Saturday, September 19, 2026

09/18 Links Pt1: NAZA doc accusing Israel of war crimes actually proves the opposite; Britain’s Israel sanctions clash with US anti-boycott laws

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: The left lobs yet another ‘Big Lie’ on Israel — and the fallout keeps getting worse
The left’s Big Lies about Israel keep growing bigger — as do the ugly consequences.

The latest: Rep. Gregory Meeks’ bid to place a “hold” on a $2.8 billion sale of US bombs to the Jewish state.

“The Trump administration’s proposed sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs . . . raises grave, unresolved concerns about how these munitions could be used in densely populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon,” huffed Meeks; it’s empty virtue-signaling, since he can’t actually stop the sale.

How bad have the lies about Israel gotten?
These are weapons needed to destroy underground tunnels and bunkers; withholding them helps sustain Hamas and Hezbollah, though Meeks claims he backs Israel’s right to defend itself from the terrorists.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) likewise opposed the sale, claiming preposterously that “US weapons are being used to perpetrate a genocide.”

It’s all nonsense: Israel has never — never — used bombs indiscriminately or where it believed major civilian casualties were likely, let alone to “perpetrate a genocide.”

And there’s no legitimate fear it ever would.

These charges fit with a slew of whoppers in a new film, “NAZA” (an acronym for the Hebrew words for “collateral damage”), that the Israel Defense Forces used AI to identify targets in Gaza and carried out strikes knowing they’d mostly kill civilians.

Contrary to the vicious smears, the IDF never leaves targeting decisions to AI, nor would it proceed with a strike if it expected a high civilian-casualty rate.

What makes these lies especially heinous is that the precise opposite is true: Israel goes to lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

Even as Hamas tries to maximize them by using them as human shields.

Urban warfare expert John Spencer, who’s studied the war in Gaza, reports that Jerusalem has “implemented more civilian harm mitigation measures than any military in history.”
Eugene Kontorovich: Britain’s Israel sanctions clash with US anti-boycott laws
All these boycott measures are, at least in part, incompatible with U.S. federal anti-boycott laws. Measures were originally adopted in the 1970s in response to the Arab League Boycott to bar Americans from “comply[ing] with, further[ing], or support[ing] any boycott fostered or imposed by any foreign country, against a country which is friendly to the United States.” Laws prohibiting investments, financing, construction, or property ownership in Israel fall squarely within that prohibition.

Moreover, because companies want to do business, and because boycotts create a victimless crime, boycotting countries have always had to engage in extensive enforcement efforts. The U.S. anti-boycott law prohibits participating in the enforcement process, even for companies that are not engaged in a boycott. For example, to enforce its boycott, the U.K. will have to ask anyone importing goods from Israel whether they’re from what it considers a prohibited location.

Simply “furnishing information” needed to enforce boycott measures is forbidden by U.S. anti-boycott law, even if the company is not itself engaged in a boycott. Indeed, most recent enforcement actions by the Department of Commerce are for furnishing information, rather than actual boycott activity.

America’s anti-boycott laws are not designed to protect Israel. They are designed to protect American companies from economic coercion by foreign countries in the service of restrictive and discriminatory trade policies that America does not share. These countries are not trying to convince companies to boycott Israel. They are forcing them to boycott Israel. U.S. anti-boycott laws seek to disable such coercion by making those laws unenforceable.

And it works. The measures are widely credited with helping end the Arab League boycott and ultimately setting the stage for the Abraham Accords.

It doesn’t matter that the boycotts are said to apply to “settlements,” as this literally includes Jerusalem, where the U.S. recognizes Israeli sovereignty, and the American Embassy resides.

The Trump administration must make clear that the new boycott measures will raise significant compliance problems for U.S. business, as even the Biden administration did when Turkey announced a boycott during the Gaza war. Moreover, federal law requires the Treasury Department to maintain a “list of countries which require or may require participation in or cooperation with an international boycott.” The U.K. (along with Spain and Ireland, which also recently adopted narrower boycott measures) should be put on that list, which currently only contains the bitter enders of the Arab League.

