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Friday, September 18, 2026

09/17 Links Pt1: The malignancy of the left; Ed Miliband ignored MI6’s warnings over Israel sanctions; Pierre Rehov: The Shadows of War

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The malignancy of the left
Sometimes, a curtain draped across a mirror is torn aside, and a horrified public suddenly glimpses what it has become.

Two things happened this week which briefly interrupted the smooth acceleration of pathological Jew-hate in the West.

A film called “NAZA” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was directed by journalist-filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, radical anti-Israel activists with a long history of delegitimizing Israel through defamatory falsehoods, in conjunction with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a byword for malevolent misreporting of the Jewish state.

“NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage or unintended civilian casualties. In war, such casualties are sadly inevitable. In the Gaza war, Israel reportedly achieved the lowest ratio of civilians to combatant deaths anywhere in the world because of the unprecedented measures it took to save civilian life wherever possible.

Yet the film claims that the Israel Defense Forces willfully caused widespread civilian deaths. Under the laws of war, armies must assess likely civilian casualties before striking military targets. The film misrepresents the IDF’s fulfilment of that duty as evidence that it intentionally subjected civilians to indiscriminate bombing.

Its shock value lay in its reliance upon voices it said belonged to members of the IDF’s crack intelligence division, Unit 8200. But these were anonymous voices, with no corroboration of who they were or even evidence of what they were claiming.

The second event was a horrifying report compiled by Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism revealing the systemic intimidation, threat and menace now confronting Jews who seek treatment from the National Health Service.

A Jewish cancer patient said that while removing a growth from his forehead, his surgeon told him that Jews shoot children “in the head or the legs” for “their own amusement.” A nurse said that a colleague made a Nazi salute shortly after finding out she was Jewish. A senior Jewish medical professor had received antisemitic death threats. A Jewish emergency worker was physically attacked by a colleague.

The CAA said that Jewish patients were terrified of their surgeons, and Jewish nurses and doctors were being pushed out of the hospitals to which they had devoted their lives.

These two things crossed a line.

In Israel, there’s been a seismic reaction against the film, with Abraham and Szor coming under pressure even from their comrades on the left.

That’s unprecedented. Israel has been profoundly changed by the enduring trauma of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war that followed. Israelis are painfully aware of the heroism of the IDF troops, so many of whom have lost their lives, limbs or mental stability in the desperate fight against a fanatical genocidal enemy—and who have now been trashed in this film, allegedly by their own brothers in arms.

Even in anti-Israel Britain, there’s been widespread shock over the discovery that British Jews are too frightened to go to the doctor or hospital because they fear they may be attacked or even killed under the surgeon’s knife or general anesthetic.

Both developments show that the West is in the grip of a pathology created by the alliance between left-wingers and Islamists. And some Israelis are themselves contaminated by this deadly sickness.
Monsters Welcome By Abe Greenwald
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Here’s something to think about: While European countries are slapping sanctions on Israel, they’re ramping up engagement (including on trade) with the Taliban. After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, of course, the Taliban reimposed all sorts of horrors, including the legalization of violence against females and the vicious punishment of religious heretics.

But Europe is too upset with the democratic State of Israel to care about any of that.

I wrote about this very issue a year ago. Since then, Europe’s outreach to the Taliban has increased considerably. In June, Taliban officials met with EU leaders in Brussels for talks about sending Afghan asylum-seekers back home. This was the first time a formal EU delegation met with Afghanistan’s leaders since 2021. The Taliban came out of it boasting that normal consular relations with the EU are coming next.

Officials from the UK and other individual Western countries now routinely fly to Qatar to meet with Taliban representatives. The Afghan Consulate General in Bonn, Germany, is under Taliban control. And an official appointed by the Taliban serves as the first secretary at the Afghan Embassy in Oslo.

The trend toward normalizing relations with the Taliban stretches well beyond Europe. India recently waived sanctions on the Taliban foreign minister so he could travel to New Delhi for talks, and the country is reassessing sanctions on Afghanistan altogether.

Less surprising, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others haven’t hesitated to engage with the brutal regime. It’s not at all uncharacteristic of Iran to have sent its foreign minister to Afghanistan last year. Nor is it shocking that Russia is the only country in the world to officially recognize the Taliban.
Revealed: New Bank of England director referred to slain Hamas terrorists as ‘unarmed demonstrators’
The new non-executive director of the Bank of England, Paul Nowak, accused Israel of killing “unarmed demonstrators” in Gaza, one week after Hamas announced the vast majority of those shot were its members, the JC has found.

Nowak, who has been the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress since 2022, was given the top role at the central bank earlier this month by Chancellor John Healey.

The incident Nowak was apparently referring to in his tweet occurred on May 14, 2018, during protests in the Strip which were dubbed the “Great March of Return”.

A total of 62 Palestinians are reported to have been killed, which initially prompted controversy as they were unarmed.

However, on May 16, Hamas had stated in interviews that 50 of those killed were its members. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) similarly claimed three of the deceased.

Hamas official Salah Bardawil said during an interview on Palestinian television: “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.

“I am giving you an official figure. 50 of the martyrs in the recent battle were from Hamas...

The announcement was widely reported by Israeli media, while a Hamas spokesman told CNN on May 18 that, while the exact numbers could not be confirmed, “the protests are peaceful and include all political and military factions”.

