Nadia Sawalha explains her swollen appearance as she details her painful health condition after a discussion with Dr Zoe which has left her face feeling ‘bruised’
Jessica Clarke Digital Reporter
16:41, 30 Oct 2025
During the show on Thursday, 30 October, Jane Moore asked Nadia the reason she had her glasses on(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX)
Loose Women star Nadia Sawalha is suffering from a painful health condition as she opens up about her appearance and her experience chatting to Dr Zoe Williams.
During the show on Thursday, 30 October, Jane Moore asked Nadia the reason she had her glasses on and opted for a no-makeup look. Nadia joked that in the past, if she wore her glasses, then people would think she was hungover, before she explained that her face felt ‘bruised’ due to her stress levels.
She discussed how she thought it was an allergy at first before explaining: “It just feels a bit bruised, but lovely doctor Zoe came and saw me, I had my own session with her in my dressing room, and I said to her ‘honestly Zoe I think it’s stress’ and she agreed.”
Nadia explained how Zoe suggested taking deep breaths and taking a bit of ‘time out’. Nadia went on to say that she hadn’t cried properly in about ‘two or three years’, saying: “I cry a little bit and then I stop. I honestly think it is that. When we get stressed, why do we think it doesn’t impact our body?” She went on to thank Zoe and said she was a ‘special woman’.
The Loose Women panellist also shared a video on her Instagram page where she revealed her sister couldn’t believe she was going on live TV ‘looking like that’. Nadia revealed her sister said she looked like she ‘had three bottles of sauvignon blanc’ and had ‘fallen asleep in a hedge’.
Fans rushed to send their well wishes as one person wrote: “Bless you Nadia I hope it clears up soon it looks uncomfortable”, while another added: “Ohhh Nadia I love how strong and humble you are. You’re beautiful inside out even with puffy eyes. Hope they get better”.
It follows after Nadia recently opened up on her 23-year marriage, revealing that it nearly ended over her husband’s intense jealousy. The 60-year-old married husband Mark Adderley in 2002 and has previously opened up about hurdles in their relationship.
Nadia spoke in the past about her husband achieving sobriety after struggling with alcohol for many years and being diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder and depression back in 2021. Now, the TV personality has revealed that after quitting alcohol, Mark began to suffer with jealousy.
Nadia told the ITV show: “My kids hate it what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger but I think that it probably has with Mark and I. I think about when things have been really tough in our marriage and we’ve thought, ‘God we’re not going to get through this’ but then we do.
“For him, it definitely would have been points through my menopause when I was a screaming banshee nutter. I was very difficult, I was awful.”
As for his behaviour that she struggled him, Nadia said: “He’s been brilliant with his sobriety and then after the sobriety, after he got sober, he cross-addicted a lot to jealousy and the jealousy was just awful. It was so bad.
“When we went to couples’ counselling, I said that unless you do some work on this, we’re not going to survive it. It’s something that’s made me love him even more that he’s done work on that.”
For Abeer Hassan, looking after her autistic son, Abdallah, has been perilous amid Israeli bombardment, displacement.
Published On 28 Sep 202528 Sep 2025
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Amid relentless forced Palestinian displacement in Gaza under intense Israeli bombardment, taking care of children with special needs becomes even more perilous.
Abeer Hassan, looking after her autistic son, Abdallah, in Deir el-Balah, says the constant Israeli explosions terrify him.
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“As the people started fleeing the area, we were also urged to leave,” Hassan told Al Jazeera.
“Abdallah used to watch cars filled with displaced families fleeing. He would come back to the tent very tense and nervous, and using sign language,” she added.
Hassan explained that they first reached a displaced camp called Ameera, which was full and had no space for their tent.
“Later, they told us to seek a place near Salah al-Din Street, despite the danger. My daughters and I were crying and Abdallah was getting tense and started making weird sounds. The scorching heat is too much and we don’t know where to go,” she said.