Israel has responded by saying it will close the U.K.’s unaccredited consulate in Jerusalem, a reasonable move that might have even more impact if done in response to the U.K.’s recognition of a Palestinian state. Israel could go further by denying visas to hostile British nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty and Oxfam. Part of the U.K.’s boycott includes a partial ban on arms sales. Israel would be within its rights to scale back export licenses for its crucial defense technologies, which are in high demand around the world.

Future right-leaning governments will hopefully abandon the boycott, as Slovenia’s has. And if a sufficient example is made of the U.K., its fellow travelers may choose to change course. But this won’t happen unless both Jerusalem and Washington go beyond mere expressions of displeasure.
Gil Troy: To bland Mr. Miliband living in la-la land: Your antics aren’t bold. They’re bovine
Miliband pulled a Mary Poppins, adding spoonfuls of sugar so his poison could go down and fool liberals. He blue-and-whitewashed his lies, broadcasting his Jewish identity, then playing the Holocaust card. Blowing more smoke, he condemned Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the crude antisemitism threatening British Jews.

Apparently, even British Labourites can still reject these horrors.

But Miliband quickly started working his con, which has bamboozled millions. His 2,600-word speech omitted Hamas’s continued abuse of Gazans and ongoing attacks against Israel, treating October 7 as a one-time explosion. You’d think Hamas then stopped fighting.

Similarly, Miliband’s litany of Israel and “settler” sins never acknowledged Palestinian violence, provocations, or imperfections – beyond vaguely requesting “effective Palestinian governance.”

We learn: Hamas was “bad,” but “the Palestinians,” Jesus-like, suffer from the oppressive Jews. Israel is the only obstacle to peace and to Miliband’s Holy Grail, the “two-state solution.”

He ignored thousands of Palestinian terrorists who threatened Israelis before and after October 7, in Gaza and the territories – with 6,828 Palestinian terror incidents outside Gaza in 2024 alone.

He overlooked what Col. (ret.) Miri Eisin, senior fellow at the International Institute for Counterterrorism, calls “tens of thousands of weapons,” hidden in “almost every single house” in Judea and Samaria in order to kill Israelis – or seize land where Israelis farm.

He discounted the smuggling of “heavy-duty weapons” from Iran via Jordan, increasingly, by hard-to-track drones. He obscured the “pay-to-slay” policies of the saintly Palestinian Authority, forgetting that this supposedly moderate PA sabotaged the Oslo peace process years before Hamas blew any chance of peace by making Gaza “Hamasistan” – destroying many Israelis’ faith in the two-state solution.

Miliband’s cockeyed narrative echoed and legitimized anti-Zionists’ ongoing character assassination of Israel as fundamentally flawed, blaming Israel first, last, and always.

Escalating, Miliband accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in Judea and Samaria. Ethnic cleansing echoes a Serbo-Croatian phrase Serbian militias used as they brutally expelled one million Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the early 1990s, killing over 100,000, 80% of them Muslim.

In 1993, UN experts defined the term as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Ethnic cleansing in Rwanda involved Hutus murdering over 800,000 Tutsi in 100 days.

In Darfur, it described Arab Janjaweed forces expelling over 2.7 million non-Arab, African ethnic groups, leaving over 300,000 dead. UK foreign secretary accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing

By contrast, Miliband reported: “since 2023... over 4,000 Palestinians” were “evicted from their homes due to settler violence and state actions” – while 3.4 million Palestinians still live in the West Bank.

As with the “genocide” libel, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” pushes what academics delicately call “concept creep” to grotesque extremes. It’s concept free-fall, exposing the accusers as ridiculous – or malevolent. To indict Israel, the worst crimes in international law keep being drained of their meaning, with once-clear thresholds obliterated.

At what point can we fairly call out this disproportionate stampede toward injustice as unfair, hysterical, and depressingly familiar to those who recognize antisemitism, even when perfumed with human rights talk?

Diplomatic wilding against Israel risks becoming a new Olympic sport. These assaults thrill anti-Zionist haters. They bypass all the Miliband weasel words. They simply welcome Britain, Canada, Norway, and these other countries now threatening to imprison their own citizens for selling flowers or wine imported from the “bad Jews” as allies in their jihadist crusade to destroy the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

It’s curious. No Palestinians are boycotted, not even convicted terrorists cashing their latest PA check for murdering innocents.