Nonetheless, on May 23 Nowak authored a tweet criticising then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in which he referenced the incident without mentioning the terrorist affiliations of those involved.

“Government in Brexit chaos. Unarmed demonstrators shot dead in Gaza. Iran nuclear deal undermined. Trade wars loom as a result of economic nationalism,” he wrote.

“Our Foreign Secretary’s priority? A personal jet. Oh and to be specific, one that isn’t painted grey.”

Nowak has also continued to post about the conflict in the years since.

On September 21 last year, the day the UK recognised a Palestinian state, Nowak tweeted: “Recognition of Palestine is a welcome and crucial step on the path to peace with a two-state solution at its heart.

“The UK government must now do all it can to ensure the Israeli government ends its assault on Gaza. Solidarity to our sister unions in Palestine."


Pierre Rehov: The Shadows of War
"The Shadows of War" explores and debunks "Palestinian" propaganda through a meticulous study of the methods employed since 1948. The "Pallywood" imagery created since the Mohammed Al-Durrah affair—and especially since the October 7th pogrom—speaks for itself. The film features various experts and commentators whose conclusions are unequivocal.


Tim Shipman: Revealed: Ed Miliband ignored MI6’s warnings over Israel sanctions
Burnham and Miliband’s position is that they needed to act before the election because tenders to build 1,200 homes on a settlement site called E1, an action seen as an impediment to a two-state solution, were due by 19 October. But insiders say that was an excuse and it is widely believed in Westminster that placating Labour MPs and winning back votes from the Greens in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election was the decisive factor. Tom Tugendhat, the shadow foreign secretary, says: ‘Having spoken to officials, it’s clear that the Foreign Office is largely of the opinion that this is performative and unhelpful.’

MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, did not give Burnham an emphatic ‘Don’t do it’ message, but it outlined that it could risk intelligence-sharing with Israel. ‘People in 6 are pulling their hair out,’ says an influential Labour figure close to the security services. ‘They presented warnings about the consequences of doing this.’ That source even suggests that Sa’ar only took Miliband’s call after a request was passed on by MI6 via Mossad. Netanyahu routinely refuses to talk to British politicians.

A non-political source with deep roots in the intelligence community has this to say: ‘If you appear like a lightweight who will selectively virtue-signal, you’re not going to be taken seriously again.’ He says that Mossad already views MI6 as competent but overcautious: ‘The relationship was difficult because we did national security, the Israelis do national survival. I think the Israelis see us as pretty professional, but a bunch of pussies in terms of the methods that we would use.’

What does less cooperation mean in practice? My sources are adamant that if Mossad had actionable intelligence about an Islamist attack in the UK, they would still pass it on. But those who understand the nuances of the intelligence-sharing relationship are clear that useful information will be lost at the margins. ‘If it’s a real, imminent national security threat, they tell us,’ a second intelligence source says. ‘But they won’t just give us a flow of information like the Five Eyes’, the intelligence-sharing partnership which comprises the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ‘Everything is conditional and transactional.’

Lost Israeli intelligence cannot easily be replicated by Britain’s Gulf Arab allies. ‘The Israelis are light years ahead of all the Arab services,’ the second intelligence source adds. But in Whitehall it is little understood that Miliband’s decision has also damaged relations with Gulf Arab states, which rely on intelligence passed to MI6 by the Israelis. This is an element with which Blaise Metreweli, the chief of MI6, would be very familiar, having served in Oman. ‘The Gulfies come to us because they know that we have a good relationship with Israel and they know that basically they’re getting Israeli product,’ a security source says. ‘They can’t get it directly, but they want it, they need it. They’re looking at us going, “What the fuck are you doing falling out with them?” A Labour source who spoke recently to senior figures in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE says: ‘Not one of them thinks we have gained influence from this. They just think we’re increasingly irrelevant. The Saudis and Qatar are downgrading their investments in the UK.’




British MP apologizes after calling for ‘military action’ against Israel
British Labour MP Tahir Ali apologized on Wednesday after calling for “military action” against Israel during a House of Commons debate on Monday, remarks Labour said were unacceptable and for which he received a formal warning from the party’s chief whip.

Ali, who represents Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley, questioned why Israel should not be disarmed while lawmakers discussed the Hamas terror group’s disarmament as part of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian settlement. He said previous British governments had intervened in the Middle East over human rights abuses and trade routes and asked whether it was time to take military action against Israel.

Ali called for Israel’s “disarmament, given the atrocities that have been committed” in Gaza.

He continued: “Previous governments have intervened in the Middle East to take action on human rights abuses and protect international trade routes. Is it not about time that military action was taken against Israel as well?”

Ali followed up Tuesday with an X post reiterating his argument, but later deleted the post and a video of his parliamentary remarks. He apologized on Wednesday, saying his remarks “wrongly gave the impression” that he supported the use of military force against Israel.

“Those are not my views, and I apologize unreservedly,” Ali wrote, adding that he does not support military action anywhere in the Middle East and has long campaigned for peace and conflict resolution.


Church rescinds honour for cleric who praised Bin Laden, awarded on 9/11 anniversary
The Church of England has confirmed that it is “urgently reviewing” the circumstances around the Archbishop of Canterbury giving an interfaith award – on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks – to an individual who previously described Osama bin Laden as “a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British”.