For children with autism, survival brings profound suffering, as Israel’s siege and restrictions make it extremely difficult for families [Screengrab/Al Jazeera] (Al Jazeera)
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, the army has issued several forced evacuation orders for Palestinians living in the besieged enclave, often telling them to move to the southern al-Mawasi area, which has been designated a so-called “safe zone”.
However, al-Mawasi has also come under repeated attack by Israel, as has the exodus of Palestinians fleeing Gaza City to an unknown fate further south.
For Abdallah, the never-ending orders and sounds of bombardments mean he spends most of the time roaming the streets and has developed a new habit of pulling his hair. His family cut his hair short to stop him tearing at it.
“I began giving him prescribed sleeping pills again, to stop him from going outside during the heat. There is nothing else I can do to help him. I discovered that my mobile phone was broken two days before we were displaced; my phone was the only means to keep him calm with mobile games and videos,” Hassan explained.
“We were all under immense pressure … young and old. At one point, I asked God to take our lives together so Abdallah wouldn’t be alone. Not everything he needs is available here,” she pleaded.
In the nearly two years of intense attacks, Israeli raids have killed at least 66,005 people and wounded 168,162, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Sunday.
EASTENDERS legend Cheryl Fergison has revealed she’s been left unable to walk following her stroke.
The actress was struck by the medical emergency in May which has left her walking with a stick.
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Actress Cheryl suffered a devastating stroke earlier this yearCredit: Shutterstock
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She described the medical emergency as ‘one of the lowest times in my life’Credit: Instagram
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Cheryl is known for playing Heather Trott in EastEndersCredit: BBC
She told the Mirror: “You lose the ability to coordinate your hands, to walk properly, your balance is gone.
“It’s frustrating and makes you angry. But I’ve started to recover; I am coming on in leaps and bounds now.”
Recalling the terrifying experience, former EastEnders star Cheryl, 59, said: “I went to bed but couldn’t settle.
“When I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, my balance completely went and I had to stop myself from falling over. My whole right side felt numb, heavy and tingly.”
Cheryl admitted that her health battle has reminded her what’s really important in life.
She added: “Material things don’t matter; they can be lost or broken, but memories are everything. Friends, family and laughter – that’s all that matters.”
Cheryl Fergison announces ‘return to the BBC’ after being axed and forced to work in a Chinese restaurant
She said: “I’ll never give in. I want to keep singing. If people criticise me for singing in small restaurants, so be it.
“At the end of the day, I’m an entertainer. Community has always been important to me, and I’ll perform no matter the crowd.
“If only two people show up, I don’t care—I’m still being paid, and I’ll still give it my all.”
What are the symptoms of stroke?
The FAST method – which stands for Face, Arms, Speech, Time – is the easiest way to remember the most common symptoms of stroke:
F = Face drooping – if one side of a person’s face is dropped or numb then ask them to smile, if it’s uneven then you should seek help.
A = Arm weakness – if one arm is weak or numb then you should ask the person to raise both arms. If one arm drifts downwards then you might need to get help
S = Speech difficulty – if a person’s speech is slurred then this could be a sign of a stroke
T = Time to call 999 – if a person has the signs above then you need to call 999 in the UK or 911 in the US for emergency care.
Other symptoms include:
sudden weakness or numbness on one side of the body
Ron Howard’s new film “Eden” is a true story about disenchanted Europeans, who, in the 1930s, escaped from their society and decamped on a lonely rock in the Galapagos, only to see their handmade utopia devolve into petty power struggles and murder. It’s also lurid proof that Charles Darwin missed out on the truly juicy survival-of-the-fittest action by about a hundred years.