This latest affront – coming 49 days before the Israeli elections – is counterproductive. It emboldens the marginal Israeli minority cheering violent settlers.


Ruthie Blum: Lying for a standing ovation won’t protect the screenwriters of ‘NAZA’ from the Israel-haters
The plot of the drama-disguised-as-a-documentary is based on anonymous testimony from 24 soldiers in the elite Unit 8200, under the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate. These purported “insiders” were filmed on rooftops in Tel Aviv, with their faces and voices distorted to protect their identities.

How convenient for all the accusers involved: They can tell whatever stories they like without having to produce a shred of evidence for their false claims of the targeted mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

Government officials and the IDF responded with anger and outrage. Nearly the entire political spectrum condemned Avraham and Szor. The notable exceptions were the Arab parties and The Democrats, led by Yair Golan.

That’s hardly surprising. Golan, a retired major general who served as deputy IDF chief of staff, caused an uproar in May 2025 when he suggested that Israel was “killing babies in Gaza as a hobby.” He later claimed that he had meant to refer to the government, not the army, stating that the military “is in my home and in my heart.” But nobody believed him—neither his supporters nor his detractors.

Something similar can be said about the reaction to Avraham and Szor. The couple currently basking in the spotlight assumed—and still seem to believe—that loudly denouncing their homeland would earn them membership in the anti-Zionist family beyond the borders of the Jewish state. But some of the responses they received from Israel-haters demonstrate just how conditional that love is.

One post on X, for example, described the production as “more shooting and crying award fodder.”

Another, on Reddit, called the film “a big psyop,” going on to state, “I’m Palestinian. I think that the movie is a way to Israeli society to launder their image. Also having two Israelis believed after seeing so much doubt about Palestinian reporting leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.”

Freed hostage Liri Albag summed up the phenomenon perfectly on Instagram. Addressing Avraham, she said, “You know that even if you were only in the army for two weeks and got discharged because of your political views, if you’d fallen into Hamas captivity, to them you’d have been a soldier regardless? And they probably would have abused you for being a soldier.”

As we have learned from all the released hostages, even if he hadn’t served in the IDF, he would have been beaten and sexually tormented. Indeed, siding with the enemy has never protected Jews from the literal and figurative gas chambers.
NAZA, the money trail, and what the film leaves out about October 7
The IDF categorically rejected the allegations, saying it could not verify the identities, roles, or relevant knowledge of the anonymous sources and disputing claims about how targeting decisions are made.

But the journalistic ecosystem behind the film also deserves scrutiny.

+972 Magazine is published by the nonprofit 972 Advancement of Citizen Journalism. The same nonprofit co-publishes the Hebrew-language Local Call (Sicha Mekomit), with Just Vision. Both publicly describe this partnership.

Now follow the financial trail.

According to +972’s donor disclosures, Local Call received Open Society Foundations grants every year from 2018 through 2024, totaling $562,900.

Open Society Foundations were founded by George Soros, who, according to the organization, has given them more than $32 billion of his personal fortune since 1984.

The documented chain is real, but must be described precisely: Soros founded and financed Open Society; Open Society granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to Local Call; and NAZA, according to its directors, draws partly on investigations published by Local Call, +972 Magazine, and The Guardian.

That does not prove Soros, Open Society Foundations, or another donor directly financed NAZA. I have seen no evidence of such a link. Nor does funding itself prove journalism false.

But funding and institutional context are not irrelevant.

Open Society has also taken clear public positions on the Israel-Hamas War. On November 1, 2023, it unequivocally condemned Hamas’s October 7 attack, calling its cruelty heartbreaking and inexcusable.

In the same statement, however, it said Israel’s campaign was becoming “increasingly indiscriminate” and argued that restrictions on electricity, water, fuel and food, together with bombing, were likely to be judged as collective punishment.

In December 2023, Open Society published a fact sheet saying it supports human-rights organizations documenting what it describes as Israeli abuses and advocating accountability, alongside policy and civil-society groups.

It reported providing $14.3 million in 2023 to groups working on Israel and Palestine, excluding an additional $3.3 million emergency commitment after October 7. The Foundations also say they do not support Hamas and their grantees are committed to nonviolence.

