? Yeah. So they're not even trying to sugarcoat it anymore? No. Can you imagine the Telegraph's reaction if an article took the same tone teaching people with disabilities the hacks of actually getting disability benefits? They

They'd be like, oh, how to cheat the taxpayers. You never have to work. Yeah. But there's the thing. Marginalized people who these systems are designed to help are underrepresented in the media. And that's most of all why this is a media storm story, because of the missing voices. The experts most able to clear up a lot of the confusion because they have to constantly muddle their way through it.

So we asked editor, disability journalist and previous MediaStorm guest, Rachel Charlton-Daly, about her experiences with the mainstream media this week. I think one of the big problems with the media coverage of the disability benefits story is that the right voices just aren't getting centred.

The voices that tend to be prioritised are psychiatrists, economists and people who work for disabled charities, not disabled voices. I was asked to be on Sunday Morning Live on BBC. As usual, I got bumped for somebody from a charity and a psychologist. I mean, I was bloody expecting it. I was expecting it, but it doesn't hurt any less, you know. By centring these voices, the wrong messages are being focused on.

Like these voices are doubtlessly good. Of course they are. But they're mainly focusing on the employability and they're focusing on like, oh, well, so many people are trying to work. So many people can't work because of how inaccessible it is. They're not focusing on the fact that thousands potentially of people could die. You know, like the real thing that we should be focusing on here is that this is going to lead to disabled deaths.

And more than anything, like I'm one of the few people to be calling this out, Labour know this. Labour knows that this is going to lead to deaths because Labour were the ones who were calling for inquiry into disability benefits deaths. If all that matters is if people can contribute to a capitalist society, then disabled people are always going to come out worst. And that's just not fair. We should be being seen as humans before we're seen as cogs in a machine.

Not only are people with disabilities often excluded entirely from the running order when they are asked to appear, it's often under circumstances that are so intolerable they feel they have to say no. I was supposed to be on Good Morning Britain this morning. I was a bit... I wasn't sure about appearing on it in the first place because...

It sounded like they wanted more of a sub-story of how I'm barely coping. And I was like, well, that's not my story. So a lot of the times when the media are asking for disabled people who are experts like me, when they are asking for us to comment, it's literally just case studies and they want to hear our worst possible trauma. And this is something that I always talk about, you know, when the media do want to hear from disabled people, they either want to hear the really inspirational stories or they want your minor trauma.

And, like, there's going to be a lot of trauma to mine during the next few months. We need to be seen as experts in our own stories as well, you know. The guy also seemed shocked when I asked for payment because, you know, this is my job. That was Rachel Charlton-Daly, an award-winning disabled journalist, activist and author. We'll take a quick ad break.

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Hi, listeners. Just before we continue, if you're a keen MediaStorm listener, we know you'll love the news meeting podcast from Tortoise. Like us, they try to understand what's behind the headlines, which is so important as the news cycle becomes increasingly chaotic.

Why do some stories dominate whilst others barely get a look in? Every Monday and Friday, three journalists battle it out to try and convince the editor that their chosen story should lead the news. And once a month, you get a chance to see the competition live and in person in Tortoise's London newsroom. Catch up on the latest episode by searching for The News Meeting wherever you get your podcasts. Next up, the US war in Yemen.

He might not have realized the U.S. is at war with Yemen, but people in Yemen sure do. This is an unfolding story, okay? As we record, Reuters has just reported that at least 10 more U.S. strikes targeted areas in Yemen, according to local intel, in the early hours of Wednesday.

But over the weekend, at least 40 US airstrikes in what is one of the Arab world's poorest nations killed 53 and injured over 100, mostly women and children. Firstly, I want to play a clip from an interview MediaStorm did with Dr. Waoud, a female health worker in Yemen who recalled her experience being bombed while pregnant at the start of Yemen's civil war in 2015.

For me, to be a mother, it was like a dream. But unfortunately, I got pregnant during the beginning of the conflict. It was a very difficult time.

I was always worried about my safety and the safety of my baby. Sometimes the planes would start to throw missiles around my home. I remember one day I was in the third floor of my home. Suddenly I found myself on the ground floor. I didn't know why I moved that far downstairs. The sounds of the trash were very high. I wanted to protect my safe and my baby.

OK, give us the background context to this week's airstrikes. The US launched airstrikes in Yemen after the Houthis threatened to attack Red Sea shipping routes unless Israel lifts its aid blockade on Gaza. So the Houthis are a rebel group that has controlled much of Yemen since a 2014 insurgency and since faced relentless civil war with the Saudi-backed government.

For a long time, the suffering of Yemenis has been massively underreported and UK weapons have been regularly used by Saudi Arabia to bomb them. Is that why this is a media storm story? Partly, partly. But I really want to emphasise this story, which has...

since been overshadowed by airstrikes in Gaza, which we will, of course, get onto. I actually think this is a huge story. It's a mass slaughter of civilians, not simply by weapons that the West provided or sold to an aggressive state, but weapons literally deployed by the US. Yemeni lives absolutely need more currency in our news.

And also this story should have longevity and it should be a centrepiece in this week's ongoing geopolitical debates. But it basically hasn't been touched since the days of the strikes on the weekend. And here are some takeaways that have been missed.