This is certainly unusual material for a mainstream stalwart like Howard, who knows his way around heroic problem-solving narratives (“Apollo 13,” the Thai cave rescue movie “Thirteen Lives”). But in screenwriter Noah Pink’s melodramatic imagining of incidents both well-documented and mysterious, one can see this Hollywood veteran on a mission to loosen the shackles of his reputation and have some nasty, brutish fun. To wit: A perma-sneering Jude Law greets intruders naked; a wild-eyed Ana de Armas insults and tries to seduce everyone; Vanessa Kirby lets foreplay include the pulling of her diseased tooth; Sydney Sweeney gives birth alone while growling at a pack of wild dogs.
The result may not be terribly illuminating about the (sub)human condition, despite the shout-outs to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. “Eden” is probably closer to an expensive reality show about mismatched survivalists. But as August fare goes, it’s a sticky, sweaty hoot, well cast and paced like a disreputable beach read, even if you might sporadically wish Werner Herzog had gotten first crack at this material. (It was also covered in a 2013 documentary.)
The first transplants to the uninhabited island of Floreana were German botanist Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Law) and his devoted, ailing partner, Dore (Kirby). Scolds who glorified suffering against the world’s wrong turns, the pair sought a radical reboot of society in rugged isolation, save the inconvenient fact that Ritter’s grandstanding philosophical missives back home were published in newspapers, turning them into eccentric folk heroes. Soon, their precious suffering took the form of new neighbors: idealistic war veteran Heinz Wittmer (Daniel Brühl) and his wide-eyed young wife Margret (Sweeney), who are looking for a new, self-sufficient way of life for their budding family.
It’s difficult to imagine a worse addition to this oil-and-water mix of high-minded nonconformist cranks and hard-toiling middle-class settlers than a capitalist sybarite. Enter the grandiose Baroness Eloise (De Armas), carried like Cleopatra onto the beach by her male lovers (Toby Wallace and Felix Klammerer), and ready to claim Floreana as the future site of an exclusive luxury resort called Hacienda Paradiso. Her first order of business, however, is pitting the scowling Ritter and bland, industrious Wittmers, who had managed a bearable distance so far, against each other.
The island, given an appropriately sickly, uninviting sheen by cinematographer Mathias Herndl, clearly wasn’t big enough for all of these new-world experimenters. But the movie’s two hours offer plenty of room for their portrayers. Howard’s generosity with his actors keeps this ensemble a charged group of clashing molecules. You wouldn’t mistake anybody’s turn for a full-throated or, conversely, subtle characterization — there’s a messiness to the cutting that prioritizes motion over stillness — but the broad strokes of personality are fun.
At its most raw (or is it overcooked?), when de Armas’ loaded-gun vibe veers toward camp or Law peacocks his pomposity with a hint of desperation, the situation may remind you of some insane pre-Code potboiler like 1932 “The Most Dangerous Game,” when a tale of people at their worst seemed all the more fascinating for unfurling in an exotic locale. Just because this corrupting pity party doesn’t crescendo so much as peter out isn’t any more of a reason to dismiss “Eden.” A little time spent with the farcical maneuverings of isolated megalomaniacs means you can skip reading the news that day.
‘Eden’
Rated: R, for some strong violence, sexual content, graphic nudity and language
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reveals details of phone conversation with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, is “in denial” about the suffering inflicted on Gaza, and the international community is now saying, “Enough is enough”.
A day after announcing that Australia will recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations next month, Albanese said that frustration with the Israeli government amid the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza had contributed to Australia’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
“[Netanyahu] again reiterated to me what he has said publicly as well, which is to be in denial about the consequences that are occurring for innocent people,” Albanese said in an interview with state broadcaster ABC on Tuesday.
Albanese said he spoke with Netanyahu last week to inform him of Australia’s decision to join France, Canada and the United Kingdom in recognising a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September.
Netanyahu, he said, continued to make the same arguments he made last year regarding the conduct of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 61,500 Palestinians since October 2023.
“That if we just have more military action in Gaza, somehow that will produce a different outcome,” Albanese said, recounting his call with the Israeli leader, according to ABC News.
Announcing Australia’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood on Monday, Albanese said that “the risk of trying is nothing compared to the danger of letting this moment pass us by”.