On Friday, at an event at Lambeth Palace, Dame Sarah Mullally presented Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi with the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith co-operation. However, the National Secular Society subsequently pointed out that in 2007, the Pakistan Ulema Council, which Ashrafi heads, had bestowed the honorary title of “Saifullah”, or sword of Allah, on Osama Bin Laden. In comments made to Reuters at the time, Ashrafi linked this to knighthood which had been given to the author Salman Rushdie, whose book The Satanic Verses was deemed by many religious Muslims to be offensive to their faith.

“If a blasphemer can be given the title ‘Sir’ by the West despite the fact he’s hurt the feelings of Muslims, then a mujahid who has been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British must be given the lofty title of Islam, Saifullah,” Reuters cited Ashrafi as telling them.

In a statement from the Pakistan Ulema Council, a spokesman said that “regarding Osama Bin Laden, Ashrafi’s remarks have been presented without their proper context. His comparison was not an endorsement of Bin Laden; it was made in the context of explaining the hurt felt by many Muslims over the British honour given to Salman Rushdie. His longstanding record against violence and extremism should be considered when assessing such remarks.”

Following a fatwa [religious decree] by the former Supreme Leader of the Iranian Regime, Ayatollah Khomeini, calling for his assassination and offering a $3 million bounty, Rushdie has spent much of the last few decades in hiding. In 2022, Rushdie was stabbed fifteen times by Hadi Matar, an American-born dual-national US-Lebanese citizen, as he prepared to speak at an event in New York. Rushdie was severely injured but survived the attack.

National Secular Society spokesperson Alejandro Sanchez said: “It is obscene, and almost beyond parody, that the archbishop of Canterbury has awarded an Osama Bin Laden apologist an interfaith award on the anniversary of 9/11. This demonstrates appallingly poor judgement and is an insult to the victims of 9/11 and their families.

“Interfaith engagement must not mean overlooking support for extremism. The archbishop of Canterbury should explain what due diligence was undertaken, whether those responsible knew about his actions, and whether the award will now be withdrawn.”


Mamdani says he won’t protest Netanyahu during UN visit
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that he doesn’t plan to attend protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the leader’s visit to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24.

“I do not have any plans to attend any protest at the U.N. General Assembly,” he told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday. “I have also been in touch with our police department in general as we prepare for the U.N. General Assembly.”

“There are no expected threats that we know of, and we continue to be confident in being able to deliver safety and security for New Yorkers,” he said.

Mamdani, who campaigned on having the Israeli premier arrested, later said that he lacked the authority to detain the prime minister. He has called on federal authorities to arrest Netanyahu.

Some New York City Police Department members reportedly have said that the mayor encouraging New Yorkers to protest the Israeli leader could put city police officers in danger.

Netanyahu is expected in the city next week for the annual gathering of world leaders at U.N. headquarters in Turtle Bay.

In late July, Mamdani was asked what he would tell Palestinian New Yorkers disappointed that he could not fulfill his campaign pledge to arrest Netanyahu and what they should do if the Israeli premier attended the General Assembly in September.

“I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest,” Mamdani said at the time. “I am simply saying that this is a city where, if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect.”

“I leave it to New Yorkers themselves to make that decision,” he said at the time.

Mamdani said on Wednesday that he never suggested that New Yorkers protest the Israeli prime minister.

“To New Yorkers, I have never encouraged them to protest,” he said. “What I have always told them is that they have the right to do so in the city. We respect that right, and this is a city that is proud of the Constitution, proud of the First Amendment. We’ll continue to do so.”
Trump admin again denies Abbas, Palestinian officials visas to attend UN General Assembly
For the second straight year, the Trump administration denied visas to the Palestinian Authority delegation for the United Nations General Assembly.

The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that the authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization “have, once again, failed to live up to their commitments” by using international lawfare against Israel instead of seeking a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“This includes initiating and supporting actions at international organizations that undermine and contradict prior commitments,” and “taking actions to internationalize” the conflict through the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, Foggy Bottom said.

It added that the PA and PLO seek to “bypass negotiations through seeking unilateral recognition.”

The State Department also said that the PA is “continuing to pay stipends to terrorists and glorify acts of terrorism and terrorists in public pronouncements and school textbooks.”

The State Department granted waivers to those stationed at the Palestinian “observer” mission to the United Nations.

The statement doesn’t mention next week’s U.N. General Assembly high-level debate week, but the timing isn’t coincidental.


HonestReporting and UN Watch: ⁠Apartheid, Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity: Hillel Neuer on Who Wrote the Charges Against Israel
Twenty-five years ago, the UN held a World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Hillel Neuer says it became "a notorious hate fest."

Thousands marched through Durban equating Zionism with Nazism. Copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were handed out on the sidelines. On September 3, 2001, Colin Powell pulled the American delegation out, and Israel walked out with them.

Happening simultaneously was the NGO Forum, a civil-society gathering rather than the governments' conference. Their declaration branded Israel a "racist, apartheid state" guilty of "acts of genocide." That was 2001, twenty-two years before October 7.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, comes back on The Honest Take to trace where that vocabulary came from: the Soviet propaganda campaign that cast Israel as colonialist and racist, the 1975 General Assembly resolution declaring Zionism a form of racism, its repeal in 1991, and its revival at Durban a decade later.

They get into who was in the room. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch were there. The Ford Foundation had funded groups that attended. Congressman Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in Congress, called it "the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews" he had seen since the Nazi period.