On May 20, 2024, Open Society welcomed the ICC prosecutor’s decision to seek arrest warrants for senior Israeli and Hamas leaders, calling it an important first step toward accountability.

These are Open Society’s own published positions. They do not establish that the Foundations dictated the editorial line of Local Call, +972, or NAZA, but they are relevant context when audiences assess reporting that later becomes the basis of a major international documentary.

Follow the testimony. Follow the credits. And follow the money.

Then ask what has been pushed to the margins: October 7, 2023.

Hamas and other armed groups invaded Israel, murdered about 1,200 people, and abducted around 250. Families were slaughtered in their homes. Young people at the Nova festival were hunted down.

A UN mission led by Pramila Patten later found reasonable grounds to believe rape and gang rape occurred during the October 7 attacks in several locations, and “clear and convincing information” that hostages were subjected to rape, sexualized torture, and other forms of sexual violence.

Yet the horror that began this war is pushed to the margins while Israel’s military response is placed under a microscope.

Civilian deaths in Gaza are tragic. Every innocent child who dies is a catastrophe, and Israel must investigate suspected violations.

But there is a fundamental moral and legal distinction between deliberately murdering civilians and attacking a military target while facing a foreseeable risk of civilian casualties. Assessing possible civilian harm before an attack is not, by itself, proof of an intention to murder civilians.

In my view, NAZA takes an extraordinarily complicated battlefield and compresses it into a devastatingly simple accusation: civilians died, therefore Israel intended to kill them.

That may be powerful propaganda. It is not a serious description of war.

Because these accusations come from Israelis, their international power is multiplied. The social-media takeaway will not be: “Anonymous Israeli sources make allegations disputed by the IDF.”

It will be: “The Israelis themselves admit it.”
MirYam Institute: NAZA doc accusing Israel of war crimes actually proves the opposite
A new documentary about the IDF’s conduct in Gaza is generating international attention. But does the material presented as evidence against Israel actually demonstrate something very different?

For clarity, neither Benjamin Anthony nor John Spencer has seen the full film. This discussion is based on promotional material released from NAZA, television interviews with its co-directors and associated public commentary about the film and its claims.

In this discussion, MirYam Institute CEO Benjamin Anthony is joined by internationally renowned urban warfare expert John Spencer to examine the claims surrounding NAZA and, in particular, its portrayal of the IDF’s approach to collateral damage and the use of artificial intelligence in targeting.

Spencer argues that the material released from the film presents the IDF’s proportionality assessments as evidence against it, when assessing anticipated civilian harm is itself part of the targeting process required under the law of armed conflict.

He explains the wider process surrounding an IDF strike, including intelligence gathering, human decision-making, proportionality assessments, mitigation measures and legal review.

Benjamin also examines the role of Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps and explains why its position within the IDF’s decision-making process matters.

The discussion concludes with Benjamin’s argument that Israel should make more of the footage documenting the October 7 massacre available to the world, and his reflections on the risks Israeli soldiers have taken during ground operations in Gaza.


Fiamma Nirenstein: It's Time To Expose EVERYTHING About Anti-Israel Movie 'Naza'...
Israel isn’t just fighting a war on the battlefield, it’s facing an increasingly fierce battle over its legitimacy across Europe. JNS senior contributing editor and former Italian parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein joins Alex Traiman to unpack the controversy surrounding an Israeli-made film accusing the IDF of deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza, and why its reception at the Venice Film Festival reflects a much larger shift in Europe’s attitude toward Israel. They also examine Britain’s escalating sanctions against Israelis in Judea and Samaria, Israel’s unusually forceful response and which European countries could still emerge as critical allies. Most importantly, Nirenstein explains why Israel may need an entirely new strategy for dealing with Europe...rewarding its friends, confronting its adversaries and refusing to apologize for defending its interests.




Washington tells UN to pick chief to return to its ‘primary purpose,’ not more ‘absurd, politicized, woke ideology’
A U.S. State Department spokesman urged the United Nations to go in a different direction when it selects its new secretary-general, as the U.N. Security Council readies on Friday for its third straw poll for the new chief, who will replace António Guterres.

The new global body leader must help the organization get “back to basics and publicly commit to the changes we require,” the Foggy Bottom spokesman said on Thursday in the department’s first public comments on the high-profile job search.