“The toll of the status quo is growing by the day, and it could be measured in innocent lives,” Albanese said, adding the decision was made as part of a “coordinated global effort” on the two-state solution, which he had discussed with the leaders of the UK, France, New Zealand and Japan.
“A two-state solution is humanity’s best hope to break the cycle of violence in the Middle East and to bring an end to the conflict, suffering and starvation in Gaza,” he said.
“It seems to me very clearly… we need a political solution, not a military one,” he said.
Albanese had said just last month that he would not be drawn on a timeline for recognition of a Palestinian state, and has previously been wary of a public opinion backlash in Australia, which has significant Jewish and Muslim minorities.
But the public mood has shifted sharply in Australia against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge this month, calling for aid deliveries to be allowed to enter Gaza as the humanitarian crisis worsens and Israel’s military continues to block relief efforts.
Israel also plans to take military control of Gaza City, risking the lives of more than a million Palestinians and instigating what a senior UN official said would be “another calamity”, as deaths from starvation and malnutrition continue to grow across the enclave.
“This decision is driven by popular sentiment in Australia, which has shifted in recent months, with a majority of Australians wanting to see an imminent end to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Jessica Genauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University, told the Reuters news agency.
“We are suffering, world. We need humanitarian aid – food and medicine – whether by airdrop or by opening ground routes. We cannot survive in this condition,” Othman Angaro, from a displacement camp in el-Fasher, told Al Jazeera.
Angaro described how he and his family rely on livestock fodder known as ambaz, a type of animal feed made out of peanut shells.
Another woman, veterinarian Zulfa Al-Nour, told Al Jazeera that her family relies daily on a charity kitchen called “Matbakh Al-Khair” for a single meal, amid a total lack of external aid.
She called for urgent international intervention, including airdrops of humanitarian supplies, warning that even the ambaz fodder is nearly depleted.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) last week warned about starvation in the el-Fasher region. Starvation has reached the most severe level on the United Nations-backed food security scale – ‘IPC Phase 5’, indicating full-blown famine – it said on Friday.
The two-month siege of el-Fasher has complicated aid efforts.
The RSF has blocked food supplies, and aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked, locals said. Prices for the goods smuggled into the region cost more than five times the national average.
Outbreak of cholera
An outbreak of cholera in the North Darfur state, of which el-Fasher is the capital, has further added to the misery.
Deaths due to the water-borne disease have risen to 191 in the region, which has witnessed months of fighting between Sudan’s army and the RSF, according to a government official.
At least 62 people have died from the disease in Tawila in the North Darfur state, the spokesman for the General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur, Adam Rijal, said in a statement on Monday.
Nearly 100 people have also died in the Kalma and the Otash camps, Rijal added, both displacement camps located in the city of Nyala in South Darfur state.
Some 4,000 cases of cholera have been reported in the region, according to the statement.
In recent months, more than half a million people have taken shelter in Tawila, some 60km (37 miles) west of el-Fasher, the state capital, which has been under two months of siege by the RSF rebels. Most of the Darfur region is under the rebel control except for el-Fasher.
‘Too weak to survive’
Meanwhile, with Sudan in the throes of the rainy season, along with poor living conditions and inadequate sanitation, the outbreak of cholera is only worsening, warn aid groups.
Cholera was first identified in early June in Tawila and has since spread to numerous refugee camps, according to NGO Avaaz.
Nearly 40 people have died due to cholera in the Jebel Marra area, a district of West Darfur state.
Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, is operating two cholera treatment facilities in Tawila housing 146 beds – coordinating nearly the entire medical response to the outbreak.
Last month, it warned that “much more” needs to be done to improve “access to water, hygiene, and medical care to curb the spread of the outbreak in the midst of the rainy season”.
Samir, a former teacher displaced to el-Fasher with his family, told Avaaz last week that the situation was “catastrophic” and that the cholera outbreak was being exacerbated by widespread hunger.