And they get into what happens next. On Monday, September 28, 2026, the General Assembly holds a day-long high-level meeting marking 25 years since Durban. It's the fourth such commemoration. While in 2001 two countries walked out, in 2009 ten pulled out, and in 2021, 38 did.

Also: why Neuer says the founders of the human rights movement were Zionists, what the UN has done about antisemitism since October 7, the Secretary-General's "didn't happen in a vacuum" remark, and the special rapporteur system, and why Neuer told Francesca Albanese to go ahead and sue him.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold Open & Introducing Hillel Neuer
2:57 "A notorious hate fest"
5:09 Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the Ford Foundation
5:59 From Soviet propaganda to "Zionism is racism"
8:20 The founders of human rights were Zionists
10:49 Mary Robinson and the "Durban strategy"
15:23 September 28, and who stayed away before
19:14 142 to 3: why most countries won't take a stand
24:20 What the UN has done since October 7
27:20 Rapporteurs "totally out of control"
30:27 Falk, Ban Ki-moon, and what Albanese told Middle East Eye
32:12 Albanese threatens to sue
35:19 How to get involved


The United Nations – with Hillel Neuer
As world leaders gather in New York for a new session of the United Nations General Assembly, Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, joins host Aviva Klompas to examine the power and politics of an institution he has spent more than two decades scrutinizing.

They discuss the influence authoritarian regimes wield within the UN, the disproportionate attention directed at Israel, and the political forces that help explain that focus. The conversation also tackles a larger dilemma: if democracies retreat from international institutions they believe have become deeply politicized, do they simply surrender those institutions to authoritarian regimes?
First Amendment doesn’t protect Albanese’s overseas speech, Trump admin says
The Trump administration asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn a May 2026 ruling that blocked U.S. sanctions against Francesca Albanese, a United Nations special rapporteur. The government argued that Albanese, whom the global body considers an “independent expert,” doesn’t have free speech rights under the Constitution as a non-U.S. citizen.

In a 65-page brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the U.S. Department of Justice argued that the lower court erred in finding that Albanese was likely protected by the First Amendment in her efforts to spur International Criminal Court action against Israeli officials.

The court, based in The Hague, is an independent judicial body not associated with the United Nations, and the United States and Israel are not parties to the court.

Albanese, who is not a plaintiff in the case, is an Italian citizen who lives outside the United States, and the speech at issue occurred abroad, according to the filing. Albanese’s husband, Massimiliano Cali, and their U.S.-citizen daughter challenged the designation.

“The U.S. is right to appeal,” Hillel Neuer, executive director of United Nations Watch, told JNS. “The First Amendment does not give a foreign UN official living abroad a constitutional right to use her mandate to advance ICC prosecutions against Americans and Israelis.”

“This was never simply about Albanese expressing controversial opinions,” Neuer said. “As UN Watch documented in our amicus brief, she repeatedly used her UN position to press the ICC for investigations, indictments and arrest warrants, and even threatened American organizations with criminal prosecution. That is targeted action, not academic commentary.”

Neuer recommended that the U.S. maintain the sanctions “and the UN must stop treating Albanese as untouchable.”

“She is acting as the de facto spokesperson of Hamas,” he told JNS. It’s time to terminate her mandate, stop shielding her misconduct, and hold her accountable for turning a human rights position into a weapon of political and legal warfare.”


JNS TV: “Ayatollahs Will FALL” Israeli Amb. Shares Stunning Prediction On Iran’s Future
Israel’s ambassador to Washington says Iran’s regime will fall...and when it does, the entire Middle East could be transformed. In this explosive conversation with JNS CEO Alex Traiman, Ambassador Yechiel Leiter reveals the extraordinary level of U.S.-Israel coordination behind the war with Iran and says Israel is ready to return to military action if necessary. Leiter also sounds the alarm over Turkey’s growing regional ambitions, explains Israel’s new post-October 7 defense doctrine and reveals why Israel will not withdraw from Gaza or southern Lebanon until Hamas and Hezbollah are dismantled. Plus, the ambassador discusses the future of U.S. military aid and delivers a deeply personal message about Israeli unity after the death of his son fighting Hamas.


UKLFI: Natasha Hausdorff discusses NAZA "documentary" allegations about IDF in Gaza
A new documentary about Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza has made serious allegations about how the IDF selects targets and assesses potential civilian casualties.

NAZA relies heavily on testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence personnel to portray a system in which large numbers of civilian deaths were knowingly accepted and artificial intelligence allegedly played a significant role in identifying targets. The IDF has strongly rejected that portrayal.

UKLFI Charitable Trust has not seen the documentary itself. This interview is based on published reports about its contents, the film’s trailer and a clip that has circulated publicly.

In this interview, UKLFI Charitable Trust Legal Director Natasha Hausdorff examines the allegations against the legal framework governing armed conflict.

She explains the principle of proportionality and why anticipating potential civilian casualties does not, in itself, make an attack unlawful. Hausdorff argues that assessing expected civilian harm before a strike is an essential part of complying with the law of armed conflict, rather than evidence of an intention to harm.

The discussion also examines one of the documentary’s most striking reported allegations: that an IDF attack was approved in which as many as 500 civilians could be killed to eliminate a single Hamas target. The IDF has described that claim as “completely false”. Hausdorff discusses both the evidential problems surrounding the allegation and the legal question it raises: international humanitarian law does not prescribe a fixed numerical ceiling for civilian casualties. Proportionality requires expected civilian harm to be assessed against the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated in the particular attack.