The next secretary-general ought to return the United Nations to “its primary purpose of maintaining peace and security in the world, rather than the absurd, politicized, woke ideology that has undermined the institution’s effectiveness,” the State Department said.

There is yet to be a clear frontrunner in the race, in which eight candidates remain to succeed Guterres at year’s end. On Friday, the 15 Security Council member states will vote “encourage,” “discourage” or “no opinion” on each candidate in a secret ballot.

The results won’t be released publicly, but in the past, they have invariably found their way to the media.

Friday’s vote won’t have color-coded ballots, meaning that it won’t be known if any of the five permanent council members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—vote “discourage.”

To win, a candidate needs to secure nine “approval” votes and to avoid even a single veto from a permanent member of the Security Council.

Former Costa Rican vice president Rebeca Grynspan, a Jewish economist and U.N. executive, fell to second place in a second round of straw polling on Aug. 21. She got seven “encourage” and four “discourage” votes and four “no opinion” votes.

That was a steep drop from the 10 “encourage,” one “discourage” and four “no opinion” votes she secured in the first round in late July.

The daughter of Holocaust refugees, Grynspan has ties to Israel and is a longtime U.N. executive and the secretary-general of the U.N. Trade and Development agency.


Israeli UN ambassador criticizes Mamdani as too ‘clever’ for his own good: ‘You cannot set the fire, then say this’
Israel’s UN ambassador Friday slammed socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani for fanning the flames of anti-Israel sentiment before next week’s General Assembly meeting — only to now act as if he never did.

Ambassador Danny Danon said in a sitdown with The Post that Hizzoner is “clever” — but can’t walk back his call to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the high-stakes UN meeting and then protest if that doesn’t happen.

“He’s very clever, but you cannot set the fire, then say this,” Danon said, referring to Mamdani’s recent attempt to backtrack after encouraging people to hit the streets.

Mamdani claimed he “never encouraged” anyone to protest when Netanyahu arrives in Manhattan on Wednesday, even after urging anti-Israel agitators to demonstrate if he failed to collar the PM upon arrival.

Mamdani, pressed July 22 on his backup plan if an arrest fell through, responded, “I think one of the bedrocks of our city is protest.”

Danon noted, “A few months before the UN General Assembly, he actually brought this idea to the floor.

“He actually set the fire by saying, ‘I will not allow [Netanyahu], he will be arrested,’ blah, blah, blah, blah.”

While anti-Israel agitators plan to target Israel’s UN delegation, Danon noted counterprotests are already brewing against Mamdani.

“The mayor has called for demonstrations. So we don’t know what to expect,” Danon told The Post.

“So far, though, I have seen, actually, demonstrations from the other side against the mayor.”

About 150 people gathered outside the mayor’s home at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan on Friday to protest his alleged divisiveness.

Massive demonstrations previously rocked Manhattan and the UN during Netanyahu’s address in 2025.

Danon dismissed Mamdani’s sudden supposed change of heart as “too little, too late,” emphasizing that the mayor’s job is to ensure safety and welcome world leaders.

“I think the mayor maybe now is trying to amend the mistake. It’s too little, too late,” Danon said.

“He should have said from the beginning: Everyone is welcome to New York. We want you to feel safe in New York. That’s the responsibility of the mayor, not to say, ‘I don’t like Israel, and the prime minister should be arrested.”


Trump says he has a 'big decision coming up' regarding whether or not to 'annihilate' Iran
US President Donald Trump told Axios on Thursday that he faces a "big decision" on whether to significantly escalate military action against Iran.

"I have a big decision coming up," he said. "Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me."

Trump also discussed his upcoming meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman on Tuesday, saying he wants to "find out where they are and how they are doing."

"We have been very protective of them," said Trump.

Trump: 'Not one ship' has reached Iran since start of US blockade
He further told Axios that "not one ship" has reached Iran since the start of the US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, noting that the US is in direct contact with the regime, which he claimed still wants to make a deal.

Regarding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit to New York, Trump told Axios that he "may" meet with the Likud leader.
Turkey Tried to Have Key U.S. Witness in an Iran Sanctions-Busting Case Killed in a New York Jail
The Turkish government tried to have Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab killed inside a US federal detention facility after learning that he was cooperating with prosecutors in a sweeping Iran sanctions-evasion investigation implicating senior Turkish officials including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to a sentencing memorandum filed in federal court in New York.