Firstly, the clear diplomatic lesson that we never seem to learn. This is a classic tale of escalatory posturing by macho leaders, supposedly in the name of deterring violence, but ultimately causing events to spiral out of control until we find ourselves in a war without knowing it. Okay, take us quickly through that spiral of events. One, Israel blocks aid to Gaza. Two, Houthis...

threaten Red Sea attacks. Three, US launches airstrikes on Yemeni civilians in an apparent attempt to deter said Red Sea attacks.

for Houthis actually initiate Red Sea attacks. And it goes on. In response to the Gaza airstrikes this week, the Houthis have pledged further militancy in solidarity with Palestine. And guess what the US has promised them? I believe all hell will break loose were the exact words of the White House press secretary. Yeah, I mean, sometimes I feel like we live in this cartoon reality where world leaders are...

kids in a playground and the mainstream media keep reporting on everything they do. Like it's so complicated and serious and grown up and it's actually all of us. Yeah. Can I also just point out how messed up it is that the Houthi demand that caused these attacks was Israel should stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza or will attack shipping. And the US was like, how about instead of letting aid into Gaza, we just bomb you? Yeah. The thing is, right,

What I haven't said yet is that the Houthis are classed as a terrorist organization by the US. And what do we not do with terrorists? Give them any human rights, obviously. Yeah. No, we don't negotiate with terrorists. Oh, of course. How can I forget? God, you've been off negotiating with terrorists again, haven't you?

But no, you were right in pointing out exactly what you did, because what does it say when the so-called terrorists are demanding compliance with international law and the so-called terrorists

civilized West are like, F you, we don't negotiate with terrorists. We're going to bomb you and your children instead. Yeah. Listeners, you know, you can also listen to our episode, One Man's Terrorist. We spoke to people in different contexts around the world who've been convicted as terrorists and their families. And this is a word that is just so complicated and we need to watch out for in a media context. Absolutely, yeah. Can you imagine, by the way, if the roles were reversed and an Islamic nation dropped bombs on

on the US and killed dozens of civilians. Like not only would we call that an act of terrorism, we would call that an act of war. And this is inherently connected to the Israel-Gaza war, isn't it? If this happened because Houthis retaliated to Israel's blockade of aid into Gaza, then this was essentially a proxy continuation of the war on Gaza, all happening under the guise of a ceasefire.

Absolutely. And it wasn't the only act of war that occurred before the ceasefire officially collapsed on Tuesday morning. Which brings us on to Eyes on Palestine. Do we have a long story short for Eyes on Palestine this week? Ceasefire?

Smoke screen. Okay. So, on Tuesday, Israel resumed full-scale military attacks on Gaza, killing over 400 people in a day, including over 130 children. This was a US-endorsed unilateral rejection of the fragile ceasefire that has held since January.

It was also one of the bloodiest days since the current conflict escalated in October 2023, but by no means the first act of war since the ceasefire began. Last weekend, Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians, including aid workers and journalists, in airstrikes. Airstrikes during a ceasefire. But how was that reported? The Guardian wrote...

Currently, both sides have refrained from returning to war, though Israel has conducted an intensifying series of airstrikes in Gaza that have killed dozens of Palestinians. Sorry, what exactly does war mean to you? I mean, honestly, it's baffling.

This was the New York Times' headline. Israel keeps up attacks in Gaza despite truce. Sorry, what exactly does truce mean to you? To be clear, since the ceasefire went into effect in mid-January, the Israeli military has conducted constant strikes in Gaza. Hamas has claimed those attacks killed more than 150 people before Tuesday's attacks.

Trump and Netanyahu are also very vocal about plans to forcibly displace all Palestinians from Gaza, despite the ceasefire agreement indicating Gazans should be allowed home. Israel and the US also pushed back the second phase of the ceasefire, which was meant to set out a long-term peace and reconstruction plan for Gaza. And meanwhile, by the way, I don't think many people know this, the Arab League, led by Egypt, negotiated and endorsed...

exactly this kind of plan, a reconstruction plan. And it was a plan backed by the UK, France, Italy and Germany. But which Western media basically didn't report on at all, despite relentlessly covering Trump's ridiculous Riviera proposal.

So that happened. And yeah, a final example of continual ceasefire breaches, I guess, is that Israeli forces have remained along the Philadelphia corridor, Gaza's border with Egypt, despite the terms of the ceasefire demanding they withdraw. Right. But the vast majority of headlines on the so-called end of the ceasefire this week reported verbatim Israel's justification for their attacks. So

Sky News wrote, more than 400 killed in Gaza as Israel launches airstrikes in response to hostage crisis. Daily Mail, Israel unleashes fires of hell in Gaza and warns Hamas will be shown no mercy if hostages are not returned. This is classic compliancy from the media, just acting as a mouthpiece for power.

We go by lived experience instead. If this is about the hostages, let's see what the families of the Israeli hostages, who, by the way, are currently protesting in Israel, have to say about this.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement, the claim that the war is being renewed for the release of the hostages is a complete deception. Military pressure endangers the hostages and soldiers. We must return to the ceasefire. And the news coming out of Israel, and again, we don't really report on domestic news in Israel,

is not in line with Netanyahu's narrative. A lot of people think that he is going back to war in a time of personal political crisis, right? His government is in crisis, his corruption trial for him is escalating. This is a quickfire way for him to preserve his power, call anyone who goes against him traitors. That is how this is being widely reported, even inside Israel.

Thank you for listening. Tomorrow we'll be joined by two very special guests to discuss pregnancy in prison and why they are campaigning for no births behind bars.

If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends. You can follow us on social media at MatildaMal, at Helen Audia, and follow the show via at MediaStormPod.

MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Sunfire.