“People are dying because they are too weak to survive,” he told the NGO.
“Their immune systems are compromised from severe malnutrition. People are starving in the displacement camps.”
مدينة الفاشر في ولاية شمال دارفور غرب السودان بتعيش مجاعة قاتلة بسبب فرض الحصار عليها من قبل قوات الدعم السريع المدعومة من الامارات المجاعة دخلت المرحلة الخامسة يعني مجاعة كاملة ووضع كارثي اتكلموا عنهم#الفاشر_تموت_جوعاََpic.twitter.com/1aNfuGY9nH
Translation: “The city of el-Fasher in North Darfur state, western Sudan, is experiencing a deadly famine due to the siege imposed on it by the Rapid Support Forces backed by the Emirates. The famine has reached the fifth stage, meaning a full-scale famine and a catastrophic situation. Speak about them.”
Meanwhile, fighting continues.
“The RSF’s artillery and drones are shelling el-Fasher morning and night,” one resident told the Reuters news agency.
“The number of people dying has increased every day, and the cemeteries are expanding,” he said.
On Monday, Emergency Lawyers, a human rights group, said at least 14 people fleeing el-Fasher were killed and dozens were injured when they were attacked in a village along the route.
The UN called for a humanitarian pause to fighting in el-Fasher last month as the rainy season began, but the RSF rejected the call.
Fighting between the two groups first erupted in the capital Khartoum in April 2023. It has since spread to several regions of the country as the army chief and de facto head of state, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, jostles for power with RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.
The war has killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 13 million people, according to UN estimates, resulting in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
A Love Island star was reportedly taken to hospital recently, with the cast member said to have later returned to the villa ‘bandaged’ up after being checked over
The UK and 27 other countries have called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, where they say the suffering of civilians has “reached new depths”.
A joint statement says Israel’s aid delivery model is dangerous and condemns what it calls the “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians” seeking food and water.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said more than 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire while waiting for food over the weekend and that 19 others died as a result of malnutrition.
Israel’s foreign ministry rejected the countries’ statement, saying it was “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas”.
The ministry accused the armed group of spreading lies and undermining aid distribution, rather than agreeing to a new ceasefire and hostage release deal.
There have been many international statements condemning Israel’s tactics in Gaza during the past 21 months of its war with Hamas. But this declaration is notable for its candour.
The signatories are the foreign ministers of the UK and 27 other nations, including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Switzerland.
The statement begins by declaring that “the war in Gaza must end now”.
It then warns: “The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths. The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity.
“We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy later told the House of Commons a “litany of horrors” was taking place in Gaza, including strikes that have killed “desperate, starving children”.
Announcing an extra £40m of humanitarian assistance for Gaza this year, Lammy said he was “a steadfast supporter of Israel’s security and its right to exist” but the government’s actions were “doing untold damage to Israel’s standing in the world and undermining Israel’s long-term security”.
There have been almost daily reports of Palestinians being killed while waiting for food since May, when Israel partially eased an 11-week total blockade on aid deliveries to Gaza and, along with the US, helped to establish a new aid system run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to bypass the existing one overseen by the UN.
Israel has said the GHF’s system, which uses US private security contractors to hand out food parcels from sites inside Israeli military zones, prevents supplies being stolen by Hamas.
But the UN and its partners have refused to co-operate with the system, saying it is unsafe and violates the humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence.
Last Tuesday, the UN human rights office said it had recorded 674 killings in the vicinity of the GHF’s aid sites since they began operating eight weeks ago. Another 201 killings had been recorded along routes of UN and other aid convoys, it added.
On Saturday, another 39 people were killed near two GHF sites in Khan Younis and nearby Rafah, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Israeli military said its troops fired warning shots to prevent “suspects” approaching them before the sites opened.