Hausdorff also addresses claims concerning the IDF’s use of artificial intelligence, including systems such as Lavender and Habsora. She discusses the IDF’s stated position that technological systems assist intelligence analysis but do not make decisions to attack, which remain decisions for human personnel. The IDF’s published account says each strike requires an individual assessment of anticipated military advantage and expected civilian harm.

The interview considers how much evidential weight can be placed on anonymous testimony when the identities, roles, access and first-hand knowledge of sources cannot independently be examined; the distinction between allegations concerning individual incidents and evidence of a systematic IDF policy; the legal significance of Hamas operating within a densely populated civilian environment; and allegations that Israel is being judged by standards not applied to other Western militaries.

Hausdorff concludes that the material described publicly does not establish the systematic policy alleged by the filmmakers. She also stresses that this doesn't mean every individual strike during the war was lawful and that specific allegations with identifiable dates and locations should be investigated.




Dutch cinema drops Oct. 7 screening of ‘NAZA’
A Dutch movie theater had scheduled an Oct. 7 screening of “NAZA,” a documentary widely seen as anti-Israel, but appeared to have removed it from its online schedule amid an outcry on Thursday.

Filmhuis Lumen in Delft, near Rotterdam, this week initially scheduled screenings of “NAZA” on Oct. 4, Oct. 7 and Oct. 11, making it one of the first theaters in the world to screen the film following its premiere last week at the Venice International Film Festival. The film won the festival’s Special Jury Prize.

The theater then dropped the Oct. 7 screening of the film, which alleges that Israel systematically targeted Palestinian civilians during the war against Hamas in Gaza. Israeli officials and others have dismissed the film as a mendacious instrument of anti-Israel propaganda. The change followed criticism online, including on Lumen’s Facebook page, over the Oct. 7 screening.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned “NAZA” as an “intolerable” and “terrible” film that “slanders IDF soldiers” and portrays Israeli soldiers as war criminals. The film was co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and named for the Hebrew military acronym for “collateral damage.”

Filmhuis Lumen did not reply by press time to a JNS query about what led to its decision to drop the Oct. 7 screening, which would have fallen on the third anniversary of Hamas’s massacres. Hamas terrorists and other Gazans killed about 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023, among other atrocities.

Oded Nir, a member of the Consulting Board of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, also known as Habithonistim, condemned the decision to screen the film on that date and said it was indicative of indifference in Western Europe to Israeli casualties.


Four Convicted in Iranian Plot to Assassinate Israeli Nuclear Scientist
The Jerusalem District Court convicted four residents of Jerusalem’s Beit Safafa neighborhood on Wednesday in a case involving an alleged Iranian-directed plan to kill an Israeli nuclear scientist and his family, the State Attorney’s Office said.

The four pleaded guilty under a plea agreement to offenses concerning their own roles in the case; none was convicted of planning the killing. Proceedings against three other defendants, including the man prosecutors say received the assassination assignment, are continuing.

Mamdouh Khader and Omri Abu Hamida were convicted of failing to prevent a terrorist act. Mahmoud Khader and Muhammad Taha were convicted of helping another defendant maintain contact with a foreign agent.

According to the amended indictment, a person acting on Iran’s behalf contacted defendant Rami Alyan in September 2024 and offered payment for assignments. Prosecutors allege that Alyan was later told to form a cell to kill the scientist and his family.

Khader and Abu Hamida joined a drive to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. During the journey, another defendant told the passengers that the trip was part of an assignment from the Iranian contact, the indictment said.

Convicted for failing to take steps to prevent assassination plan
Security personnel refused the group entry, and two other defendants filmed the entrance. After they returned to Jerusalem, Abu Hamida asked why the Iranians wanted the footage and was told that someone at the location was a person they wanted to kill. Khader and Abu Hamida took no steps to prevent the plan, according to the indictment.

Mahmoud Khader admitted helping to spray and photograph writing in Jerusalem. He also drove another defendant to collect two stun grenades and helped obtain a fake police license plate intended for footage that would appear to show an attack on a patrol car.
Sweden expels Iranian diplomat for targeting Jews
Sweden has expelled an Iranian embassy employee and summoned the country’s ambassador for allegedly threatening Jewish and Israeli interests in Sweden, the country’s justice minister said on Wednesday.

“We know that Iran, over a long period of time, has conducted activities that threaten security in and against Sweden, targeting both individuals who oppose the Iranian regime and various Jewish and Israeli interests in our country,” Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said in a statement to AFP. “This has, among other things, been done by making use of criminal networks.”

The Iranian embassy did not immediately respond to AFP‘s request for comment, the news agency reported.

The Swedish Security Service (Sapo) has previously accused Iran of recruiting criminal gang members to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden, a claim Iran has denied.

“When it comes to what has prompted the government’s announcement today, I am not in a position to go into any details, as it concerns our intelligence work,” Sapo spokesman Jonathan Svensson told AFP.

“We can confirm that Iran continues to engage in activities that pose security threats in and against Sweden. This includes, among other things, attempts to use proxies, such as criminal networks, to carry out attacks or acts of violence,” he said.