The extraordinary allegation is contained in a 57-page submission filed on behalf of Zarrab in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Dated July 2, 2026, and filed July 8, the memorandum was prepared ahead of Zarrab’s sentencing and asks the court to impose a sentence of time served, citing his extensive cooperation with US authorities and what his lawyers describe as years of retaliation by the Turkish government.

In perhaps the most striking disclosure, Zarrab’s lawyers devote an entire section of the filing to what they titled “Simultaneous Retaliation and Attempted Murder by Turkey.”

According to the filing, Zarrab was being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) while secretly meeting with prosecutors to prepare for the trial of Mehmet Hakan Atilla, then a deputy general manager of Turkey’s state-owned lender Halkbank. US authorities were taking extensive measures to conceal his cooperation, but rumors began circulating among inmates that Zarrab had switched sides and was helping the government.

In early November 2017 the threats escalated dramatically. A fellow inmate armed with a knife cornered Zarrab and told him that he had been paid to kill him and would do so if Zarrab was cooperating with US authorities, the memorandum says. The identity of the person or entity that allegedly paid the inmate is blacked out in the publicly available version of the filing, although Zarrab’s lawyers characterize the episode in the section heading as an attempted murder by Turkey.

Zarrab escaped only after his cellmate came looking for him and, together with other prisoners, forcibly rescued him, according to his attorneys.

The incident was considered so serious that Zarrab was immediately transferred to FBI custody. Two FBI agents guarded him at all times because, the filing says, authorities concluded that the reach of those seeking to harm him was so extensive that “no jail would be sufficiently safe.”

The alleged attempt on his life came amid a broader campaign that Zarrab’s lawyers say was designed to stop him from testifying about a massive sanctions-busting network in which Halkbank, under directives from Turkey’s leadership, helped Iran gain access to billions of dollars in oil revenue despite US restrictions.
Russia and China veto US proposal for UN experts to keep monitoring sanctions on Iran
Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Sercurity Council resolution Thursday that would have authorized UN experts to keep monitoring sanctions that were reimposed against Iran last year over its nuclear program.

The Security Council sanctions are still in effect, which freeze Iran’s assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures.

Using a provision in the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers, France, Germany and the United Kingdom triggered the “snapback” mechanism, which reimposed the sanctions on Sept. 27, 2025. It restored the Security Council sanctions committee and authorized a panel of UN experts to monitor implementation.

The United States had drafted a resolution to extend the UN expert panel’s mandate for a year. The resolution failed despite a vote of 11-2 in its favor, with Somalia and Pakistan abstaining, because of the Russian and Chinese vetoes.

It comes as the Trump administration is pursuing a wider campaign to isolate Tehran from its remaining economic partners as the more than six-month-old war in Iran has hit a stalemate. Separately, Thursday, the administration went after digital currency networks that it says are illegally providing sanctioned Iranian entities with access to the international financial system.

The Treasury and State Departments announced that they had targeted two companies — BitBank and the Pishtaz Simorgh Electronic Trade Co. — and three associates of BitBank’s previously sanctioned chief, Babak Zanjani, who are accused of playing a role in helping Iran evade sanctions. Illustrative: Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

At the United Nations, Iran’s UN mission thanked China and Russia for vetoing the US resolution, saying on social media that the countries “prevented yet another cynical attempt by the United States and its allies to abuse the Security Council for their political purposes.”

Since Israel and the US struck Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025, UN nuclear inspectors have been unable to verify the status of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. The UN nuclear watchdog has said Iran maintained a stockpile of 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

US deputy ambassador to the UN Jennifer Locetta said the United States wasn’t surprised by the vetoes on Thursday because the experts “would have shined the light” on prohibited cooperation between Iran and its partners.

She said the vetoes are part of a broader effort to prevent expert monitoring of sanctions, and even the appointment of panel members, “to stifle reporting that implicates their own activities in support of rogue regimes.”


Saudi Arabia issues alert for potential danger in capital Riyadh, amid Houthi attacks
Saudi civil defense issues an alert early over potential danger in the capital Riyadh amid an uptick in attacks by Iran-aligned Houthis group on the Gulf country.