And on Sunday, the ministry said 67 people were killed as they surged toward a convoy of UN aid lorries near a crossing point in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said troops fired warning shots at a crowd “to remove an immediate threat” but disputed the numbers killed.
Following the incident, the World Food Programme warned that Gaza’s hunger crisis had “reached new levels of desperation”.
“People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance. Malnutrition is surging with 90,000 women and children in urgent need of treatment,” the UN agency said.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Monday that 19 people had died as a result of malnutrition since Saturday and warned of potential “mass deaths” in the coming days.
“Hospitals can no longer provide food for patients or staff, many of whom are physically unable to continue working due to extreme hunger,” Dr Khalil al-Daqran, a spokesperson for al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, told the BBC.
“Hospitals cannot provide a single bottle of milk to children suffering from hunger, because all baby formula has run out from the market,” he added.
Residents also reported that markets were closed due to food shortages.
“My children cry from hunger all night. They’ve had only a small plate of lentils over the past three days. There’s no bread. A kilogramme of flour was $80 (£59) a week ago,” Mohammad Emad al-Din, a barber and father of two, told the BBC.
The statement by the 27 countries also says Israeli proposals to move Gaza’s entire 2.1 million into a so-called “humanitarian city” in the southern Rafah area are unacceptable, noting that “permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law”.
They urge Israel, Hamas and the international community to “bring this terrible conflict to an end, through an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire”.
And they warn that they are “prepared to take further action to support an immediate ceasefire and a political pathway to security and peace”.
That is seen by many as code for recognising a state of Palestine, something many countries have done but not all, including the UK and France.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein rejected the criticism.
“All statements and all claims should be directed at the only party responsible for the lack of a deal for the release of hostages and a ceasefire: Hamas, which started this war and is prolonging it,” he said.
“Instead of agreeing to a ceasefire, Hamas is busy running a campaign to spread lies about Israel. At the same time, Hamas is deliberately acting to increase friction and harm to civilians who come to receive humanitarian aid,” he added.
The Israeli military said earlier this month that it recognised there had been incidents in which civilians had been harmed while seeking aid and that it was working to minimise “possible friction between the population and the [Israeli] forces as much as possible”.
The Israeli military body responsible for co-ordinating aid, Cogat, also said on Monday that Israel “acts in accordance with international law and is leading efforts to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza in co-ordination with the international organisations”.
A spokesperson for the GHF meanwhile appealed to UN agencies to join its operation while also blaming them for “stopping” work and for failing to deliver supplies across the territory.
Chapin Fay told journalists that he had been to border crossings where he saw aid supplies “rotting” because UN agencies would not deliver them.
The Israeli foreign ministry said on Sunday that 700 lorry loads of aid were waiting to be picked up by the UN from crossings.
The UN has said it struggles to pick up and distribute supplies because of the ongoing hostilities, Israeli restrictions on humanitarian movements, and fuel shortages.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
At least 59,029 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The city of Los Angeles must pay nearly $50 million to a man who has been in a coma since he was hit by a sanitation truck while crossing a street in Encino, a jury decided Thursday.
Kamran Hakimi, now 61, was in a crosswalk at Hayvenhurst Avenue and Ventura Boulevard last August when the sanitation truck struck him. Hakimi had a green light, and the driver made an “unsafe right turn,” according to Hakimi’s attorneys.
A handlebar on the front of the truck hit Hakimi’s head and flung him to the asphalt, where he hit his head, the attorneys said. Hakimi briefly stood and flashed a thumbs up before losing consciousness.
“Mr. Hakimi’s life, and the lives of his family, are forever changed due to the negligence of a City of Los Angeles employee,” said Rahul Ravipudi, one of Hakimi’s attorneys. “This verdict upholds the dignity of the life Mr. Hakimi enjoyed before this tragedy and we are grateful to the jury who carefully considered all the evidence and provided Mr. Hakimi with the means necessary to get the higher level of care he so desperately needs.”