In June 2024, two containers packed with plastic explosives were found outside the offices of Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems in Gothenburg. In October that year, a 13-year-old boy discharged a firearm at the entrance to an Elbit Systems facility.

A Swedish court in April 2025 sentenced four teenagers to prison for recruiting the boy to carry out the shooting.

In May 2025, gunshots were fired outside the Israeli embassy.

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said on Wednesday that the embassy employee was asked to leave over “activities that are not compatible with the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.”
Satellite images show Iran rapidly working to rebuild nuclear site bombed by Israel
Iran is rapidly advancing the reconstruction of a nuclear facility that was previously bombed by Israel, according to satellite images cited in a report Thursday by the Institute for Science and International Security.

The Washington-based institute said Iran has been “rapidly moving forward with the reconstruction of the Taleghan 2 facility,” located at the Parchin military complex, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Tehran.

Taleghan 2 was struck by Israel in October 2024, during a retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on Israel earlier that month, and was bombed again by the Israeli Air Force in March amid the latest war, after the military said Iran had been restoring the site following the first strikes.

The IDF has said that in recent years, Iran used the site for “the development of advanced explosives and for conducting sensitive experiments as part of the AMAD Project,” Iran’s alleged secret nuclear weapons development program between the late 1990s and 2003.

Western intelligence has suggested Tehran carried out tests relevant to nuclear bomb detonations at Taleghan 2 more than two decades ago.

In its latest report, the institute said Vantor Technologies satellite imagery from September 13 shows that “Iran has erected a tarp above the destroyed hardened buried facility, hiding the reconstruction activity that is occurring underneath from satellite view or aerial reconnaissance.”

“Significant activity can be seen throughout the construction site. Construction vehicles, including dump trucks, bulldozers, concrete pump trucks and concrete mixers, and cranes, are actively working to rebuild the facility,” the report said.


Hizbullah's Surrender of Ali Al Taher Has Cost It Legitimacy in Lebanon
The Ali Al Taher ridge, which overlooks the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh, housed an extensive tunnel network and an operational Hizbullah command center. The Lebanese government had asked Hizbullah to hand it over to the Lebanese army instead of allowing Israel to occupy it. Hizbullah refused to comply, seeing this as an unwelcome precedent for similar handovers in other parts of Lebanon at a time when the Lebanese authorities seek to impose a monopoly over weapons.

Even if many in the Shiite community continue to sympathize with Hizbullah, all of the Shiite-majority villages in the Lebanon-Israel border area have been razed by the Israelis. It is unknown whether the Shiite community can continue to support the group when the Israeli response has already swallowed an area seen as the heart and soul of the community's presence in Lebanon.

While there have been reports of Iran trying to rearm the group through smuggling networks in Syria, and sending funds through regional countries, this seems hardly enough to turn it into the fighting force it once was. Hizbullah can engage in small operations against Israeli forces, but for now these are highly unlikely to change much, given Israel's technological superiority.

However, Hizbullah's major problem remains one of national legitimacy. The group worked hard over the decades to anchor its anti-Israel stance in a national consensus, which was formally approved in government statements endorsing the role of the resistance. This is no longer present, as many Lebanese now consider the group to be an Iranian proxy force that has led their country to disaster.
Israeli Commandos Hunted Hizbullah Underground for 3 Months before Blowing Up Ali Taher Ridge
Israeli commandos and combat engineers conducted three months of exhausting ambushes, close-range fighting and underground warfare on southern Lebanon's Ali Taher Ridge to clear it before blowing up the major Hizbullah strategic underground complex.

Lt.-Col. D., commander of a combat engineering company, described working in thick vegetation, boulders, and at a distance from other Israeli forces, while dozens of Hizbullah forces operated in the area and repeatedly targeted Israeli troops with drones and indirect fire.

As Israeli forces advanced, they began discovering the scale of Hizbullah's preparations on the ridge. Lt.-Col. R., commander of the Maglan commando unit, said, "We put together the intelligence picture on the ground and realized there was a fortified site that had been prepared for a very long time....Every soldier would prepare for an ambush lasting several days, move covertly, reach the position, remain there hidden with special equipment and wait patiently." During the operation, dozens of Hizbullah forces were killed either by drones or in close-range fighting.

IDF troops used a series of classified measures aimed at forcing Hizbullah out of the tunnels, D. said. Israeli forces cut off supplies being delivered by drones and conducted searches on foot for shafts, using clues such as metal beneath rocks, openings in the ground, and weapons positioned near suspected exits. One underground route was penetrated after a month and a second after six weeks.

D. added, "The morale in the unit is among the most exceptional I have ever encountered. The soldiers of the company did not go home for three months. They didn't wash their faces and didn't eat like normal people. They slept outside in the brush, in the cold and the heat, for hours during long ambushes. They did what was needed to complete the mission because they understood its importance. They did not complain."


IDF Chief: "Hamas Has Been Defeated"
During a security briefing this month, Brig.-Gen. Ofir Mizrahi, head of the Research Division in IDF Intelligence, warned, "We identify a desire by Hamas to renew governance...recruit people, build up its strength and restore its capabilities. We need to pay attention to the fact that Hamas is still a threatening organization."

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir responded, "Those are their intentions. But alongside that, I am telling you...Hamas is a defeated organization. It does not fire."

"We are eliminating its weapons depots, we are eliminating its senior figures and those who carried out Oct. 7. It does not respond, and therefore it can be said that Hamas has been defeated."