Majority believe Israel should help Saudis against Houthis as Likud continues downward trend - poll
A majority of Israelis, 54%, believed Israel should assist Saudi Arabia in its struggle against the Houthis, a Friday Maariv poll revealed.

Thirty-eight percent said such assistance should be conditioned on a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, while 16% supported assisting the kingdom against the Iran-backed Yemeni terror group even without an immediate diplomatic return.

Twenty-six percent opposed Israeli assistance to Saudi Arabia, while 20% said they did not know.

The poll also surveyed support for the upcoming Knesset elections slated for October 27. The poll's findings showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud continuing its downward trend this week, falling to just 18 seats, while the coalition bloc remained stable at 50 seats.

The bloc held its ground as Ofer Winter’s People of Israel once again cleared the electoral threshold, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, running in an alliance with Moshe Feiglin's Zehut, gained one seat, bringing it to six.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Allowing Hamas to Participate in the Upcoming Elections Would Be a Catastrophic Mistake
What is important is the broad picture Ashour presents: an Islamist terrorist group that claims to exist for the Palestinian people has instead become an instrument for controlling, exploiting, and indoctrinating them.

His assessment should be required viewing for anyone negotiating with Hamas. The question is not whether Hamas will hand over some weapons or accept a temporary political arrangement. The question is whether Gaza can ever develop a fundamentally different political and social culture while Hamas's ideology remains embedded in its society and institutions.

Ashour is warning the international community not to make the mistake of believing that Gaza's problem can be solved simply by reaching an agreement with Hamas's leaders.

A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system.

That is why allowing Hamas to retain a political and military role — particularly by including Hamas-affiliated political figures in future elections — would only perpetuate the problem Ashour is describing.

The members of the Board of Peace and the international community need to ask themselves a basic question: Hamas's ideology has helped produce a culture of violence, death, and destruction, so can Gaza really be successfully rebuilt while that ideology — along with its institutional machinery for perpetuating it — remains intact?

The answer, it would seem, is unfortunately not.


Amit Segal: The Decline in Settler Violence
It’s Friday, September 18, and unclassified material circulated this week at Central Command headquarters: the latest episode of Hanoch Daum’s satirical series “Life Is a Hard Time,” which centers on the hilltop youth. In 23 minutes, it explained everything: the settler leadership’s double message, the army’s helplessness, the anarchism, the lost youth.

Life is indeed a hard time, but less so than the news suggests. Nationalist crime in Judea and Samaria fell from 121 incidents in July to 86 in August to 22 so far in September. The number of innocent Palestinians murdered by settler gunfire stands at a flat zero, pending review of one incident earlier this year whose circumstances are still unclear. The number of innocent Jews murdered by Palestinian gunfire stands at three. That is after countless foiled cells, seized explosive drones, last-minute arrests and a round-the-clock presence in the refugee camps.

That it is far more dangerous to be a Jew than a Muslim in Judea and Samaria is obvious. What is astonishing is that it is much more dangerous to be an Arab in Ramla than in Ramallah. This year, 161 Arabs were murdered inside Israel in criminal violence, 34 Palestinians in Judea and Samaria fell victim to local gang wars and 10 bystanders were killed in IDF operations.

Next to the Palestinian explosives arena, nationalist crime is a match. But in a fuel-soaked environment, a match can set the whole area ablaze. It can do so through terror attacks, or through a massive wildfire of international sanctions that has only just begun.

Contrary to the smears, David Zini’s Shin Bet is doing no less on this front than his predecessors’—in fact, more. The army itself has started imposing economic penalties. Recently, six-figure bills for the cost of evacuation were sent to unauthorized outposts that insisted on going up onto the land again and again. Another order now allows vehicles found at such outposts to be confiscated. You wouldn’t believe how many parents discovered their company lease car had been seized because their son decided to put down roots in Area B.

At a recent meeting deep in the field, a few hilltop youths told a senior officer they were the modern-day equivalent of the Tower and Stockade policy of the early days of Zionist settlement. The officer replied that there are 104 new settlements and 170 brand-new farms, all with government approval, and every one of them would be glad of the extra manpower.





 




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2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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