Hakimi is a father of five and worked in real estate before the crash. In October, his attorneys filed a lawsuit against the city in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The city admitted that the driver failed to yield to Hakimi, according to Hakimi’s attorneys. But at trial, the city “disputed the damages suffered by Mr. Hakimi, arguing that his life expectancy was limited and that the value of his non-economic damages, including pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life, was minimized because he was in a comatose state,” Hakimi’s attorneys said.
The jury ordered the city to pay Hakimi $48.8 million, including $25 million for future pain and suffering and $10 million for future medical expenses.
The verdict, which comes as the city continues to struggle with escalating legal liability payouts, was larger than any single payout by the city in the last two fiscal years, according to data provided by the City Attorney’s Office. The city can still appeal.
Another Hakimi attorney, Brian Panish, said the case never should have gone to trial, blaming City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto for refusing to settle the case.
“The city attorney chose to force this case to trial, rejected all reasonable settlement proposals … There were many reasonable proposals made by an independent mediator chosen by the city,” Panish said.
Feldstein Soto, through her press office, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Panish echoed arguments made by plaintiffs’ attorneys who have said that Feldstein Soto’s legal strategies have contributed to rising legal liability costs. They claim that Feldstein Soto has taken cases to trial that she should have settled, resulting in bigger verdicts if the city is found liable.
The city paid out a total of $289 million, its highest liability costs ever, in the fiscal year 2025.
Last Thursday, just days after he had ordered strikes upon Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood outside Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital and spoke of his outrage that the building had been hit in an Iranian counterstrike.
“They’re targeting civilians because they’re a criminal regime. They’re the arch-terrorists of the world,” he said of the Iranian government.
Similar accusations were levelled by other Israeli leaders, including the president, Isaac Herzog, and opposition leader Yair Lapid, during the conflict with Iran, which ended with a ceasefire brokered by United States President Donald Trump on Monday.
However, what was missing from these leaders was an acknowledgement that Israel itself has attacked almost every hospital in Gaza, where more than 56,000 people have been killed, or that the Strip’s healthcare system has been pushed to near total collapse.
It was an omission noticeable in much of the Israeli press reporting on the Beersheba hospital attack, with few mentions of the parallels between it and Israel’s own attacks on hospitals in Gaza. Instead, much of the Israeli media has supported these attacks, either seeking to downplay them, or justifying them by regularly claiming that Hamas command centres lie under the hospitals, an accusation Israel has never been able to prove.
Israel’s siege upon Gaza, supported by much of its media, has pushed the population to the brink of famine [File: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP]
Weaponising suffering
According to analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera, a media ecosystem exists in Israel that, with a few exceptions, both amplifies its leaders’ calls for war while simultaneously reinforcing their claims of victimhood, all while shielding the Israeli public from seeing the suffering Israeli forces are inflicting on Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
One Israeli journalist, Haaretz’s media correspondent Ido David Cohen, wrote this month that “reporters and editors at Israel’s major news outlets have admitted more than once, especially in private conversations, that their employers haven’t allowed them to present the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the suffering of the population there”.
“The Israeli media … sees its job as not to educate, it’s to shape and mould a public that is ready to support war and aggression,” journalist Orly Noy told Al Jazeera from West Jerusalem. “It genuinely sees itself as having a special role in this.”
“I’ve seen [interviews with] people who lived near areas where Iranian missiles had hit,” Noy added. “They were given a lot of space to talk and explain the impact, but as soon as they started to criticise the war, they were shut down, quite rudely.”
Last September, a complaint brought by three Israeli civil society organisations against Channel 14, one of Israel’s most watched television networks, cited 265 quotes from hosts they claimed encouraged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide. Among them, concerning Gaza, were the phrases “it really needs to be total annihilation” and “there are no innocents.”
A few months earlier, in April, the channel was again criticised within the Israeli media, this time for a live counter labelled “the terrorists we eliminated”, which made no distinction between civilians and fighters killed, the media monitoring magazine 7th Eye pointed out.