However, he was not saying that Hamas had been destroyed or disarmed. The military intends to continue operating against the group until it is demilitarized.

The IDF now controls 64% of Gaza. According to the Israeli assessment, Hamas is not currently receiving the same support from regional states and organizations that previously backed it, in part because many of those are themselves under pressure from Israel.


PragerU: How Turkey Is Using Middle East Instability to Become a Regional Power | John Spencer
Urban warfare expert ‪@johnspencerwarscholar‬ joins PragerU CEO ‪@realtalkwithmarissa‬ to explain how the wars reshaping the Middle East are creating new opportunities for rising powers like Turkey. Spencer breaks down Turkey’s growing ambitions, Israel’s security concerns, the collapse of Assad’s regime in Syria, and why Syria has become a central battleground for regional power competition. He also explains what modern urban warfare reveals about the conflicts in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Gaza, and why Americans should pay attention to conflicts that may seem far away.

00:00 John Spencer on Urban Warfare
00:31 John’s 25 Years in the U.S. Military
03:46 What Makes Urban Warfare Different?
06:09 What Makes Someone a Military Expert?
08:45 Cities, Civilians, and the Laws of War
12:07 Proportionality and Civilian Harm in Urban Combat
17:45 When Terrorists Use Western Values Against Us
23:23 Nagorno-Karabakh and the Battle of Shusha
29:39 Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Rising Regional Powers
34:07 Ukraine, Kyiv, and the Mini-Manual for Urban Defense
39:45 Drones, Delta, and the Future of Warfare
47:48 Why America Gets Involved in Foreign Wars
53:20 What the Media Missed About India and Pakistan




Democrats push back on White House’s planned $2.8 billion sale of bombs to Israel
Congressional Democrats are taking steps to attempt to halt a planned $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, which is reportedly set to be financed with U.S. foreign military funding.

Rep. Greg Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he is placing a procedural hold on the sale, citing concerns that the weapons would be used in violation of U.S. and international law.

“I remain firmly committed to Israel’s security and its ability to defend itself against serious regional threats,” Meeks said in a statement. “But the Trump administration’s proposed sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, some of the most destructive munitions in our arsenal, raises grave, unresolved concerns about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon.”

Meeks, who has historically been a strong supporter of Israel, added that the administration had failed to provide “sufficient assurances” that the weapons would be used in line with American law and with protections for civilians.

“I therefore will not clear this sale at this time. This decision does not diminish Congressional support for Israel’s legitimate defense needs; it reflects Congress’s responsibility to ensure that U.S.-funded weapons are used lawfully, responsibly, and with meaningful safeguards for human life,” Meeks continued.

The administration can — and has in the past — sidestepped such efforts by Meeks, but doing so has historically been an unusual step.

Meanwhile, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has helped lead efforts in the past to force Senate votes to block military sales to Israel, also vowed to step in.


Terror-Loving Palestinian Reporters’ Group Is Behind Notorious List of ‘Journalists’ Slain in Gaza: Group Manipulates Western Orgs ‘To Pass Off Terrorists as Journalists’
A little-known Palestinian journalist group—which is behind the widely publicized claims by American media figures that Israel is intentionally murdering journalists in Gaza—is a radical, "pro-terrorist" operation in the West Bank whose leader regularly invokes bloodshed and touts terrorists as "heroes," according to a watchdog investigation obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The group, known as the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate (PJS), is led by a "pro-terrorist official" who has glorified "individual terrorists with blood on their hands" and advocated on behalf of imprisoned jihadists. The PJS is a Ramallah-based media union that cites "struggle against the occupation" as one of its core missions and has played an outsized role in seeding spurious claims that Israel is "silencing the press through killing." Two of the world's most prominent journalist advocacy groups—the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)—have relied heavily on PJS's research to build their widely cited lists of "journalists" killed in Gaza.

PJS, for instance, served as "a top source" for the CPJ's much-disputed list of "journalist casualties in the Israeli-Gaza war," according to a review by the media watchdog group HonestReporting. PJS is referenced in more than a quarter of the embattled group's profiles of those "journalists" supposedly killed by Israel. The CPJ—which descended into turmoil and infighting after the Free Beacon revealed that its list includes many confirmed terrorists and also exposed the virulent anti-Israel sentiment among its board members—is currently conducting a wholesale review of its list.

PJS also maintains a formal partnership with the IFJ, the world's largest press advocacy group, where its president, Nasser Abu Bakr, also serves as a senior vice president. The IFJ was notably caught in late July by the Free Beacon quietly erasing the names of terrorists from its own widely cited list of slain journalists, which is also built primarily on data supplied by PJS. Abu Bakr, meanwhile, allegedly sits on the Fatah Party's so-called Revolutionary Council, the main parliamentary body of the Palestinian government's largest faction, challenging the narrative that he is a neutral media advocate.

"PJS, despite being a pro-terrorist organization, serves as the wellspring from which international journalism organizations wet their lips before slandering Israel with the narrative that the IDF deliberately targets journalists," HonestReporting said in its report. "With PJS as a major source, it comes as no surprise that CPJ and IFJ databases are rife with terrorists passed off as journalists."