Analysts and observers described how Israel’s media and politicians have weaponised the horrors of the past suffering of the Jewish people and have moulded it into a narrative of victimhood that can be aimed at any geopolitical opponent that circumstances allow – with Iran looming large among them.
“It isn’t just this war,” Noy, an editor with the Hebrew-language Local Call website, said. “The Israeli media is in the business of justifying every war, of telling people that this war is essential for their very existence. It’s an ecosystem. Whatever the authority is, it is absolutely right. There is no margin for doubt, with no room for criticism from the inside. To see it, you have to be on the outside.”
“The world has allowed Israel to act as some kind of crazy bully to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants,” Noy added. “They can send their troops into Syria and Lebanon, never mind Gaza, with impunity. Israel is fine. Israel is bulletproof. And why wouldn’t they think that? The world allows it, then people are shocked when Iran strikes back.”
The Israeli media largely serves as a tool to manufacture consent for Israel’s actions against the Palestinians and in neighbouring countries, while shielding the Israeli public from the suffering its victims endure.
Exceptions do exist. Israeli titles such as Noy’s Local Call and +972 Magazine often feature coverage highly critical of Israel’s war on Gaza, and have conducted in-depth investigations into Israel’s actions, uncovering scandals that are only reported on months later by the international media. Joint reporting from Local Call and +972 Magazine has revealed that the Israeli military was using an AI system to generate bombing target lists based on predicted civilian casualties. Another report found that the Israeli military had falsely declared entire Gaza neighbourhoods as evacuated, which then led to the bombing of civilian homes in areas that were still inhabited.
A more famous example is the liberal daily Haaretz, which regularly criticises Israel’s actions in Gaza. Haaretz has faced a government boycott over its coverage of the war.
“It’s not new,” Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS University of London, said. “Israeli media has long been pushing the idea that they [Israel] are the victims while calling for actions that will allow them to present greater victimhood [such as attacking Iran]. They often use emotive language to describe a strike on an Israeli hospital that they’ll never use to describe an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza.”
Take Israeli media coverage of the siege of northern Gaza’s last remaining functioning healthcare facility, the Kamal Adwan Hospital, in December.
While descriptions of the attacks on the hospital from United Nations special rapporteurs spoke of their “horror” at the strikes, those in the Israeli press, in outlets such as Ynet or The Times of Israel, instead focused almost exclusively upon the Israeli military’s claims of the numbers of “terrorists” seized.
Among those seized from the hospital were medical staff, including the director of Kamal Adwan, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who has since been tortured in an Israeli military prison, his lawyer previously told Al Jazeera.
In contrast, Israeli coverage of the Soroka Hospital attack in Beersheba almost universally framed the hit as a “direct strike” and foregrounded the experience of the evacuated patients and healthcare workers.
Palestinian children react as they receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Gaza City, June 21, 2025 [Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]
In this environment, Matar said, Netanyahu’s representation of Israel as home to a “subjugated people” reinforced a view that Israelis have long been encouraged to hold of themselves, even amid the decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.
“No one questions what Netanyahu is saying because the implications of his speech make sense as part of this larger historical narrative; one that doesn’t allow for any other [narrative], such as the Nakba or the suffering in Gaza,” the academic said.
In this episode of Centre Stage, our guest is Dr Gabor Mate, a retired physician, author and Holocaust survivor who has written extensively on trauma and child development, as well as Israel and Palestine.
Mate talks about the colonial foundations of Zionism, how living under it has traumatised Palestinians and the ways mainstream media distorts the realities on the ground in Gaza.
Phil Lavelle is a TV news correspondent at Al Jazeera.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk condemned the “horrifying, unconscionable suffering” inflicted by Israel in Gaza. Speaking at a Human Rights Council session in Geneva, Switzerland, he accused Israel of blocking life-saving aid and called for impartial investigations on deadly attacks on civilians.