PJS is one of the "most cited source[s] on CPJ's database of slain Gazan journalists, cited for information about 58 media workers," according to HonestReporting's independent audit. "This accounts for 26.6% of the 218 Gazan journalists on the CPJ database that were reviewed by HonestReporting. This includes 9 removed individuals." HonestReporting separately determined in late August that CPJ still includes at least 120 names linked to Hamas and other terror factions on its list, well over half of the 209 names included.

The IFJ, meanwhile, states online that it works "closely with its affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate to verify information in real time" before including individuals on its own highly scrutinized list of slain Gaza journalists. The Free Beacon first reported in July that the IFJ removed eight confirmed terrorists from its list with no public acknowledgment, fuelling questions about the organization's credibility and repeated claims that "the Israeli army has deliberately targeted journalists."

Abu Bakr and his PJS are far from neutral observers in Israel's conflict with Hamas, according to HonestReporting, which bluntly describes the group as "a radical and partisan" front organization "led by a pro-terrorist politician."
Data Analysis of 14.7 Million News Articles Finds Outsized Global Focus on Israel
An analysis of nearly 14.7 million news articles published across 65 languages found that Israel received more international media coverage per capita than any country with at least 5 million residents in nine of the ten annual periods examined, with the disparity appearing even during periods without a major Israeli war.

Researcher and writer Jeremy Musighi highlighted the findings in a September 16 thread based on his recently published analysis, “Center of Attention”. The project examined international online news from 2017 through August 2026, television coverage and a more limited set of social-media indicators.

Musighi sampled 14,679,657 articles from the GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, using both its English-language and machine-translated international feeds. Domestic outlets were excluded when measuring coverage of their own countries. An article was classified as primarily about a country when that country received the largest number of geographic references in the story, according to the analysis’s methodology.

For its main per-capita rankings, the analysis excluded countries with populations below 5 million to prevent small states from disproportionately dominating the results. Musighi states that lowering the threshold to 1 million residents does not change Israel’s ranking.

The results place Israel well outside the normal range for a country of roughly 10 million people.

Across the period examined, Israel ranked first in international coverage per capita in every annual sample except 2022, when it ranked fourth behind Ukraine, Switzerland and Ireland following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Averaged across the decade, Israel still received 2.4 times as much coverage per capita as Sweden, the second-ranked country, according to the analysis. In absolute volume, Israel ranked sixth worldwide, behind only the United States, China, Britain, Russia and France.

The Disparity Existed Before October 7
The difference cannot be explained solely by the war that followed Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack.

In 2019, a comparatively quiet year in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one out of every 112 international articles in Musighi’s sample was primarily about Israel. Israel ranked seventh worldwide in absolute coverage that year and first per capita, according to the dataset.

Scaled against GDELT’s total monitored output, the analysis estimates that roughly 1.5 million international articles were primarily about Israel in 2019, approximately one article for every seven Israeli residents. The comparable figure was one article per 47 Canadians, 340 Brazilians and 1,550 Indians, according to the analysis’s methodology.

Coverage expanded substantially after October 7.

During 2024, approximately one in every 50 international articles sampled was primarily about Israel, while one in 26 mentioned the country. Israel ranked second worldwide in absolute coverage, behind only the United States, and received more than three times as many stories per capita as second-place Sweden.

The sampled volume of stories primarily about Israel also exceeded, separately, the totals for all 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, all 22 members of the Arab League and the countries of South Asia, according to the analysis.


New York Times Owns Up to Two Israel-Related ‘Editing Errors’ in Two Days
A month after lawyers complaining about Nicholas Kristof’s "dog rape" fantasy sent a letter demanding to inspect New York Times Company board records and warning that "sustained editorial failure" could cause the Times to become "a newspaper the public comes to regard as a propaganda operation," the Times has published two additional corrections acknowledging editing errors on Israel-related news.

The first of the two has to do with the size of bombs that the U.S. is supplying to Israel. "Corrected on Sept. 15, 2026: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified the size of the bombs that have caused widespread civilian harm in Gaza. They are 2,000 pounds, not 40,000 pounds," the article now reads.

The second concerns a line that, while technically accurate, infuriated a lot of Times readers who were vocal in their dismay about it. That article now carries this appendage: "Editors’ Note: Sept. 16, 2026 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article included a statement that was intended to convey Israelis’ perception of the government’s military response to the Oct. 7 terror attack in relation to the attacks, but inadvertently suggested that Israelis’ experience as terror victims was a matter of perception. It has been removed from the article."

A social media post by Eitan Fischberger highlighting the original line—"But Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of Oct. 7," with Fischberger’s comment, "What the f**k is this, @nytimes"—had 1.5 million impressions on X, highlighting the way that the X platform has helped to level the playing field between the legacy or "mainstream" media outlets such as the Times and individuals such as Fischberger.

Fischberger is the grandson of Rabbi Avi Weiss, a heroic grassroots activist on behalf of Soviet Jewry and other causes and the founding rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx. Fischberger, who is based in Israel and called Weiss his mentor, inspiration, and role model, told the Washington Free Beacon, "Apparently the Times needed a viral backlash to be reminded that the victims of a terrorist massacre are, in fact, victims."

"The bigger lesson is that social media can be an extraordinary force multiplier for accountability. It can take something the Times might otherwise have gotten away with, and turn it into something the paper can no longer ignore," Fischberger said, though he noted it "only works if the public refuses to grow numb or shrug this stuff off as the status quo."





 


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